hostile Blackfoot confederation driving Manuel Lisa and Andrew Henry out of that prime beaver country, the whole of the upper Missouri drainage was again cleared of American interests for many years.
Nevertheless, they did leave behind one man in abandoning their Bighorn post in 1811.
“Onliest trapper we left up thar’ was one of the mulatto fellers,” Isaac related.
Bass turned from his anvil, beads of sweat standing out on his brow like glittering diamonds, his thick brown eyebrows soaked. “A Negra?”
“He t’weren’t as dark as most Negras I see’d afore. Name o’ Edward Rose—the one we left behind when we put the Bighorn post at our backs.”
Bass drove the hammer down on the glowing spring metal, spacing his words between each resounding ring of hammer on steel. “Why’d he … stay on … up there … seeing how … things were … mighty hot … in that country?”
“Wanted to live on with them Crow.”
The hammer came to a stop, and he stuffed the half-finished spring back into the coals, heaving down on the bellows handle to excite the fire. “Gone off to live with Injuns … just like a Injun?”
Washburn nodded. “Them Crow have mighty handsome wimmens, Titus.” He licked his lips visibly. “Mighty, mighty handsome wimmens.”
“What become of you when Manuel Lisa pulled out of that country?” Bass inquired, leaning over the red cedar piggin and bringing the ladle to his lips, drinking long and slow.
“I stayed on with Henry. He been my friend right from that first winter in that up-country. I throwed in with him whar’ he was going.”
With their desertion of the upper Missouri, Andrew Henry initially dropped downriver with Manuel Lisa. But while the Spaniard established a new base of operations at a new Fort Lisa raised near Council Bluffs, Andrew Henry figured he’d had himself enough of the Indian trade. He tromped on back home, while Lisa carried on a lively trade up the river as far as the Mandan villages, eastward to the Sac and Fox, from time to time bartering with bands of the westward-migrating Sioux. But due to the well-financed encroachments of the British companies coupled with the economic hardships brought the infant nation by the War of 1812, after more than a dozen years on the upper rivers, the American fur trade was no bigger when hostilities ended with the English, no stronger among the tribes in 1815 than the trade had been in 1804.
By 1819 the aggressive Lisa had nudged out many of his stodgy, conservative partners, the sort of financiers he’d believed were holding him back—replacing them with men the likes of Joshua Pilcher.
“I went with Henry when he walked away from Lisa,” Washburn explained. “Henry had him a plan, an’ a good’un too. We went up to the lead mines, up north.”
“Galena?”
“That’s them.”
“You was mining lead?”
“Same as ye buy for yer rifle, Titus. Bar lead—from St. Louis Tower. Yessir. Me an’ Andrew, ’long with some others, all throwed in the muscles of their backs too. It were good, honest work—not like the Injun trade. But no matter, Henry said: thar’ll always be fellers like Leeza to push open the doors to the frontier, fellers to keep them god-damned doors open.”
The country Manuel Lisa wanted most to exploit was as close to virgin territory as any that then existed. The Canadians hadn’t trapped it to any degree at all. What few furs had come from that country were nothing more than those the Blackfoot stole from other tribes and turned around to sell to the Canadian companies. A rich harvest, Lisa kept evangelizing among his men and financiers, an unbelievable treasure of furs lay waiting those who would take the gamble. That territory was, after all, a land where an American’s scalp wasn’t worth much at all, attached to a head, or hanging from some warrior’s belt.
“Then Leeza died that very y’ar,” Washburn explained. “Eighteen-nineteen. An’ Joshua Pilcher takes over the comp’ny. Carried on all the ol’ Spanyard’s dreams too. Took him two winters to do it, but Pilcher finally got him a big outfit put together, setting off for the upper river.”
Some dozen miles above the mouth of the Knife River, Joshua Pilcher rebuilt an old Lisa post and named the new fort after one of his three lieutenants, William Henry Vanderburgh. Then Pilcher pushed ahead with the two others: Robert Jones and Michael Immel. Later that year at the mouth of the Bighorn, near the spot where Lisa had raised a post in 1807, Pilcher’s men built Fort Benton, christened for Missouri’s newly elected senator.
By 1822 Pilcher had three hundred men trading on the upper Missouri and Yellowstone, Jones and Immel in charge of day-to-day operations. So with the Yellowstone trade secure, Pilcher next set his eye on the rich headwaters of the Missouri.
“But by that y’ar I was done with breaking my back in a galena mine.”
“What become of you?” Titus asked, drawing the crimson spring from the coals.
“That once-a-time army gen’ral named Ashley come to see Andrew up to the mines—come to talk him back into the fur business. Said he needed Henry to be his field captain for a new fur company he was puttin’ together. Ashley claimed he was going back to that fur kentry—said he was headed for the land o’ the beaver on the upper Missouri!”
Washburn grinned endearingly, his upper lip pulling back, taut above that snaggletooth like a hawser rope looped halfway around a wharfside post. “Spring of twenty-two it were: the two of ’em hired on some fellers what answered the notice they put in the St. Louie paper—askin’ for fellers to go to the mountains an’ trap beaver.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing that notice,” Bass said quietly, slamming the hammer down onto the spring iron angrily. Watching the fireflies spew forth, the slake fly off the steel band with every blow. “Don’t read much no more anyways. Ain’t read much of anything in a long, long time, you know.”
“My, but thar’ was a bunch of ’em what did sign on for the upriver,” Isaac replied, his eyes squeezed into squints as he brooded on the roll call of their names, likely recalling each face too. “That Negra Rose was back from the Crows by then, ready an’ snortin’ to trap again. He went, along with a greenhorn Negra named Beck with. Then thar’ was the preacher, Jedediah Smith—he carried him his Bible ’long in his possibles. Young Jim Bridger t’weren’t more’n a green-broke kid, an’ Davy Jackson couldn’t been much older. ’Nother Span-yard, Louie Vasquez, was along too, with Tom Fitzpatrick, an’ a ornery ol’ hunter said he lived with the Pawnee of a time.”
“That one you told me ’bout—Glass?”
“Yep.” Washburn nodded. “Our bunch with Henry was the first to push off from St. Louie. The gen’ral an’ his boys weren’t gonna get away for the better part of a month behin’t us. Whew! My ol’ body gets tired yest thinking about what work it be pushin’ a boat upriver. Mean work—’bout as mean as work comes: pullin’ that boat of Henry’s with ropes up through the brush and bramble, fightin’ skeeters an’ mud, warpin’ them
With a wag of his head Titus suddenly interrupted, “If I don’t see another flat or keel and them big hawsers for the rest of my life—it’ll be soon enough.” He drew his bare, sinewy forearm across his forehead, then swiped at the large pendant of sweat hanging at the end of his nose.
Struggling upriver, the Henry brigade pushed past the town of Franklin, Missouri, and nearby Boone’s Lick. Next came Fort Osage at the mouth of the Kansas River, and finally the mouth of the Platte.
“That’s the place I’d leave the Missouri an’ strike out for the moun-tanes on my own the next time.”
Bass slowly laid his hammer down on the cooling steel and swallowed before asking, “The river you said what takes you into the mountains?”
“Runs smack into the heart of the Rockies.”
“So you did see where it goes?”
“Not rightly—but I been on it. Ye can count plew on that.”
“Frenchie word for beaver pelt.”
“You say you already was on that river—the Platte we can take to the mountains?”
“That comes later on, Titus,” he replied gruffly, waving off that interruption to the flow of his story. “By an’ by we pull Ashley’s trade goods, ’long with our own possibles an’ plunder, all the way north to them Mandan villages. It were thar’ we bartered fer ponies. Ye see, the gen’ral was to rendezvous with us by then—but word reached us that his boat hit a snag and sunk clean to the bottom of the river. Not a feller to give up, Ashley turned right around to head back to St. Louie fer more trade goods. Meanin’ Henry’s brigade, we was on our own. Andrew looked over our bunch an’ said he’d lead out the rest of us overland—makin’ for the Yallerstone.”
