The True Account (30 page)

 

 

 

 

T
HE CAPTAINS
leaned forward in the canoe. Drouillard, Lewis, Charbonneau, my uncle, and I all sat up straight. Sacagawea looked inquiringly downriver. Pomp, strapped to a board on his mother's back, had heard the sound, too. I could tell by his smile as, over the rapids, we heard it again; from around a bend just ahead came the clapping reverberations of gunfire.

“Paddle, boys,” Lewis shouted. “Paddle for all you're worth. Someone's shooting at our men.”

Having left our mounts with the Nez Perce for the winter, we were moving swiftly down the Clearwater River toward the Columbia in a loosely strung-out flotilla. Rounding the bend, we spotted the lead canoe drawn up on a sandy bar. Just beyond it the Serpent poured in from the south. On a tongue of land stretching out between the two rivers was a small palisaded fort, where half a dozen men stood firing off their rifles.

Suddenly Lewis began to laugh. The captain, who in his happiest moments was not much given to mirth, gasped, choked, and nearly fell out of the canoe with gales of laughter. He passed his glass to Captain Clark, who began to laugh uproariously himself. Clark handed the glass to me, and to my inexpressible delight who should I see but Franklin, being hoisted to the shoulders of the joyful advance party, discharging their guns not in anger but to celebrate this happy reunion with the savant, who had been given up for lost and now was found.

As we beached our canoe on the gravel shingle just below the fort, Franklin approached my uncle, drew himself up to his full height, saluted smartly, and declared, “Private True Teague Kinneson, I present you with this fort and the Territory of the Pacific Northwest, in the memory of Commander Ethan Allen of the Green Mountain Regiment of the First Continental Army.”

Now came hugs, hand-shaking, and congratulations upon Franklin's miraculous deliverance. “How in the world did you arrive here safely, sir?” my uncle asked.

“Oh, the trip down the No Return was a pleasant outing, friend True. Izaac Walton towed me the entire way. Now if you'll just step into Fort Ti, you'll see such fortification work as will please you very much. I constructed it entirely with you in mind.”

Franklin proudly led us through Fort Ti, where he pointed out its ramparts, garrisons, embrasures, rifle enfilades, parade grounds, and inner and outer walls, though in fact it was no more than a few sticks with the bark still attached thrust upright into the sand. In the center was a smoldering fire of green willow sticks.

“Welcome to the Land of the Columbia, gentlemen,” he said. “Do you like your smoked salmon plain or on camas-bread toast?”

M
Y UNCLE
, F
RANKLIN, AND I
decided to canoe on to the Columbia in advance of the main party, scouting to see which sections of the big river were navigable and which not. For though the Nez Perce Indians had assured us that the entire way to the Pacific was readily manageable with a good craft, we felt that, since the distance to the ocean was so short compared to the distance from the headwaters of the Missouri to St. Louis, and our altitude here still comparatively high, there must of necessity be some terrible rapids and falls between ourselves and tidewater. My uncle said he heartily looked forward to sluicing down them with such an accomplished waterman as Franklin and thereby winning the Great Race to the Pacific—though to keep it a contest he would advise Lewis from time to time of the character of the water ahead.

We set out down the Serpent the next morning in Franklin's Shoshone canoe. My two companions frequently plied their angling-rods for salmon, of which there were huge numbers in the river at that time, and all went very smoothly for several days. In due course we came to the junction of the Serpent with the Columbia, in a desert land of sage and black cliffs and little else. Here my uncle left Lewis a note on a stick reading “Smooth sailing. Excelsior!”

But three days later, we saw rising high above the river ahead the smoky mist of a gigantic falls. Nearby a great throng of people had congregated for a fair even larger than the rendezvous of the mountain people at the Lake Where the River of Yellow Stones Rises. Later we learned that these were Wallawalla Indians, a name my uncle prized for its drollness. But when we attempted to speak to them or communicate with sign language, the people took no notice of us. Though we spent the whole morning walking among them, they appeared to look directly through us. This peculiar behavior alarmed the private, who feared that we had come into a land of ghosts or, worse, had been turned into apparitions ourselves, invisible to living human beings.

The Wallawallas had congregated here to trade with several other riverine nations for horses, fish, elk horn, Spanish goods from California, and British goods from ships that had come up into the mouth of the lower Columbia. Lining both banks above the falls were house-sized stacks of salmon, which served the people of the Northwest the way buffalo served the Indians of the plains. They used fish for food, lamp oil, fuel, currency, and sport. Among the hundreds of fairgoers were artists painting elk hides and tailors sewing elegant clothing. There were dancers, medicine men, shamans dressed in bright costumes, and even a party of exquisites, strolling here and there and judging the wares with the nicest and most just distinctions. Games of all kinds were going forward—horse races, foot races, canoe races, bow and arrow contests. An old man from the Chinook Nation was carving the upswept bow of a canoe larger and more elegant than any we had seen into the shape of a leaping salmon. Yet not one of these people acknowledged our presence. Finally, Franklin suggested that we seek out an interview with their chief.

Chief Dorsal Fin of the Red Salmon was a tall, stem Wallawalla in his fifties. As Franklin and my uncle told our story in Nez Perce and sign language, he listened with an impassive mien that I did not think boded well for us or the official expedition to follow. When they were done, the chief frowned and said that the Columbia River people were only too aware of the enslavement of the California Indians by the Spanish, not to mention the degrading influence of the British and American traders upon the Clatsops and Chinooks at the mouth of the Columbia. At a council held two nights before, he and his people had resolved to harry all white incursionists out of their territory by whatever means necessary. Moreover, he had little doubt, from our having a Blackfoot guide, that we were in league with those traditional enemies of his nation. And although the truce obtaining at the fair prevented him from having us and the larger American party summarily executed, we should instantly return up the river and inform our confederates that by the time they arrived the period of general amnesty would be over. If they attempted to proceed, his warriors would spear them out of the river with their tridents like so many flopping salmon.

Both Franklin and I were of the opinion that we should instantly warn Lewis of this new difficulty, but my uncle had a different idea. To begin with, he acquired the Chinook canoe with the beautifully carved salmon in exchange for a quick painting that I did of it and its creator. Then he went to work on a new invention that he called an “im-pell-er.” This device consisted of two paddles made of western fir, about six feet long and connected in the middle, which he attached to the stem of the canoe like the sails of a windmill, to be operated by an elastic belt made from a whale intestine he bought from an Indian who had come up from the ocean.

Franklin and I went to reconnoiter the falls and the rapids below. Though perhaps not so high as the Great Falls on the Missouri, or quite so loud as the thundering River of Yellow Stones, this Columbian cataract was more forbidding. The force of the falling water shook the ground under our feet, and in a smooth basin at its base was a swirling green vortex. Below the whirlpool was a roaring gut a quarter of a mile long and no wider than fifty feet, with several distinct terraces of dark rock rising on each side. An elderly Yakima River Indian named Butcher Boy was happy to inform us that these obstacles, though terrifying enough, were child's play compared to a narrows downriver, followed by yet another piece of broken water—four miles of cascades, falls, and rapids known as the Chute. Butcher Boy explained that the falls, the whirlpool, the gut, the narrows, and the Chute were called the Five Demons.

That evening we again sought an audience with Dorsal Fin of the Red Salmon, whom we found conferring with Butcher Boy about the best way to preserve our livers for trade to the coastal Tlingits. My uncle informed Dorsal Fin that if he dared accept, we would wager that we could beat him in a canoe race down the river through the Five Demons. To pique the chief's pride, the private warned him that he had invented a mechanism—his im-pell-er—that would add immeasurably to our speed.

“Yes, and I just returned from Washington, where Mr. Jefferson appointed me Emperor of the Columbia Territory,” Dorsal Fin replied. And the jovial Butcher Boy, who was now measuring my uncle's head with a little colored string like a haberdasher's tape, gave his belled cap a playful little jingle.

My uncle said that though he knew Dorsal Fin and his watermen could not possibly be afraid to accept his challenge, it would be unfortunate to give even the impression of fear. He did not need to remind the chief how people
would
gossip of a long winter's day when there wasn't much fishing and time hung heavy on their hands. Nor how common it was for the impression of timidness to be mistaken for timidness itself, especially by willful subordinates or rivals consumed by jealousy.

Abruptly Dorsal Fin said, “Make yourself plain, old fellow. What are the stakes?”

“Our livers to do with as you choose”—with a nod at the beaming Butcher Boy—“against the safety of the oncoming American party. If you win you'll kill us and trade us for whalebone bows to the Tlingits. If we win you'll grant us and the expedition to come safe passage to the Pacific and back.”

 

The race was slated for the next morning. We would paddle to the portage path around the falls, take out our canoes there, put in again below the whirlpool, shoot as much of the gut and the narrows as possible, and continue down to the river's tidal line, below the Chute. There Butcher Boy and his associates would be awaiting our arrival, should we be fortunate enough to get through the rapids.

My uncle assured us that his im-pell-er blades would carry us through with flying colors. He continued work on his invention throughout the evening, while Franklin repaired to the women's private bathing pool, in a little secluded bay of the river, whence there issued many delighted shrieks.

I asked my uncle if he truly thought we could survive the rapids, much less win the race. He instanced many similar feats that had been thought utterly impossible until they were performed, including Hercules slaying the nine-headed Hydra, Odysseus blinding the Cyclops, and Beowolf destroying Grendel and his mother. When I pointed out that these heroes were mythical figures, not real men, he frowned and said myths were inspired by men and he hoped I was not suggesting that he was less than a man. He assured me that anyone who had ever taught a term in a Vermont schoolhouse, much less survived the slings and arrows of a literary career for thirty years, would not be daunted by a little broken water. Adding that no playwright worthy of the name, nor any painter, either, should ever shun an experience that might produce material for his work. Nonetheless, I slept very fitfully that night, waking a dozen times to the terrible roaring of the nearby falls.

 

At dawn Franklin appeared from the ladies' quarters, fresh as a daisy and bedizened with colored beads, an elk-skin coat, a new pair of moccasins, a shark's-tooth amulet on a hammered copper chain, and garlands of sweetgrass and late-blooming asters in his hair. My uncle, seeming unfatigued from his own nightlong efforts, was delighted with his im-pell-er blades. Downriver the spray above the falls turned pink in the sunrise. To the beating of a dozen drums we prepared to launch our canoes.

Dorsal Fin had ten paddlers in his vessel, all of whom had greased themselves well with salmon oil against the icy river water. The chief explained that there were two portage paths around the falls, one on each side of the river, and offered us our choice. But as my uncle confidently wound up his blades, with the whale-gut throwing off droplets of dew as it tightened, he said that the Wallawallas should choose for themselves. The Fin replied that he would take the steep trail on the north bank, leaving the gender path on the south for us, but that whatever else, we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the slick above the falls. “It looks as innocent as a summer pond,” he said, “but the current there is more inexorable than the fiercest rapids. Once a canoe is pulled in, there's no escape. Indeed, we send our condemned murderers and other great criminals down the slick on a raft with no paddle.”

As we approached this Niagara of the West, my uncle continued to wind the wooden blades. Sure enough, before we knew it we were sucked into the deceiving slick and pulled at a terrible rate of speed toward the lip of the falls. True released the blades, and the canoe was flung forward, with the wooden paddles whirling round in a blur. We shot over the falls like a missile from a catapult, just clearing the boiling green whirlpool below. But we had no leisure to congratulate ourselves on our good fortune, as our canoe was instantly swept into the whitewater. A jagged black rock spanning most of the river loomed up ahead of us. Paddling frantically, we sped between it and the canyon wall. For several seconds I could get no air. Then we emerged from the maelstrom into a relatively quiescent stretch of water, though full of standing waves over more rocks. We were approaching the narrows—three miles of unbroken cascades compressed to a flume a hundred yards wide.

Here we had no choice but to leap out onto the ledges and, with elk-hide ropes, lower the canoe down several sets of plummeting rips. Upriver, Dorsal Fin and his oiled crew were shooting the gut below the whirlpool. Next came some miles of turbulent but navigable water, through which our canoe held the lead. But the im-pell-er blades took a terrible beating on the rocks, and the whale-gut was losing its elasticity, so each time my uncle rewound it, we covered less distance. Again I looked over my shoulder back up the river. Dorsal Fin had gained so much on us that a moment later we were neck and neck.