It was well in line with the General's character that he kept me on until the very afternoon before the intended day of marching. Then, as it were at the eleventh hour, he included in his written orders to Pike, to march the following day, a brief paragraph to the effect that I was to accompany the expedition as a volunteer surgeon.
Notwithstanding the orders of the General, we did not start in the morning, but were forced to wait over until the fifteenth of July, owing to the unreadiness of our charges, the Osage captives who had been rescued from the Pottawattomies and who were to be returned to their people under our escort.
The first stage of our journey, up the Osage River, was one tedious to all and exceedingly to those whose duties confined them to the navigation of the boats. In I need only add that the Summer was fast nearing its close before we arrived at the Osage towns.
There, instead of the which we had a right to expect from an Indian tribe to whom we had restored so many members, we were delayed many days by their ungrateful to supply us with horses, and in the end obtained with greatest difficulty only a few of their least desirable animals.
Yet, relieved of the boats and our Indian charges and of these few pack-beasts and saddle horses, our march on toward the Pawnee Republic, when at last we did get under way again, soon carried us into the prairie which lies of the three-hundred-mile belt of half-forested lands along the Mississippi. We had come to that vast extent of desert plains which, though in game, is all but of timber. In consequence of this fact, young Wilkinson and I agreed with Pike that the waste is to serve forever as the Western boundary of the Republic's settled population.
About the middle of September I was sent on ahead of the party to the Pawnee Republic, accompanied by a young Pawnee called Frank, one of the half-dozen of his people attached to the expedition at St. Louis. We were well mounted, and travelled rapidly in a northwesterly direction, across the lower fork of the Kansas River and the three branches which flow into the Republican Fork from the south and west.
At first we kept a sharp outlook for hunting and war parties of the Kans, who at the time were not on the best of terms with their cousins the Osages. But throughout our trip we saw nothing more dangerous than the numerous panthers which thrive on the superabundant game. Though bold, these beasts were too well fed to trouble us. The same was true of the gray wolves, a small pack of which followed us day after day to feast upon the carcasses of the we killed.
Evening of the fourth day brought us into the vicinity of the Pawnee Republic. We were riding along over a broken, hilly country, and my savage companion was telling me, in a mixture of bad French and worse English, that we should soon come within sight of the Republican Fork and his home village, when suddenly we rode into a broad track which could only have been made by a large body of horsemen, over two hundred at the very least.
"Hold!" I cried, up and pointing at the signs. "Look. Many people went south, on horses, two or three weeks ago. Your people? They have gone to the Arkansas?"
"Non!" Frank, and leaping off, he caught up and handed to me a tent pin. "Pawnee? non! Stick no grow in Pawnee hunting-ground. White man's knife cut him. Voilà!"
"White man!" I repeated in .
How was it possible that there could have been so large a party of white men traversing this remote ? As I sat staring at the wooden pin, studying its grain and shape, Frank circled around through the beaten grass in search of further signs. A guttural cry from him compelled my attention.
He was holding up a broken spur.
"España!" he called.
One glance was enough to convince me that he was not mistaken. The spur was of Spanish make.
More puzzled than ever, we clapped heels to our horses, and up the track, which Frank declared led direct from the village. Within a few minutes we topped a line of high hills, and found ourselves looking down into the valley of the Republican and upon the rounded roofs of the big Pawnee .
One look was enough to relieve our fears regarding the safety of the village. I had never seen a more peaceful-appearing Indian town. The women were at work robes near the lodges or harvesting their corn and in the little patches of field near-by. The children were far and wide, the girls playing with their puppies or tagging their mothers, the boys practising with bows and arrows or watching the hoop-and-pole games of the few men who were to be seen. The young , probably, were off on hunting or war parties, and of the men who remained in the village, most were in their lodges or lolling in the shade outside.
But I did not look long at the . My eye was almost immediately caught by a red-and-yellow flag afloat above the front of the great council-. Even at that distance I could not fail to recognize it as the flag of Spain. So astonished was I at the sight that I drew up short, unable to credit my eyes. The flag solved the mystery of the track, only to raise the puzzling question of the presence of so large a body of Spaniards at so great a distance from their present boundaries.
A loud shouting and in the village roused me from my bewilderment. We had been sighted. The women and children were fleeing to the lodges, and all the men capable of bearing arms were advancing toward us, with threatening guns and bows and lances. However, Frank at once made the wolf-ear sign which showed them that he was a Pawnee, while I held up the wampum belt intrusted to me by Pike. A moment later Frank was recognized, and the news shouted back to the village.
At the same time the men, both mounted and afoot, charged down upon us, and piercing the air with their war whistle and flourishing their weapons as if about to tear us to pieces. A man unused to Indians, no matter how brave, might well have trembled at finding himself thus confronted by hundreds of yelling, half-naked savages. The Pawnee warriors are particularly formidable-looking, being tall and well shaped, and their height by the roach of short hair which runs back over their shaven heads to the feathered scalp-lock. I was, however, too well in the Indian character either to show or to feel any .
As the wild band closed about us in mock attack, a stately whom Frank said was Characterish, or White Wolf, the grand chief of the nation, forced his horse through the mob and greet............