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CHAPTER IV THE CROSSROADS OF THE WEST
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The geese were now indeed flying down the river, coming in long, dark lines out of the icy north. Sometimes the sky was overcast1 hours at a stretch. A new note came into the voice of the wind. The nights grew colder.
 
Autumn was at hand. Soon it would be winter—winter on the plains. It was late in October, more than five months out from St. Louis, when Mr. Jefferson’s “Volunteers for the Discovery of the West” arrived in the Mandan country.
 
Long ago war and disease wiped out the gentle Mandan people. Today two cities stand where their green fields once showed the first broken soil north of the Platte River. But a century ago that region, although little known to our government at Washington, was not unknown to others. The Mandan villages lay at a great wilderness2 crossroads, or rather at the apex3 of a triangle, beyond which none had gone.
 
Hereabout the Sieur de la Verendrye had crossed on his own journey of exploration two generations earlier. More lately the emissaries of the great British companies, although privately4 warring with one another, [Pg 200]had pushed west over the Assiniboine. Traders had been among the Mandans now for a decade. Thus far came the Western trail from Canada, and halted.
 
The path of the Missouri also led thus far, but here, at the intersection5, ended all the trails of trading or traveling white men. Therefore, Lewis and Clark found white men located here before them—McCracken, an Irishman; Jussaume, a Frenchman; Henderson, an Englishman; La Roque, another Frenchman—all over from the Assiniboine country; and all, it hardly need be said, excited and anxious over this wholly unexpected arrival of white strangers in their own trading-limits.
 
Big White, chief of the Mandans, welcomed the new party as friends, for he was quick to grasp the advantage the white men’s goods gave his people over the neighboring tribes, and also quick to understand the virtue6 of competition.
 
“Brothers,” said he, “you have come for our beaver7 and our robes. As for us, we want powder and ball and more iron hatchets8 and knives. We have traded with the Assiniboines, who are foolish people, and have taken all their goods away from them. We have killed the Rees until we are tired of killing10 them. The Sioux will not trouble us if we have plenty of powder and ball. We know that you have come to trade with us. See, the snow is here. Light your lodge11 fires with the Mandans. Stay here until the grass comes once more!”
 
“We open our ears to what Big White has said,” replied Lewis—speaking through Jussaume, the [Pg 201]Frenchman, who soon was added as interpreter to the party. “We are the children of a Great Father in the East, who gives you this medal with his picture on it. He sends you this coat, this hat of a chief. He gives you this hatchet9, this case of tobacco. There are other hatchets and more tobacco for your people.”
 
“What Great Father is that?” demanded Big White. “It seems there are many Great Fathers in these days! Who are you strangers, who come from so far?”
 
“You yourself shall judge, Big White. When the geese fly up the river and the grass is green, our great boat here is going back down the river. The Great Father is curious to know his children, the Mandans. If you, Big White, wish to go to see him when the grass is green, you shall sit yonder in that boat and go all the way with some of my men. You shall shake his hand. When you come back, you can tell the story to your own people. Then all the tribes will cease to wage war. Your women once more may take off their moccasins at night when they sleep.”
 
“It is good,” said the Mandan. “Ahaie! Come and stay with us until the grass is green, and I will make medicine over what you say. We will open our lodges12 to you, and will not harm you. Our young women will carry you corn which they have saved for the winter. Our squaws will feed your horses. Go no farther, for the snow and ice are coming fast. Even the buffalo13 will be thin, and the elk14 will grow so lean that they will not be good to eat. This is as far as the white men ever come when the grass is green. Beyond this, no man knows the trails.”
 
[Pg 202]
 
“When the grass is green,” said Lewis, “I shall lead my young men toward the setting sun. We shall make new trails.”
 
Jussaume, McCracken, and all the others held their own council with the leaders of the expedition.
 
“What are you doing here?” they demanded. “The Missouri has always belonged to the British traders.”
 
The face of Meriwether Lewis flushed with anger.
 
“We are about the business of our government,” he said. “It is our purpose to discover the West beyond here, all of it. It is our own country that we are discovering. We have bought it and paid for it, and will hold it. We carry the news of the great purchase to the natives.”
 
“Purchase? What purchase?” demanded McCracken.
 
And then the face of Lewis lightened, for he knew that they had outrun all the news of the world!
 
“The Louisiana Purchase—the purchase of all this Western country from the Mississippi to the Pacific, across the Stony15 Mountains. We bought it from Napoleon, who had it from Spain. We are the wedge to split the British from the South—the Missouri is our own pathway into our own country. That is our business here!”
 
“You must go back!” said the hot-headed Irishman. “I shall tell my factor, Chaboillez, at Fort Assiniboine. We want no more traders here. This is our country!”
 
“We do not come to trade,” said Meriwether Lewis. “We play a larger game. I know that the men of the Northwest Company have found the Arctic Ocean—you [Pg 203]are welcome to it until we want it—we do not want it now. I know you have found the Pacific somewhere above the Columbia—we do not want what we have not bought or found for ourselves, and you are welcome to that. But when you ask us to turn back on our own trail, it is a different matter. We are on our own soil now, and we will not turn for any order in the world but that of the President of the United States!”
 
McCracken, irritated, turned away from the talk.
 
“It is a fine fairy tale they tell us!” said he to his fellows.
 
Drouillard came a moment later to his chief.
 
“Those men she’ll take her dog-team for Assiniboine now—maybe so one hundred and fifty miles that way. He’ll told his factor now, on the Assiniboine post.”
 
Lewis smiled.
 
“Tell him to take this letter to his factor, Drouillard,” said he. “It is a passport given me by Mr. Thompson, representing Mr. Merry, of the British Legation at Washington. I have fifty other passports, better ones, each good at a hundred yards. If Mr. Chaboillez wishes to find us, he can do so. If we have gone, let him come after us in the spring.”
 
“My faith,” said Jussaume, the Frenchman, “you come a long way! Why you want to go more farther West? But, listen, Monsieur Capitaine—the Englishman, he’ll go to make trouble for you. He is going for send word to Rocheblave, the most boss trader on Lake Superior, on Fort William. They are going for send a man to beat you over the mountain—I know!”
 
[Pg 204]
 
“’Tis a long road from here to the middle of Lake Superior’s north shore,” said Meriwether Lewis. “It will be a long way back from there in the spring. While they are planning to start, already we shall be on our way.”
 
“I know the man they’ll send,” went on Jussaume. “Simon Fraser—I know him. Long time he’ll want to go up the Saskatchewan and over the mountain on the ocean.”
 
“We’ll race Mr. Fraser to the ocean,” said Meriwether Lewis; “him or any other man. While he plans, we shall be on our way!”
 
Well enough the Northern traders knew the meaning of this American expedition into the West. If it went on, all the lower trade was lost to Great Britain forever. The British minister, Merry, had known it. Aaron Burr had known it. This expedition must be stopped! That was the word which must go back to Montreal, back to London, along the trail which ended here at the crossroads of the Missouri.
 
“The red-headed young man is not so bad,” said one of the white news-bearers at the Assiniboine post. “He is willing to parley16, and he seems disposed to be amiable17. But the other, the one named Lewis—I can do nothing with him. For some reason he seems to be hostile to the British interests. He speaks well, and is a man of presence and education, but he is bitter against us, and I cannot handle him. We must use force to stop that man!”
 
“Agreed, then!” said his master, laughing lustily, for, safe in his own sanctuary18, he had not seen these [Pg 205]men himself. “We shall use force, as we have before. We will excite the savages19 against them this winter. If they will listen to us, and turn back in the spring—all of them, not part of them—very well. If they will not listen to reason, then we shall use such means as we need to stop them.”
 
Of this conversation the two young American officers, one of Virginia, the other of Kentucky, knew nothing at all. But they held council of their own, as was their fashion—a council of two, sitting by their camp fire; and while others talked, they acted.
 
Before November was a week old, the axes were ringing among the cottonwoods. The men were carrying big logs toward the cleared space shown to them, and while Meriwether Lewis worked at his journal and his scientific records, William Clark, born soldier and born engineer, was going forward with his little fortress20.
 
Trenches21 were cut, the logs were ended up—taller pickets22 than any one of that country ever had seen before. A double row of cabins was built inside the stockade23. A great gate was furnished, proof against assault. A bastion was erected24 in one corner, mounting the swivel piece so that it might be fired above the top of the wall. A little more work of chinking the walls, of flooring the cabins, of making chimneys of wattle and clay—and presto25, before the winter had well settled down, the white explorers were housed and fortified26 and ready for what might come.
 
The Mandans sat and watched them in wonder. Jussaume, the French trader, shook his head. In all [Pg 206]his experience on the trail he had seen nothing savoring27 quite so much of preparedness and celerity.
 
Among all the posts to the northward28 and eastward29 the word went out, carried by dog runners.
 
“They have built a great house of tall logs,” said the Indians. “They have put the thing that thunders on top of the wall. They never sleep. Each day they exercise with their rifles under their arms. They have long knives on their belts. They carry hatchets that are sharp enough to shave bark. Their medicine is strong!
 
“They write down the words of the Mandans and the Minnetarees in their books. They are taking skins of the antelope30 and the bighorn and the deer, even skins of the prairie-grouse and the badger31 and the prairie-dog—everything they can get. They dry these, to make some sort of medicine of them. They cut off pieces of wood and bark. They put the dirt which burns in little sacks. They make pictures and make the talking papers—all the time they work at something, the two chiefs. They have a black man with them who cannot be washed white—they have stained him with some medicine of their own. He makes sounds like a buffalo, and he says that the white man made him as he is and will do us that way. We would like to kill them, but they have made their house too strong!
 
“They never sleep. In the daytime and in the nighttime, no matter how cold it is, one man, two men, walk up and down inside the wall. They have carried their boats up out of the water—two boats, a great one and [Pg 207]two small. All through the woods they are cutting down the largest trees, and out of the straight logs they are making more boats, more boats, as many as there are fingers on one hand. They have axes that cast much larger chips than any we ever saw. We fear these men, because they do not fear us. We do not know what to think. They are men who never sleep. Before the sun is up we find them writing or making large chips with their axes, or hunting in the woods—not a day goes by that their hunters do not bring in elk and deer and buffalo. They do not fear us.
 
“We have seen no men like these. They are chiefs, and their medicine is strong!”
 

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 overcast cJ2xV     
adj.阴天的,阴暗的,愁闷的;v.遮盖,(使)变暗,包边缝;n.覆盖,阴天
参考例句:
  • The overcast and rainy weather found out his arthritis.阴雨天使他的关节炎发作了。
  • The sky is overcast with dark clouds.乌云满天。
2 wilderness SgrwS     
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠
参考例句:
  • She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
  • Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。
3 apex mwrzX     
n.顶点,最高点
参考例句:
  • He reached the apex of power in the early 1930s.他在三十年代初达到了权力的顶峰。
  • His election to the presidency was the apex of his career.当选总统是他一生事业的顶峰。
4 privately IkpzwT     
adv.以私人的身份,悄悄地,私下地
参考例句:
  • Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
  • The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。
5 intersection w54xV     
n.交集,十字路口,交叉点;[计算机] 交集
参考例句:
  • There is a stop sign at an intersection.在交叉路口处有停车标志。
  • Bridges are used to avoid the intersection of a railway and a highway.桥用来避免铁路和公路直接交叉。
6 virtue BpqyH     
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力
参考例句:
  • He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
  • You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。
7 beaver uuZzU     
n.海狸,河狸
参考例句:
  • The hat is made of beaver.这顶帽子是海狸毛皮制的。
  • A beaver is an animals with big front teeth.海狸是一种长着大门牙的动物。
8 hatchets a447123da05b9a6817677d7eb8e95456     
n.短柄小斧( hatchet的名词复数 );恶毒攻击;诽谤;休战
参考例句:
  • Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. 他们带来磨利的战斧、短刀、刺刀、战刀也全都有殷红的血。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
  • They smashed all the carved paneling with their axes and hatchets. 圣所中一切雕刻的、们现在用斧子锤子打坏了。 来自互联网
9 hatchet Dd0zr     
n.短柄小斧;v.扼杀
参考例句:
  • I shall have to take a hatchet to that stump.我得用一把短柄斧来劈这树桩。
  • Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.别用斧头拍打朋友额头上的苍蝇。
10 killing kpBziQ     
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财
参考例句:
  • Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
  • Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。
11 lodge q8nzj     
v.临时住宿,寄宿,寄存,容纳;n.传达室,小旅馆
参考例句:
  • Is there anywhere that I can lodge in the village tonight?村里有我今晚过夜的地方吗?
  • I shall lodge at the inn for two nights.我要在这家小店住两个晚上。
12 lodges bd168a2958ee8e59c77a5e7173c84132     
v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 );暂住;埋入;(权利、权威等)归属
参考例句:
  • But I forget, if I ever heard, where he lodges in Liverpool. 可是我记不得有没有听他说过他在利物浦的住址。 来自辞典例句
  • My friend lodges in my uncle's house. 我朋友寄居在我叔叔家。 来自辞典例句
13 buffalo 1Sby4     
n.(北美)野牛;(亚洲)水牛
参考例句:
  • Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
  • The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。
14 elk 2ZVzA     
n.麋鹿
参考例句:
  • I was close enough to the elk to hear its labored breathing.我离那头麋鹿非常近,能听见它吃力的呼吸声。
  • The refuge contains the largest wintering population of elk in the world.这座庇护所有着世界上数量最大的冬季麋鹿群。
15 stony qu1wX     
adj.石头的,多石头的,冷酷的,无情的
参考例句:
  • The ground is too dry and stony.这块地太干,而且布满了石头。
  • He listened to her story with a stony expression.他带着冷漠的表情听她讲经历。
16 parley H4wzT     
n.谈判
参考例句:
  • The governor was forced to parley with the rebels.州长被迫与反叛者谈判。
  • The general held a parley with the enemy about exchanging prisoners.将军与敌人谈判交换战俘事宜。
17 amiable hxAzZ     
adj.和蔼可亲的,友善的,亲切的
参考例句:
  • She was a very kind and amiable old woman.她是个善良和气的老太太。
  • We have a very amiable companionship.我们之间存在一种友好的关系。
18 sanctuary iCrzE     
n.圣所,圣堂,寺庙;禁猎区,保护区
参考例句:
  • There was a sanctuary of political refugees behind the hospital.医院后面有一个政治难民的避难所。
  • Most countries refuse to give sanctuary to people who hijack aeroplanes.大多数国家拒绝对劫机者提供庇护。
19 savages 2ea43ddb53dad99ea1c80de05d21d1e5     
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • There're some savages living in the forest. 森林里居住着一些野人。
  • That's an island inhabited by savages. 那是一个野蛮人居住的岛屿。
20 fortress Mf2zz     
n.堡垒,防御工事
参考例句:
  • They made an attempt on a fortress.他们试图夺取这一要塞。
  • The soldier scaled the wall of the fortress by turret.士兵通过塔车攀登上了要塞的城墙。
21 trenches ed0fcecda36d9eed25f5db569f03502d     
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕
参考例句:
  • life in the trenches 第一次世界大战期间的战壕生活
  • The troops stormed the enemy's trenches and fanned out across the fields. 部队猛攻敌人的战壕,并在田野上呈扇形散开。
22 pickets 32ab2103250bc1699d0740a77a5a155b     
罢工纠察员( picket的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Five pickets were arrested by police. 五名纠察队员被警方逮捕。
  • We could hear the chanting of the pickets. 我们可以听到罢工纠察员有节奏的喊叫声。
23 stockade FucwR     
n.栅栏,围栏;v.用栅栏防护
参考例句:
  • I had not gone a hundred yards when I reached the stockade.我跑了不到一百码,就到了栅栏前。
  • A heavy stockade around the cabin protected the pioneer from attack.小屋周围的厚厚的栅栏保护拓荒者免受攻击。
24 ERECTED ERECTED     
adj. 直立的,竖立的,笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立,建立
参考例句:
  • A monument to him was erected in St Paul's Cathedral. 在圣保罗大教堂为他修了一座纪念碑。
  • A monument was erected to the memory of that great scientist. 树立了一块纪念碑纪念那位伟大的科学家。
25 presto ZByy0     
adv.急速地;n.急板乐段;adj.急板的
参考例句:
  • With something so important,you can't just wave a wand and presto!在这么重大的问题上,你想挥动一下指挥棒,转眼就变过来,办不到!
  • I just turned the piece of wire in the lock and hey presto,the door opened.我把金属丝伸到锁孔里一拧,嘿,那门就开了。
26 fortified fortified     
adj. 加强的
参考例句:
  • He fortified himself against the cold with a hot drink. 他喝了一杯热饮御寒。
  • The enemy drew back into a few fortified points. 敌人收缩到几个据点里。
27 savoring fffdcfcadae2854f059e8c599c7dfbce     
v.意味,带有…的性质( savor的现在分词 );给…加调味品;使有风味;品尝
参考例句:
  • Cooking was fine but it was the savoring that he enjoyed most. 烹饪当然很好,但他最享受的是闻到的各种味道。 来自互联网
  • She sat there for a moment, savoring the smell of the food. 她在那儿坐了一会儿,品尝这些食物的香味。 来自互联网
28 northward YHexe     
adv.向北;n.北方的地区
参考例句:
  • He pointed his boat northward.他将船驶向北方。
  • I would have a chance to head northward quickly.我就很快有机会去北方了。
29 eastward CrjxP     
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部
参考例句:
  • The river here tends eastward.这条河从这里向东流。
  • The crowd is heading eastward,believing that they can find gold there.人群正在向东移去,他们认为在那里可以找到黄金。
30 antelope fwKzN     
n.羚羊;羚羊皮
参考例句:
  • Choosing the antelope shows that China wants a Green Olympics.选择藏羚羊表示中国需要绿色奥运。
  • The tiger was dragging the antelope across the field.老虎拖着羚羊穿过原野。
31 badger PuNz6     
v.一再烦扰,一再要求,纠缠
参考例句:
  • Now that our debts are squared.Don't badger me with them any more.我们的债务两清了。从此以后不要再纠缠我了。
  • If you badger him long enough,I'm sure he'll agree.只要你天天纠缠他,我相信他会同意。


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