From the summit of Pike's Peak, Pike, the explorer, had looked down upon regions watered by four great rivers,—the Platte,[1] Arkansas, Rio Grande and Colorado. Into those dark gorges he had recklessly plunged. But he had scarcely done more than confirm the position of the great landmark, which nature has placed at the head of these great rivers.
War with England had put a stop to exploration for a time, but with peace it was determined to know if the Platte would not afford a better route than the roundabout one Lewis and Clarke had followed to the Pacific. It was thought depressions might exist where this river issued from the mountains, so giving access to the country on the other side, by a way less formidable to the traveller than had yet been found.
With this object in view, Major Long[2] was sent to the Missouri in 1819 by President Monroe. As he was a man of scientific attainments, a more thorough and critical report was expected from him than his predecessors had so far furnished.
Long's journey marks a distinct era in the ways of travel; for while Pike had used row-boats, Long ascended the Missouri in a steamboat built for the purpose at Pittsburg, and named the "Western Engineer." In this vessel he made the voyage to Council Bluffs.
In going up the Missouri, Long found the most populous settlements growing up in the neighborhood of St. Charles, in what is now Callaway County, and in that part lying between the Osage and Chariton. Above the Chariton only a horse-path, called a trace, led northward to Council Bluffs.
In all these primitive settlements superior wealth would be indicated by the number and size of the corn-cribs, smoke-houses, etc., but nothing resembling the barn found on every farm in the Northern States entered into the make-up of these frontier homesteads.
After spending the winter in camp near Council Bluffs, Long passed on his way into the Platte, to the village of the Otoe nation, situated about forty miles above the confluence of the Platte with the Missouri. Going thence he entered the Pawnee country, finding there a more friendly welcome than Pike had met with, but, like him, getting an impression of savage chivalry and independence, the like of which he had found nowhere else. The braves of this nation hung out their war-shields in the village streets, as the cavaliers of old were accustomed to display theirs before their tents, so that every passerby might know who the occupant was by his device.
Long's party turned down the South Fork of the Platte, and reached the mountains in July, 1820, after making a journey of nearly a thousand miles since leaving the Missouri.
In one place this traveller has noted down how they had passed by a large and uncommonly beautiful village of the prairie marmot, covering a grassy plain of about a mile square. As they came toward it, this spot happened to be covered with a herd of some thousands of bisons. On the left were a number of wild horses, and immediately in front twenty or thirty antelopes, and about half as many deer. As it was near sunset the light fell obliquely upon the grass, giving an additional brilliancy to its dark verdure. The little inhabitants of the village were seen running playfully about in all directions, and when the travellers got near them, they sat erect on their burrows, and gave a short, sharp bark of alarm.
A scene of this kind comprised most of what was beautiful and interesting to the passing traveller in the wide unvaried plains of the Missouri and Arkansas.
Before leaving this interesting region, Dr. James, the botanist and historian of the expedition, ascended the high mountain now known as Long's Peak (July 13). Turning south, Long's party soon struck the waters of the Arkansas, near Pike's Peak, from whose summits they saw the great plain they had crossed, "rising as it receded until it appeared to mingle with the sky."
From this point, the explorers descended the valleys of the Arkansas and its largest tributary, the Canadian, to Fort Smith, and from thence through the growing settlements of the territory,[3] to the Mississippi, visiting, by the way, the famous Hot Springs of the Washita. The upper waters of the Arkansas and Platte were reported by them to lie in sandy wastes unfit for occupation by civilized man. Often the explorers would have to dig in the bed of the river to get water, while the arid appearance of every thing around, caused by the disappearance of the rivers[4] beneath their own sands, the want of wood and absence of game, stamped the whole region as one on which nature had set the seal of perpetual barrenness and desolation.
The sum of these discoveries had traced out, as it were, the larger veins through which emigration, the life-blood of the country, was ultimately to flow.
[1] The Platte was called Nebraska by the Otoes, whence comes the name of the State in which it chiefly lies. Some authorities make the Indian word mean the same thing as the French, or flat and shallow, which describes it well.
[2] Major Stephen Harriman Long had been assistant professor of mathematics at West Point. He afterwards (1823-24) explored the Upper Mississippi. Journal of the first expedition published in 1823, of the second 1824.
[3] Arkansas Territory was formed in 1819, capital Little Rock, then a village built on a bluff near the beginning of the hilly region. The name comes from a rock in the river exposed at low water. Fort Smith was a new military post. Other settlements were scattered along the Arkansas from the White River Cut-off to Belle Point, and on Red River as far as the Kiamesha. Though numerous, Long says all were small. Besides these, the Cherokees were also forming settlements on the Arkansas about Cadron, which Long often found superior, in respect of the comforts of life, to those of the whites. These people were the vanguard of their nation, to which Government had ceded lands in Arkansas Territory, and was removing from Georgia beyond the Mississippi. They owned black slaves, the same as the whites. They raised considerable cotton, which they wove into cloth for their own use.
[4] Disappearance of the Rivers. Long's party travelled more than a hundred miles along the dry bed of the Arkansas without once seeing water. Of course they hastened on through this desert with all speed.