The Oregon Trail quotes

Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the City of St. Louis.

Not only were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders were making ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe.

Many of the emigrants, especially of those bound for California, were persons of wealth and standing. The hotels were crowded, and the gunsmiths and saddlers were kept constantly at work in providing arms and equipments for the different parties of travelers.

No better evidence of the intrepidity of his temper could be wished than the common report that he had killed more than thirty grizzly bears. He was a proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do.

I have never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better man than my noble and true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon.

We were soon free of the woods and bushes, and fairly upon the broad prairie. Now and then a Shawanoe passed us, riding his little shaggy pony at a “lope”;

Henry Chatillon pointed to us. The old Delaware fixed his eyes intently upon us for a moment, and then sententiously remarked:

“No good! Too young!” With this flattering comment he left us, and rode after his people.

This tribe, the Delawares, once the peaceful allies of William Penn, the tributaries of the conquering Iroquois, are now the most adventurous and dreaded warriors upon the prairies.

At this Shaw got up, with his eyes half opened, and feeling the part indicated, he found his hand glued fast to his red flannel shirt.

“He’ll look well when he gets among the squaws, won’t he?” observed the captain, with a grin.

He then crawled under the cart, and began to tell stories of which his stock was inexhaustible. Yet every moment he would glance nervously at the horses. At last he jumped up in great excitement. “See that horse! There—that fellow just walking over the hill!

But again the captain’s easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of grumbling about them.

“Oh, anything for a quiet life!” he said again, circling back to his favorite maxim.

But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic confederates. The captain had sold his commission, and was living in bachelor ease and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin. He hunted, fished, rode steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits.

“What has that fellow been saying to you?” said Shaw, as I returned to the tent. “I have heard nothing but his talking for the last half-hour.”

R. had none of the peculiar traits of the ordinary “British snob”; his absurdities were all his own, belonging to no particular nation or clime.

He was possessed with an active devil that had driven him over land and sea, to no great purpose, as it seemed;

And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the valor of his heart.

Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures.

We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey; but four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie; and to reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks.

The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement to the traveler.

Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one, perhaps, fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his rifle.

Early in the morning after we reached the Platte, a long procession of squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading his horse by a rope of bull-hide.

At last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened “Five Hundred Dollar”), and then mounted with a melancholy air.

“Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black—all black with buffalo!”

In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope;

But the emigrants went farther than mere forebearance; they decreed that since Tom couldn’t stand guard without falling asleep, he shouldn’t stand guard at all, and henceforward his slumbers were unbroken.

Establishing such a premium on drowsiness could have no very beneficial effect upon the vigilance of our sentinels

;

The captain is as helpless on the prairie as a child. We shall have to take him and his brother in tow; they will hang on us like lead.”

“The prairie is a strange place,” said I.

“A month ago I should have thought it rather a startling affair to have an acquaintance ride out in the morning and lose his scalp before night, but here it seems the most natural thing in the world; not that I believe that R.

then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated.

The cherished relic is soon flung out to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie.

We resumed our journey; but we had gone scarcely a mile, when R. called out from the rear:

This patriarchal scene was curious and striking enough; but we made our escape from the place with all possible dispatch, being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the men who crowded around us.

Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs.

They demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what was our business. The last query was particularly embarrassing;

All landed safely at last; we crossed a little plain, descended a hollow, and riding up a steep bank found ourselves before the gateway of Fort Laramie, under the impending blockhouse erected above it to defend the entrance.

Looking back, after the expiration of a year, upon Fort Laramie and its inmates, they seem less like a reality than like some fanciful picture of the olden time

; so different was the scene from any which this tamer side of the world can present. Tall Indians, enveloped in their white buffalo robes, were striding across the area or reclining at full length on the low roofs of the buildings which inclosed it.

Many of them were firmly persuaded that the French were instigating the Indians to attack and cut them off. On visiting the encampment we were at once struck with the extraordinary perplexity and indecision that prevailed among the emigrants.

They seemed like men totally out of their elements; bewildered and amazed, like a troop of school-boys lost in the woods.

It was impossible to be long among them without being conscious of the high and bold spirit with which most of them were animated. But the FOREST is the home of the backwoodsman. On the remote prairie he is totally at a loss.

This timorous mood of the emigrants was doubly unfortunate, as it exposed them to real danger.

Assume, in the presence of Indians a bold bearing, self-confident yet vigilant, and you will find them tolerably safe neighbors.

But your safety depends on the respect and fear you are able to inspire. If you betray timidity or indecision, you convert them from that moment into insidious and dangerous enemies.

Disregarding his complaints, we left him, and coming to the mouth of Chugwater, separated, Shaw and Henry turning to the right, up the bank of the stream, while I made for the fort.

Taking leave for a while of my friend and the unfortunate squaw, I will relate by way of episode what I saw and did at Fort Laramie.

It was not more than eighteen miles distant, and I reached it in three hours;

I mean to give up trapping after this year. My squaw says she wants a pacing horse and some red ribbons; I’ll make enough beaver to get them for her, and then I’m done! I’ll go below and live on a farm.”

“Your bones will dry on the prairie, Rouleau!”

said another trapper, who was standing by; a strong, brutal-looking fellow, with a face as surly as a bull-dog’s.

I fired; it leaped upward and fell upon its tracks. Measuring the distance, I found it 204 paces. When I stood by his side, the antelope turned his expiring eye upward. It was like a beautiful woman’s, dark and rich.

“Fortunate that I am in a hurry,” thought I; “I might be troubled with remorse, if I had time for it.”

Cutting the animal up, not in the most skilled manner, I hung the meat at the back of my saddle, and rode on again. The hills (I could not remember one of them) closed around me. “It is too late,” thought I, “to go forward.

“Will they go to the war?”

No man is a philanthropist on the prairie.

We welcomed this news most cordially, and congratulated ourselves that Bordeaux’s interested efforts to divert The Whirlwind from his congenial vocation of bloodshed had failed of success, and that no additional obstacles would interpose between us and our plan of repairing to the rendezvous at …

When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away.

War is the breath of their nostrils.

Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a deadly, rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation.

but doubtless one-half at least of our kind hosts, had they met us alone and unarmed on the prairie, would have robbed us of our horses, and perchance have bestowed an arrow upon us beside.

Trust not an Indian. Let your rifle be ever in your hand.

Wear next your heart the old chivalric motto SEMPER PARATUS.

The rain by this time had begun to abate; and going down to the bottom of the ravine, we loosened the animals, who were standing up to their knees in water. Leading them up the rocky throat of the ravine, we reached the plain above.

“Am I,” I thought to myself, “the same man who a few months since, was seated, a quiet student of BELLES-LETTRES, in a cushioned arm-chair by a sea-coal fire?”

All around us was obscurity;

… and ruddier, until at length the clouds drew apart, and a flood of sunbeams poured down from heaven, streaming along the precipices, and involving them in a thin blue haze, as soft and lovely as that which wraps the Apennines on an evening in spring.

Rapidly the clouds were broken and scattered, like routed legions of evil spirits.

The plain lay basking in sunbeams around us; a rainbow arched the desert from north to south, and far in front a line of woods seemed inviting us to refreshment and repose.

But as we rode on, the sun was sinking, and soon was within half an hour of the horizon. We ascended a hill and looked round us for a spot for our encampment.

The prairie was like a turbulent ocean, suddenly congealed when its waves were at the highest, and it lay half in light and half in shadow, as the rich sunshine, yellow as gold, was pouring over it.

The rough bushes of the wild sage were growing everywhere, its dull pale green overspreading hill and hollow.

Then, suddenly, standing in a circle by the stream, swarming with their savage inhabitants, we saw rising before us the tall lodges of the Ogallalla.

Never did the heart of wanderer more gladden at the sight of home than did mine at the sight of those wild habitations!

The Indians will soon be corrupted by the example of the whites, abased by whisky, and overawed by military posts; so that within a few years the traveler may pass in tolerable security through their country.

Its danger and its charm will have disappeared together.

As soon as Raymond and I discovered the village from the gap in the hills, we were seen in our turn; keen eyes were constantly on the watch.

but Rouleau, clambering gayly into his seat, kicked his horse’s sides, flourished his whip in the air, and trotted briskly over the prairie, trolling forth a Canadian song at the top of his lungs. Reynal looked after them with his face of brutal selfishness.

“Well,” he said, “if they are killed, I shall have the beaver. They’ll fetch me fifty dollars at the fort, anyhow.”

This was the last I saw of them.

When among this people danger is never so near as when you are unprepared for it, never so remote as when you are armed and on the alert to meet it any moment.

Nothing offers so strong a temptation to their ferocious instincts as the appearance of timidity, weakness, or security.

Many deep and gloomy gorges, choked with trees and bushes, opened from the sides of the hills, which were shaggy with forests wherever the rocks permitted vegetation to spring.

The animal was of course wholly uncontrollable, and stretched away at full speed over the prairie, till he and his rider vanished behind a distant swell. I never saw the man again, but I presume no harm came to him.

An Indian on horseback has more lives than a cat.

The village encamped on a scorching prairie, close to the foot of the mountains. The beat was most intense and penetrating. The coverings of the lodges were raised a foot or more from the ground, in order to procure some circulation of air;

The men themselves made no objection, nor would they have made any had the journey been more dangerous; for

Henry was without fear, and the other two without thought.

Shaw and I were much better fitted for this mode of traveling than we had been on betaking ourselves to the prairies for the first time a few months before. The daily routine had ceased to be a novelty.

For these once obtained, together with the skill to use them, all else that is essential would follow in their train, and a host of luxuries besides.

One other lesson our short prairie experience had taught us; that of profound contentment in the present, and utter contempt for what the future might bring forth.

These principles established, we prepared to leave Fort Laramie. On the fourth day of August, early in the afternoon, we bade a final adieu to its hospitable gateway. Again Shaw and I were riding side by side on the prairie.

His hawk’s eye had been so completely deceived by the peculiar atmosphere that he had mistaken two large crows at the distance of fifty rods for a grizzly bear a mile off.

To the journey’s end Henry never heard the last of the grizzly bear with wings.

In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill.

There were certain marks too about his shoulders, which could be accounted for by the circumstance, that during Tete Rouge’s illness, his companions had seized upon the insulted charger, and harnessed him to a cannon along with the draft horses.

To Tete Rouge’s astonishment we recommended him by all means to exchange the horse, if he could, for a mule.

Fortunately the people at the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to make some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a tolerable mule in exchange for the broken-down steed.

In front and on either side we could see dark columns and masses, half hidden by clouds of dust, rushing along in terror and confusion, and hear the tramp and clattering of ten thousand hoofs.

That countless multitude of powerful brutes, ignorant of their own strength, were flying in a panic from the approach of two feeble horsemen.

To remain quiet longer was impossible.

We encamped close to the river.

The night was dark, and as we lay down we could hear mingled with the howling of wolves the hoarse bellowing of the buffalo, like the ocean beating upon a distant coast.

No one in the camp was more active than Jim Gurney, and no one half so lazy as Ellis. Between these two there was a great antipathy.

a little antelope came running up with remarkable gentleness to within fifty yards; and there it stood, its slender neck arched, its small horns thrown back, and its large dark eyes gazing on me with a look of eager curiosity.

By the side of the shaggy and brutish monsters before me, it seemed like some lovely young girl wandering near a den of robbers or a nest of bearded pirates.

The buffalo looked uglier than ever. “Here goes for another of you,” thought I, feeling in my pouch for a percussion cap. Not a percussion cap was there. My good rifle was useless as an old iron bar.

He was miserably emaciated; his mane was all in tatters; his hide was bare and rough as an elephant’s, and covered with dried patches of the mud in which he had been wallowing. He showed all his ribs whenever he moved.

He looked like some grizzly old ruffian grown gray in blood and violence, and scowling on all the world from his misanthropic seclusion.

The old savage looked up when I first approached, and gave me a fierce stare; then he fell to grazing again with an air of contemptuous indifference.

For my part, I remained as quiet as he, and looked quite as hard; I felt greatly inclined to come to term with him.

“My friend,” thought I, “if you’ll let me off, I’ll let you off.”

At length he seemed to have abandoned any hostile design. Very slowly and deliberately he began to turn about; little by little his side came into view, all be-plastered with mud. It was a tempting sight. I forgot my prudent intentions, and fired my rifle;

At length he produced a box which he had extracted from some dark recess within, and opening it, he presented me with a folded paper of some size. “What is it?” said I. “Calomel,” said the doctor.

Under the circumstances I would have taken almost anything.

There was not enough to do me much harm, and it might possibly do good; so at camp that night I took the poison instead of supper.

Aloof amid the darkness appeared a gigantic black apparition; solemnly swaying to and fro, it advanced steadily upon us. Henry, half vexed and half amused, jumped up, spread out his arms, and shouted.

The invader was an old buffalo bull, who with characteristic stupidity, was walking directly into camp.

It cost some shouting and swinging of hats before we could bring him first to a halt and then to a rapid retreat.