CHAPTER IV

       THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST

       Table of Contents

      Hundreds of Winnipeggers were upon the road, either going to or returning from St. Cloud, from whence all groceries and other supplies are obtained. The teams consist of a single horse or ox, not unfrequently a cow, harnessed to a two-wheeled cart. The outfit is a curiosity. The wheels are six or seven feet in diameter, and very dishing. A small rack is affixed to the wooden axle. The concern is composed wholly of wood, with a few raw-hide thongs. It is primitive in design and construction, and though so rude, though there is not an ounce of iron about the cart, it serves the purpose of these voyagers admirably. Our teams have been stuck in the mud, at the crossings of creeks, half a dozen times a day; but those high-wheeled carts are borne up by the grass roots where ours go down to the hub.

      There is a family to each cart, — father, mother, and a troop of frowzy-headed, brown-faced children, who, though shoeless and hatless and half naked, are as happy as the larks singing in the meadows, or the plover skimming the air on quivering wings. They travel in companies, — fifteen or twenty carts in a caravan. When night comes on, the animals are turned out to graze; the families cook each their own scanty supply of food, smoke their pipes by the glimmering camp-fire, tell their stories of adventure among the buffaloes, roll themselves in a blanket, creep beneath their carts, — all the family in a pile if the night is cool, — sleep soundly, and are astir before daylight, and on the move by sunrise. The journey down and back is between eight and nine hundred miles; and as the average distance travelled is only about twenty miles a day, it takes from forty to fifty days to make the round trip. No wonder the people of that settlement are anxious to have a railroad reach the Red River.

      Leaving the Pembina road and striking westward to the river, we descend the bank to the bottom-land, which is usually about twenty-five feet below the general surface of the valley. We cross the river by a rope ferry kept by a half-breed, and strike out upon the Dakota plain. The trail that we are upon bears northwest, and is the main road to Fort Totten, near Lake Miniwakan, or the "Devil's Lake," and the forts on the Upper Missouri. Here, as upon the Minnesota side, the wild-flowers are blooming in luxuriance. Our horses remorselessly trample the roses, the convolvulus, and the lilies beneath their feet.

      The prairie chickens are whirring in every direction, and one of our bluff and burly teamsters, who is at home upon the prairies, who in the First Minnesota Regiment faced the Rebels in all the battles of the Peninsula, who was in the thickest of the fight at Gettysburg, who has hunted Indians over the Upper Missouri region, who is as keen-sighted as a hawk, takes the grouse right and left as they rise. His slouched hat bobs up and down everywhere. He seems to know just where the game is; now he is at your right hand, now upon the run a half-mile away upon the prairies. He stops, raises his gun, — there is a puff of smoke, another, and he has two more chickens in his bag. We are sure of having good suppers as long as he is about.

      We reach Dakota City, — another thriving town of one log-house, — peopled by Monsieur Marchaud, a French Canadian, his Chippewa wife and twelve children.

      While our tents are being pitched, we cross the river by another ferry to Georgetown, — a place consisting of two dwellings and a large storehouse owned by the Hudson Bay Company. This is the present steamboat landing, though sometimes the one steamer now on the river goes up to Fort Abercrombie. The river is narrow and winding south of this point, and not well adapted to navigation.

      We find an obliging young Scotchman with a thin-faced wife in possession of the property belonging to the Company. He takes care of the premises through the year on a salary of two hundred dollars, and has his tea, sugar, and groceries furnished him. He can cultivate as much land as he pleases, though he does not own a foot of it, — neither does the Company own an acre. It belongs to the people of the United States, and any brave young man with a large-hearted wife may become possessor of these beautiful acres if he will, with the moral certainty of finding them quadrupled in value in five years.

      This great highway of the North lies along the eastern bank of the river. We have travelled over it all the way from Fort Abercrombie, passing and meeting teams. Here we see a train of thirty wagons drawn by oxen, loaded with goods consisting of boxes of tea, sugar, salt, pork, bacon, and bales of cloth, which are shipped by steamer from this landing. The teas come from England to Montreal, are there shipped to Milwaukie, and transported by rail to St. Cloud. Each chest is closely packed in canvas and taken through in bond. The transportation of the Hudson Bay Company between this place and St. Cloud amounts to about seven hundred tons per annum.

      In addition, the Red River transportation carried on by the Indians and half-breeds is very large. About twenty-five hundred carts pass down and up this highway during the year, each one carrying upon an average nine hundred pounds.

      Besides all this there is the United States government transportation to Fort Abercrombie and the forts beyond, amounting last year to eighteen hundred tons. The rates paid by the War Department government for transportation are $1.36-3/8 per hundred pounds for every hundred miles. All of this traffic will be transferred at once to the Northern Pacific Railroad upon its completion to the Red River.

      The estimated value of the Red River trade is ten millions of dollars per annum, and it is increasing every year.

      The keen-eyed hunters of our party have been on the lookout for a stray buffalo or a deer, but the buffaloes are a hundred miles away. We hear that they have come north of the Missouri in great numbers, and those who are to go West anticipate rare sport. For want of a buffalo-steak we put up with beef. It is juicy and tender, from one of Mr. Marchaud's heifers, which has been purchased for the party.

      It is a supper fit for sovereigns, — and every one is a sovereign out here, on the unsurveyed lands, of which we, in common with the rest of the people, are proprietors. We are lords of the manor, and we have sat down to a feast. Our eggs are newly laid by the hens of Dakota City, our milk is fresh from the cows whose bells are tinkling in the bushes along the bank of the river, and the cakes upon our table are of the finest flour in the world. Hunger furnishes the best relish, and when the cloth is removed we sit around the camp-fire during the evening, passing away the hours with wit, repartee, and jest, mingled with sober argument and high intellectual thought.

      Our tents are pitched upon the river's bank. Far away to the south we trace the dim outline of the timber on the streams flowing in from the west. Turning our eyes in that direction, we see only the level sea of verdure, — the green grass waving in the evening breeze. At this place our company will divide, — Governor Marshall, Mr. Holmes, and several other gentlemen, going on to the Missouri, while the rest of us will travel eastward to Lake Superior.

      It would be a pleasure to go with them, — to ride over the rolling prairies, to fall in with buffaloes and try my pony in a race with a big bull. It would be thrilling, — only if the hunted should right about face, and toss the hunter on his horns, the thrill would be of a different sort!

      We sit by our camp-fires at night with our faces and hands smeared with an abominable mixture prepared by our M. D., ostensibly to keep the mosquitoes from presenting their bills, but which we surmise is a little game of his to daub us with a diabolical mixture of glycerine, soap, and tar! Our tents are as odorous as the shop of a keeper of naval stores. There is an all-pervading smell of oakum and turpentine. Clouds of mosquitoes come, take a whiff, and retire in disgust. We can hear them having a big swear at the Doctor for compounding such an ointment!

      I think of the country which those who are going west will see, and of the region beyond, — the valley of the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and the hills of Montana, — territory to be