"We shall go over to camp with you!" Tsistsaki declared.
My uncle told me to order the stableman, Bissette, to saddle three horses for us. Within fifteen minutes we were heading for the valley of the Teton, five miles to the north, where more than ten thousand Indians were waiting to trade their winter take of robes and furs for the goods that the steamboats were to bring to us. All the North Blackfeet and the Bloods and the Gros Ventres were there, and our own people, the Pikuni, the southern, or Montana, branch, of the great Blackfoot Confederacy. We called the Pikuni "our people," because nearly all of our company men in Fort Benton were married to women of that tribe.
What a thunder of sound struck our ears as we arrived at the edge of the valley slope and looked down into it! It was all aglow with fires shining yellow through the buffalo-leather lodge skins. Drums were booming; people were singing, laughing, and dancing; children were shouting; horses were impatiently whinnying for their mates; and dogs were howling defiance to their wild kin of the plains, the deep-voiced wolves and shrill-yelping coyotes. We paused but a moment, listening to it all, and hurried on down to the camp of the Pikuni and the lodge of White Wolf, chief of the Small Robes Clan, brother of Tsistsaki and father of my chum, Pitamakan—Running Eagle.
Tethering our horses to some brush, we went inside and were made welcome, my uncle taking the honor seat at the right of the chief. In as few words as possible my uncle explained why we had come and the need for hurry, and White Wolf at once sent messengers up and down the valley to ask the different tribal head chiefs to come to his lodge for a council with Pi-oh' Sis-tsi-kum—Far Thunder—as my uncle had been most honorably renamed at the medicine-lodge ceremonials of the previous summer. Within an hour they had all arrived, Big Lake of the Pikuni, Crow Foot of the North Blackfeet, Calf Shirt of the Bloods, and Lone Bull of the Gros Ventres, and with them came some of their under-chiefs—clan chiefs and chiefs of the various branches of the All Friends Society. The lodge became so crowded with them that the women and children were obliged to retire to other lodges.
"Well, Far Thunder," Big Lake said to my uncle, when all were seated and the pipe was going the round of the circle, "we were all busy directing our women in the packing of our robes and furs for to-morrow's trade, for we had been told of the arrival of the fire boat; but when you called we came. Speak; our ears await your words!"
My uncle had a wonderful command of the Blackfoot language. Briefly in well-chosen words he told them that the great company was winding up its affairs. He explained that Steell and Carroll would take over the company fort and the business, and then said that he himself had decided to enter into close trade relations with them, especially to keep them supplied with goods and ammunition during their winter hunts; he asked them to decide at once where they would pass the coming winter, for upon their decision depended the size of the order for goods that must be sent on the fire boat, which was to return down-river in the morning. Loud clapping of hands and cries of approval answered this last statement, and then Crow Foot, the greatest chief, perhaps, of the confederacy, said, "Far Thunder, brother! Your offer to winter-trade with us is the best news we have ever had. No more will our young men be obliged to make long and dangerous journeys through winter snows and killing blizzards to the fort across from here for fresh supplies of powder and balls, and other things. No longer will our hunters be obliged to sit idle in their lodges. Brother, I think we may safely leave the choice of our coming winter-hunting country to you!"
"Ai! Ai! Far Thunder, brother, the words of Crow Foot are our words!" cried some of the chiefs. And others said, "Yes, Far Thunder, be yours the choice!"
"I thank you for your generosity," my uncle replied. "Brothers, I choose a part of our country that is black with buffalo; whose wooded valleys shelter countless elk and deer. In its very center will I build my trade-house. Brothers, before the Moon of Falling Leaves is ended you shall see it standing, full of goods, at the mouth of On-the-Other-Side Bear River!"
"Ha! At the mouth of the Musselshell, where the steamboats will unload the trade goods almost at our doors!" I said to myself.
"No! No! I protest! Not there, brothers!" cried Lone Bull, the Gros Ventre chief. "That is too dangerous a country! Last winter, during all its moons, the Assiniboins were encamped in its northern part, the valley of Little River [Milk River on the maps. So named by Lewis and Clark], and the Crows were at the same time camping in the valley of On-the-Other-Side Bear River, where they will doubtless hunt again this coming winter!"
"Ha! All the more reason that we should winter there!" cried Big Lake. "We have too long neglected that part of our country. It is our plain duty to go down there and clean it of our enemies and keep it clean of them. If we fail to do so, they will be soon claiming it their very own, the gift of their gods to them."
"Right you are, brother," cried Crow Foot, "and wise is Far Thunder! He could not have made a better choosing. What say you all? Is it decided that we winter down there?"
"Yes! Yes!" they all answered—all but Lone Bull and his under-chiefs.
"You still object to the choice?" said Big Lake to him.
"I do, though I shall be there with you. My silence now is my warning to you all that you are making a mistake for which we shall pay dearly with our blood!" he answered.
"Ha! Since when were we afraid of our enemies!" Calf Shirt exclaimed.
So was that matter settled. White Wolf knocked the ashes from the smoke pipe, and the chiefs filed out of the lodge to go their homeward ways. As the women returned, I said to my chum, "Pitamakan, almost-brother, we are certainly going to see some exciting, perhaps dangerous times down in that On-the-Other-Side Bear River country!"
"Excitement, danger, they make life," he answered.
Tsistsaki, coming in, heard my remark. She turned to my uncle. "So, man mine, we go to the On-the-Other-Side Bear River country, do we? Yes? Oh, I am glad! Down there grow plenty of plums. I shall gather quantities of them for our winter use!"
We went out, mounted our horses, and hurried home and to bed. That is, Tsistsaki and I did; my uncle worked all night, writing out his trade-goods orders. The steamboat men worked all night, too, unloading freight for the fort, and when I awoke in the morning the boat had left with its load of company furs.
When we were eating breakfast, my uncle said to us, "Well, woman, well, youngster, we start upon a new trail now, a trail of my own making, and I feel that it is going to be a trail easy and worth blazing. All that I have in the world, about twenty thousand dollars, I am putting into the venture, and on top of that I am asking for more than ten thousand dollars' worth of goods on a year's time. Thomas, we have just got to pay that bill when it comes due, fourteen months from now, or Wesley Fox's name will become a byword in St. Louis."
"We shall pay it, sir," I said.
"Absolutely, we shall pay it, if I have to beg robes and beaver skins from my people to make up the amount!" Tsistsaki declared.
Looking back at it after all these years, I see that the dissolution of the American Fur Company was an historical event. Its founders and its later owners, the Chouteaus, had been the first to profit by the discoveries of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and year by year they had built a string of trading-posts along the Missouri, which did an enormous business in trading with the various tribes of Indians for their buffalo robes and beaver and other furs. But little by little the richness and vastness of the Missouri River country became known to the outside world; first came various opposition fur-traders, then settlers upon the rich bottom lands of the river.
Before the settlers the Indians and the buffaloes fled, and the income of the company correspondingly decreased. The Chouteaus simply could not brook opposition, or trade with penny-saving settlers, profitable as that might have been; so in this year of 1865 they went out of business. At the time only two of the company posts, Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and Fort Benton were in what may be termed still virgin country; that is, country still rich in buffaloes and fur animals and controlled