Centennial (31 page)

There was competition. Local girls, spotting the way Pasquinel spent his money buying presents for anyone connected with the fur trade, thought he might make a good husband. He was generous. He was entertaining. In looks ... well, he was small but he was not ridiculous. Best of all, he seemed to be lucky.

They made known their interest, but Pasquinel excused himself, as he always did, on grounds that he already had a wife in Quebec. He was willing to give them money, pay for their drinks and bed with them as chance provided, but he could express no interest in marriage.

Lise Bockweiss was not so easy to dispose of. She was a solid, forthright girl with all the domestic qualifications a husband might expect. She also had a sense of humor and could appreciate the comedy in watching the New Orleans French girls trying to catch this elusive trader. She was taller than Pasquinel but she had the knack of making him seem important when she was with him, and from time to time even Pasquinel had the fleeting thought: This one could make “une bonne femme.”

The four ate together frequently, but between Grete and McKeag little was happening. He was timorous with ladies and blushed as red as his beard when pretty Grete teased, “I’ll bet you have a squaw hidden upstream.” It was not long before young Grete concluded that there was little future for her in wooing McKeag, and she turned her attentions to a shopkeeper who appreciated her.

It was more difficult for Pasquinel to evade Lise. For one thing, her father took a heavy-handed interest in the courtship; he was aware that Lise was seriously considering the coureur and he did not propose to let the Frenchman slip away. Bockweiss could not believe Pasquinel’s vague talk of having a wife. He persuaded the coureur to visit with him in his shop, and in the process of explaining how he cast his jewelry he found opportunity to speak of his daughter: “That one has a solid head on her shoulders. A man would always be proud of that one.”

The silver reached him in ingots, which he melted in a small furnace activated by an arm-powered bellows: Use’s mother taught her how to cook ... good.”

When the silver assumed liquid form, he poured it meticulously into molds shaped like butterflies, or wheels, or arm bracelets: “It’s no easy thing to bring two daughters all the way from Germany, but when they are both angels, especially Lise, it’s worth it.”

When the silver cooled, he used delicate files to remove any excess, catching it for reuse later. Then he took the pieces to a buffer wheel, turned by a foot pedal, and as he pumped he said, “A man with a good business like you ought to marry. I myself plan to marry again next year, but of course, finding a good woman isn’t easy.”

He now took the pieces and began the delicate etching and decoration which made a Bockweiss silver piece so desirable. He had large, fat fingers which seemed unsuitable for intricate work, but he used his tools with such skill that he could carve almost any design: “Pasquinel, let me be frank. I sell a piece like this for ten dollars. I’m going to be a wealthy man. With my daughters, especially Lise, I can afford to be generous. You would have a fixed home here in Saint Louis. A fixed home is something.”

As the time approached for the traders to return to their rivers, Lise Bockweiss took over where her father had stopped. She gave a dinner to which Pasquinel was invited and showed him concentrated attention, after which her father took the Frenchman aside and said, “As long as the world lasts, women will want jewelry and Indians will want trinkets. You do the trading. I’ll make the silver. It will be a good partnership.”

He continued expansively: “And as your partner, Pasquinel, I would be very happy ... that is ... should you at some point in time wish to join my family.” This was said with Germanic gravity and with such obvious regard for Lise’s welfare that not even Pasquinel could treat it jokingly. A proposal was being made, one most advantageous, and he was forced to give it attention.

McKeag, watching this from a comfortable distance, since Grete was no longer applying pressure on him, saw that his partner was being maneuvered into marriage, and he began to take seriously Pasquinel’s repeated statements that he had a wife somewhere else, Montreal or New Orleans or Quebec. He was not surprised, therefore, when Bockweiss invited him to the shop one day to speak of this matter, but he was taken aback when he found Grete’s shopkeeper there, accompanied by a blonde from New Orleans.

“Herr McKeag,” Bockweiss said bluntly, ‘this young lady has told us that your partner Pasquinel has a wife in New Orleans. What of that?”

McKeag took a deep breath, looked first at the girl, then at the shopkeeper, and said, “Pasquinel jokes about this ... to keep from getting trapped. One time he says he has a wife in Montreal, another time Quebec. I suppose he said New Orleans too.”

Bockweiss laughed nervously, but with obvious relief. The blonde, however, felt that she had been insulted and was not disposed to let the matter drop. “He told me nothing. I heard it from a New Orleans girl. When I told her that I liked Pasquinel, she said, ‘No good. He has a wife in New Orleans.’ ”

“Did she know the wife?” Bockweiss asked.

“How do I know?”

“You could ask her.”

“Ask? Ask? She’s gone.”

The meeting was inconclusive, and Bockweiss, feeling an impropriety in having raised such a question about a potential son-in-law, yet wanting reassurance as a father, suggested that perhaps McKeag might want to question his partner, but at this the Scotsman rebelled. Blushing deeply, he fumbled, “I wouldn’t know ... I couldn’t.”

So the businessman was deputized to interrogate Pasquinel, and it was a futile interview. The little Frenchman laughed and said, “This town is too much. I better get back to the Indians.”

“But do you have a wife in New Orleans?” the man pressed.

“No.”

After this reassurance the Bockweiss family concluded there was no impediment. Plans went forward for a wedding, even though the groom had not said definitely that he was entering into the union, and finally Bockweiss put the matter to him bluntly: “Can we have the wedding before you go back to the plains?”

“Yes.”

It was a charming affair. Normally the local French would have ignored such a wedding, but the Bockweiss family came from South Germany, an area friendly to France, and in addition, were Catholic, which made them doubly welcome in the community. At the celebration, Bockweiss and his daughters made a favorable and lasting impression on the inhabitants, while Pasquinel, looking very short and muscular beside his taller German wife, behaved himself, and the approving news was flashed through the crowd: “He’s turning over whatever savings he has to his wife. Bockweiss has acquired a grant of land from the governor; and she’s building a big house.” Before the coureurs left Saint Louis, the new bride assured McKeag, “We’ll always keep one room for you,” but when the canoe was heading west the Scotsman thought, One more freedom gone.

In the late summer of 1803, as they came down the Platte from Rattlesnake Buttes with seven bales of beaver, they heard at the Pawnee village news that was doubly sad. Chief Rude Water had been slain by an Arapaho war party: “Big devil Lame Beaver, he staked himself out. Shot Rude Water.”

“Pasquinel!” McKeag called. “You hear that? The Arapaho who helped us up north. Lame Beaver. He killed Rude Water.”

“What happened to Lame Beaver?”

McKeag translated this for the Pawnee, and they replied, “We killed him.”

Pasquinel shook his head sadly. “Deux braves hommes ... morts. Dommage, dommage.”

Then the Pawnee continued with additional information that proved even more startling: “Lame Beaver killed Rude Water only because he used special bullets.” And they showed Pasquinel the two bullets.

“They’re gold!” Pasquinel cried, letting them drop heavily into a cup.

McKeag interrogated the braves for nearly an hour, trying to determine how Lame Beaver could have obtained gold bullets, and in the end it was agreed that he must have located a lode. Where? No one knew. When? It must have been after the winter when the Arapaho helped cure McKeag’s shoulder, because that year there was no evidence of gold bullets.

“Where did he go that winter, after he left us?” Pasquinel asked.

“After buffalo,” McKeag answered. “Don’t you remember? They said, ‘We’ve got to find one more herd before winter?’ That’s what they said.”

“Are there any mountains north of that river?” Pasquinel demanded.

The question was interpreted for the Pawnee, who answered, “No. Flat. Flat.”

Pasquinel became obsessed with Lame Beaver and his gold bullets. Somewhere this clever Indian had found gold. The trick now was to determine where. Guidance could come only from Blue Leaf; she would know where her husband had found his treasure, so during the forthcoming season they would seek her out and extract the secret. In the meantime, they would carry the two gold bullets to Saint Louis and sell them for the Pawnee.

Unfortunately, when he reached home, Pasquinel’s preoccupation with the bullets diverted his attention from the inventive work his wife had completed during his absence. Applying the funds he had left with her, plus others she had wheedled from her father, she had purchased a lot on the residential Rue des Granges. It commanded a comprehensive view of the town; it seemed above the river yet part of it. Here she had built a good stone house with a porch on four sides. The house contained many features suitable for dwelling along the edge of a German forest, yet its outward appearance was completely French, built only of such materials as a frontier town could provide. If a needed brick or fabric was unobtainable, she turned up some ingenious substitute.

And she was the major adornment of the house, a large, capable young woman with zest for whatever was happening in the world. If persons of importance passed through Saint Louis to the western frontier, she wanted to know them, to talk with them of their prospects. In the winter of 1804, for example, she entertained frequently for Captain Meriwether Lewis and his assistant, Lieutenant William Clark, as they prepared an expedition to explore the upper Missouri River, and perhaps points farther. But her special guest was Captain Amos Stoddard, who had been sent to Saint Louis by President Jefferson on a mission of peculiar delicacy. He and his aide, Lieutenant Prebble, made her house their virtual headquarters, and conversation was good.

Pasquinel fitted easily into such entertaining. He was a rough, convivial host, and what he lacked in social grace, he made up for with tales of his adventures on the prairie. Such guests as joined the parties liked to talk with him of Indians, and he expounded views which were more readily accepted by his French listeners than by Captain Stoddard and his aide. “I have one rule,” Pasquinel often said. “Never fight the Indian if you can avoid it. Never betray him in a trade. Bring him to you by faithfulness.”

It was remarkable that the French, who had followed these precepts in Canada, would enjoy three hundred years of amiable relations with their Indians, while the Americans, who were sure the ideas were wrong, would breed only agony with theirs. Perhaps it was because the French wanted trade; the Americans, land.

Lieutenant Prebble voiced the prevailing view: “We found in Kentucky—and everywhere else, for that matter—that the only reasonable way to handle an Indian is to kill him. Trust? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. I say thank God there’s a wilderness out there where decent white men will never want to live. I say let’s throw every damned Indian into that desert and let them keep it till hell freezes.”

In February, after one such dinner, Lise told her husband and her father that she was pregnant, and they had a private celebration, to which they summoned McKeag, who was alone in his room. There was laughter and prediction as to what the boy would be, assuming, as Pasquinel did, that it would be a boy. Bockweiss suggested that he become a silversmith, to keep the profitable business going, and to everyone’s surprise, Pasquinel agreed. “Keep him in Saint Louis,” he said forcefully. “Never let him work the rivers.”

He himself spent the winter interrogating voyageurs as to where gold might be found, but none of them knew. He asked Captain Lewis, who said, “There’s no gold in America.” Lieutenant Prebble gave him a book on the subject, but of course, he couldn’t read.

On March 9 of that year Pasquinel and the other Frenchmen in Saint Louis watched approvingly as Captain Stoddard engineered a comical, warm-hearted charade. He had been ordered by President Jefferson to inaugurate United States rule in the sprawling Louisiana Purchase recently acquired from Napoleon of France. But there was a complication.

Since Spain had never got around to relinquishing control of the area to France, as she had been obligated to do by one of those treaties which periodically ended European wars, Saint Louis was still Spanish, and French authorities could not legally hand it over to America. It was Stoddard who devised the ingenious stratagem whereby everything could be set right.

“The top Spanish officer in the area must formally cede this domain to the top French officer in the area,” he suggested. “Then the French officials can, with propriety, yield the territory to the United States.” Few proposals in the brief history of Spain’s San Luis de Iluenses had been more enthusiastically received, and through the streets ran Pasquinel, shouting, “Tomorrow we shall all be French again.”

But there was another difficulty. In the entire area there was no Spanish official; strange as it may seem now, the only Spanish officer in the territory was Charles de Hault de Lassus, a French lieutenant who happened to be serving as the Spanish governor of Upper Louisiana, and if he was required to represent Spain in this transfer, where could a French officer be found to represent the Emperor Napoleon? Captain Stoddard was not only resourceful, but also gallant, and he volunteered to fill the breach: “For this one day I designate myself as the legal representative of his august majesty the Emperor of France, and on his exalted behalf I shall accept the transfer.”

So on the morning of March 9 a varied crowd surrounded the governor’s residence, a squat building on Rue de l’Eglise marked by a flagpole. First in attendance were the Indians assembled from four neighboring tribes to witness the celebration: Delaware, Shawnee, Abnaki, Sac. It was a cold day and they stood in buffalo robes, turning their heads sharply whenever cheers or guns exploded. Second came the French contingent, led by Captain Stoddard, eleven men, including Pasquinel, in Sunday clothes. Third were a few casual Americans, quite dirty and out of place. And finally there was Governor de Lassus, a Frenchman making believe he was a Spaniard in this gracious puppet play.