Rob Nixon, the Old White Trader: A Tale of Central British North America

“Often and often did we bitterly repent our folly, and wish ourselves back home; but wishing was of no use. We found that we were slaves without the possibility of escape. Tom, who had more learning by a great deal than I had, said one day that he would go and appeal to the Consul, – I think he was called, a British officer at the port where we lay, – when the mate, who heard him, laughed, and told him, with an oath, that he might go and complain to whomsoever he liked; but that both he and Bill had signed papers, and had no power to get away. By this Tom knew that if we complained the captain would produce the papers signed by the other boys, and that we should be supposed to be them, and have no remedy. Tom then proposed that we should play all sorts of pranks, and behave as badly as we could. We tried the experiment, but we soon found that we had made a mistake; for our masters beat and starved us till we were glad to promise not again to do the same. Our only hope was that we should some day get a chance of running away; and, if it hadn’t been for that, we should, I believe, have jumped overboard and drowned ourselves. Month after month passed by, the ship continued trading from port to port in the Pacific Ocean, – as the big lake you’ve heard speak of, friend Redskin, is called, – over to the west there; but the chance we looked for never came. We then hoped that the ship would be cast away, and that so we might be free of our tyrants. If all had been drowned but ourselves we shouldn’t have cared. At last, after we’d been away three years or more, we heard that the ship was going home. We didn’t conceal our pleasure. It didn’t last long. Another captain came on board one day. I heard our captain observe to him, ‘You shall have them both a bargain. Thrash them well, and I’ll warrant you’ll get work out of them.’ I didn’t know what he meant at the time. In the evening, when the strange captain’s boat was called away, Tom and I were ordered to get up our bags and jump in. We refused, and said we wanted to go home. We had better have kept silence. Down came a shower of blows on our shoulders, and, amid the jeers and laughter of our shipmates, we were forced into the boat. We found ourselves aboard a whaler just come out, with the prospect of remaining in those parts three years at least. You’ve heard speak, Peter, of the mighty fish of the big lake. The largest sturgeon you ever set eyes on is nothing to them – just a chipmunk to a buffalo. We had harder and dirtier work now than before – catching, cutting out, and boiling down the huge whales – and our masters were still more cruel and brutal. We were beaten and knocked about worse than ever, and often well nigh starved by having our rations taken from us. How we managed to live through that time I don’t know. I scarcely like to think of it. The ship sailed about in every direction; sometimes where the sun was so hot that we could scarce bear our clothes on our backs, and sometimes amid floating mountains of ice, with snow and sleet beating down on us. At last, when we had got our ship nearly full of oil, and it was said that we should soon go home, we put into a port, on the west coast of this continent, to obtain fresh provisions. There were a few white people settled there, but most of the inhabitants were redskins. The white men had farms, ranchos they were called, and the natives worked for them.

“Tom and I agreed that, as the ship was soon going home, the captain would probably try to play off the same trick on us that our first captain had done, and so we determined to be beforehand with him. We were now big, strongish fellows; not as strong as we might have been if we had been better fed and less knocked about; but still we thought that we could take good care of ourselves. We hadn’t much sense though, or knowledge of what people on shore do; for how should we, when you see that since the day we left our native country, when we were little ignorant chaps, we hadn’t once set our feet on dry land. Tom swore, and so did I, that if we once did reach the shore, we’d get away as far from the ocean as we could, and never again smell a breath of it as long as we lived. How to get there was the difficulty. We had always before been watched; and so, to throw our shipmates off their guard, we pretended to think of nothing but about going home, and our talk was all of what we would do when we got back to old England. We said that we were very much afraid of the savages on shore, and wondered any one could like to go among them. After a time, we found that we were no longer watched as we used to be. This gave us confidence. The next thing was to arrange how we were to get on shore. We neither of us could swim; and, besides, the distance was considerable, and there were sharks – fish which can bite a man’s leg off as easily as a white fish bites a worm in two. We observed that, in the cool of the evening, some boats and canoes used to pull round the ship, and sometimes came alongside to offer things for sale to the men. Tom and I agreed that if we could jump into one of them while the owner was on board, we might get off without being discovered. Night after night we waited, till our hearts sunk within us, thinking we should never succeed; but, the very night before the ship was to sail, several people came below, and, while they were chaffering with the men, Tom and I slipped up on deck. My heart seemed ready to jump out of my skin with anxiety as I looked over the side. There, under the fore-chains, was a canoe with a few things in her, but no person. I glanced round. The second mate was the only man on deck besides Tom, who had gone over to the other side. I beckoned to Tom. The mate had his back to us, being busily engaged in some work or other, over which he was bending. Tom sprang over to me, and together we slid down into the canoe. The ship swung with her head towards the shore, or the mate would have seen us. We pulled as for our lives; not, however, for the usual landing-place, but for a little bay on one side, where it appeared that we could easily get on shore. Every moment we expected to see a boat put off from the ship to pursue us, or a gun fired; but the sun had set, and it was growing darker and darker, and that gave us some hope. Still we could be seen clearly enough from the ship if anybody was looking for us. The mate had a pair of sharp eyes. ‘He’ll flay us alive if he catches us,’ said I. ‘Never,’ answered Tom, in a low tone; ‘I’ll jump overboard and be drowned whenever I see a boat make chase after us.’ ‘Don’t do that, Tom,’ said I; ‘hold on to the last. They can but kill us in the end, and we don’t know what may happen to give us a chance of escape.’ You see, friend Peter, that has been my maxim ever since, and I’ve learned to know for certain that that is the right thing.

“Well, before long we did see a boat leave the ship. It was too dark to learn who had gone over the side into her. We pulled for dear life for a few seconds, when Tom cried out that he knew we should be taken. I told him to lie down in the bottom of the canoe, and that if the ship’s boat came near us I would strip off my shirt and pretend to be an Injun. At first he wouldn’t consent; but, as the boat came on, some muskets were fired, and suddenly he said he’d do as I proposed, and he lay down, and I stripped off my shirt and smoothed down, my hair, which was as long as an Injun’s. On came the boat; I pulled coolly on as if in no way concerned. The boat came on – she neared us. Now or never, I thought; so I sang out, in a feigned voice, and pointed with my paddle towards the other side of the harbour. I don’t think I ever felt as I did at that moment. Did they know me? or should I deceive them? If the mate was there I knew that we should have no chance. The people in the boat ceased pulling. I didn’t move either, though the canoe, with the last stroke I had given, slid on. Again I pointed with my paddle, gave a flourish with it, and away I went as if I had no business with them. I could not understand how I had so easily deceived my shipmates, and every instant I expected them to be after us. At last we lost sight of them in the gloom; but Tom, even then, was unwilling to get up and take his paddle. I told him that, if he didn’t, we should have a greater chance of being caught. The moment I said that, up he jumped, and paddled away so hard that I could scarcely keep the canoe in the right course for the place where we wanted to land. The stars helped us with their light; and, as we got close in with the shore, we found the mouth of a stream.

“Though we had so longed to get on shore we felt afraid to land, not knowing what we should do with ourselves. The shore looked so strange, and we expected to see all sorts of wild animals and snakes which we had heard talk of. Tom was the most timid, ‘It was bad aboard, Bill,’ said he, ‘but if we was to meet a bear or a buffalo what what should we do?’ I couldn’t just answer him; but when we found the river we agreed that we would pull up it as far as we could go, and it would carry us some way into the country at all events. We little knew the size of this mighty land, or of the big, long, long rivers running for hundreds of miles through it. This America of yours is a wonderful country, friend Redskin, if you did but know it. Well, up the river we pulled for some miles; it was but a mere brook, you’ll understand, but we thought it a great river. It was silent enough, for there were no habitations except a few native wigwams. We had all the night before us, that was one thing in our favour. As on we went we heard a roaring, splashing noise, which increased. ‘Hillo! here’s a heavy sea got up; I see it right-a-head,’ cried Tom. ‘We must go through it, however,’ said I; and so I tried to paddle the canoe through it. We very nearly got swamped; it was, you see, a waterfall and rapid, and higher up even our canoe could not have floated. We now agreed that go on shore we must, like it or not; I stepped out first, and then helped Tom, or in his fright he would have capsized the canoe. There we were both of us on firm ground for the first time since, as little boys, we left old England. I did feel strange, and when I tried to walk, I could scarcely get along.

“Tom rolled about as if he was drunk, hardly able to keep his feet. The rough ground hurt us, and we were every instant knocking our toes and shins against stumps and fallen branches. We both of us sat down ready to cry. ‘How shall we ever get along?’ asked Tom. ‘We shall get accustomed to it,’ I answered; ‘but it does make me feel very queer.’ We found a good supply of provisions in the canoe, and we loaded ourselves with as much as we could carry, and we then had the sense to lift our canoe out of the water, and to carry her some way till we found a thick bush in which we hid her. ‘If they find out we got away in the canoe they’ll think we are drowned, and not take the trouble to look for us,’ observed Tom, as we turned our backs on the spot. We were pretty heavily laden, for we didn’t know where we might next find any food; and as we walked on we hurt our feet more and more, till Tom roared out with pain, and declared he would go no further. ‘Then we shall be caught and flayed alive, that’s all, Tom,’ said I. ‘But let us see if we can’t mend matters; here, let us cut off the sleeves of our jackets and bind them round our feet.’ We did so, and when we again set off we found that we could walk much better than before. We hadn’t been so many years at sea without learning how go steer by the stars. What we wanted was to get to the east; as far from the sea and our hated ship as possible: that one thought urged us on. Through brushwood which tore our scanty clothes to shreds, and over rough rocks which wounded our feet, and across marshes and streams which wetted us well nigh from head to foot, we pushed our way for some hours – it seemed to us the whole night – till we got into an Indian track. We didn’t know what it was at the time, but found it was an easy path, so we followed it up at full speed. On we ran; we found that it led in the right direction, and that’s all we thought of. Unaccustomed to running or walking as we were, it seems surprising how we should have held out; but the truth is it was fear helped us along, and a burning desire to be free.

“Daylight found us struggling up a high hill or ridge, rather running north and south; we reached the top just as the sun rose above a line of lofty and distant mountains. We turned round for a moment to look on the far-off blue waters which lay stretched out below us, and on which we had spent so large a portion of our existence. ‘I’ve had enough of it,’ cried Tom, fiercely shaking his fist; and then we turned along again, and rushed down the ridge towards the east. It was the last glimpse I ever had of the wide ocean. Still we did not consider ourselves safe. We should have liked to have put a dozen such ridges between our tyrants and ourselves. On we went again till at last our exhausted strength failed, and we stopped to take some food. Once having sat down it was no easy matter to get up again, and before we knew what was happening we were both fast asleep. We must have slept a good many hours, and I dreamed during that time that the mate, and cook, and a dozen seamen were following us with flensing-knives, and handspikes, and knotted ropes, shrieking and shouting at our heels. We ran, and ran for our lives, just as we had been running all night, but they were always close behind us. The mate – oh! how I dreaded him – had his hand on my shoulder, and was giving a growl of satisfaction at having caught me, when I awoke; and, looking up, saw not the mate, but the most terrible-looking being I had ever set eyes on, so I thought.

“I had, to be sure, seen plenty of savages who came off to the ship from the islands at which we used to touch, but they were none of them so fierce as he looked. I won’t describe him, because he was simply a redskin warrior in his war paint and feathers. It was his hand that was on my shoulder; his grunt of surprise at finding us awoke me. I cried out, and Tom and I jumped to our feet and tried to run away; a dozen Indians however surrounded us, and escape was impossible. ‘Let us put a bold face on the matter, Tom,’ I sang out; ‘I don’t think they mean to kill us.’ Our captors talked a little together and they seemed pleased with the way we looked at them, for they showed us by signs that they meant us no evil. They were a portion of a war party on their way to destroy the pale-face settlement on the coast. They guessed by our dress and looks, and from our clothes being torn, that we were runaway English seamen; and, knowing that we should not wish to go back to our ship, considered that we should prove of more value to them alive than our scalps would be if they took them. We understood them to say that they wanted us to go with them to attack their enemies, but we showed them by our feet that we could not walk a step, and as they were not ill-tempered people they did not insist on it. After a talk they lifted us up – two taking Tom, and two me between them – and carried us along at a quick rate for some miles to their camp; there we saw a large number of Indians collected, some armed with bows, and some few with fire-arms.

“There were a few women, in whose charge we were placed. We could not make out whether we were considered prisoners or not; at all events, we could not run away. Leaving us, the whole party set forth towards the west on their expedition. Two days passed, and then, with loud shoutings, and shriekings, and firing of muskets, the party appeared, with numerous scalps at the end of their spears, and some wretched captives driven before them, I remember, even now, how I felt that night, when the war-dance was danced, and the prisoners tortured; how fearfully the men, and even the women, shrieked, and how the miserable people who had been taken, as they were bound to stakes, writhed under the tortures inflicted on them. While we looked on, Tom and I wished ourselves back again, even on board the ship, thinking that we ourselves might next be treated in the same manner. At last the savages brought fire, and then, as the flames blazed up, we saw three people whom we knew well, – the captain, and mate, and one of the men, who had been among the worst of our tyrants. Though their faces were distorted with agony and horror, as the light fell on them, there was no doubt about the matter. They might have seen us. If they did, it must have added to their misery. They had come on shore to visit some of the settlers, we concluded, and, at all events, were found fighting with them. We got accustomed, after a time, to such scenes, and learned to think little of them, as you doubtless do, friend Peter; but at that time, I went off in a sort of swoon, as the shrieks and cries for mercy of the burning wretches reached my ears. The Indians had got a great deal of booty, and having taken full revenge for the injury done them, and expecting that they would be hunted out if they remained in the neighbourhood, they judged it wise to remove to another part of the country. Our feet had sufficiently recovered during the rest of two days to enable us to walk, or I am not certain that we should not have been killed, to save our captors the trouble of carrying us. It took us a week to reach the main camp, where most of the women and children were collected. We limped on, with difficulty and pain, thus far concealing our sufferings as much as we could. We could not have gone a mile further, had not the tribe remained here to decide on their future course. The rest, and the care the women took of us, sufficiently restored our strength to enable us to move on with the tribe to the new ground they proposed taking up. Your Indian ways, friend Peter, were very strange to us at first, but by degrees we got into them, and showed that we were every bit as good men as the chief braves themselves. Whatever they did, we tried to do, and succeeded as well as they, except in tracking an enemy, and that we never could come up with. They, at first, treated us as slaves, and made us work for them, as they did their women; but when they saw what sort of lads we were, they began to treat us with respect, and soon learned to look upon us as their equals. We both of us became very different to what we were at sea, Tom especially. There we were cowed by our task-masters, here we felt ourselves free men; and Tom, who was looked upon as an arrant coward on board ship, was now as brave as the bravest warrior of the tribe. We were braver, indeed; for while they fought Indian-fashion, behind trees, we would rush on, and never failed to put our enemies to flight.

“We were of great service to our friends in assisting them to establish themselves in their new territory, and to defend themselves against the numerous foes whom they very soon contrived to make. Still we held our own, and our friends increased in numbers and power. Our chief was ambitious, and used every means to add fresh members to his tribe, by inducing those belonging to other tribes to join us. His object, which was very clear, excited the jealousy of a powerful chief, especially, of the great Dakotah nation, inhabiting the country north-east of our territory. He, however, disguised his intentions, and talked us into security by pretending the greatest friendship. Through his means, our other enemies ceased to attack us, and we began to think that the hatchet of war was buried for ever. Tom and I had been offered wives – daughters of chiefs – and we had agreed to take them to our lodges, when we both of us set out on a hunting expedition, to procure game for our marriage feast, and skins to pay for the articles we required. We had great success, and were returning in high spirits, when night overtook us, within a short distance of the village. We camped where we were, as we would not travel in the dark, hoping to enter it the next morning in triumph. About midnight, both Tom and I started from our sleep, we knew not why. Through the night air there came faint sounds of cries, and shrieks, and shouts, and warlike noises. We thought it must be fancy; but presently, as we stood listening, there burst forth a bright light in the direction of the village, which went on increasing, till it seemed that every lodge must be on fire. What could we do? Should we hasten on to help our friends? It was too late to render them any assistance. We must wait till daylight to learn what way the foe had gone, and how we could best help our friends; so we stood watching the flames with grief and anger, till they sunk down for want of fuel. We had not lived so long with Indians, without having learned some of their caution; and concealing our game and skins, as soon as it was dawn we crept on towards the village. As we drew near, not a sound was heard – not even the bark of a dog. We crept amid the bushes on hands and feet, closer and closer, when from a wooded knoll we could look down on the lately happy village, or, I should say, on the spot where it lately stood.

“By the grey light of the morning a scene of desolation and bloodshed was revealed to us, which, in all my experience of warfare, I have never seen equalled. Every lodge was burnt to the ground; here and there a few blackened posts alone remaining to show where they once stood: but a burnt village I have often seen. It was the sight of the mangled and blackened bodies of our late friends and companions thickly strewed over the ground which froze the blood in our veins. For some moments we could scarcely find breath to whisper to each other. When we did, we reckoned up the members of the tribe, men, women, and children, and then counting the bodies on the ground, we found that our foes had killed every one of them, with the exception of perhaps a dozen, who might have been carried off. This told us, too correctly, how the event had occurred. In the dead of night the village had been surrounded, torches thrown into it, and, as the people rushed out confused, they were murdered indiscriminately – old and young, women and children. Were our intended wives among them? we almost wished they were; but we dared not descend to ascertain. The place was no longer for us. ‘I wish that I was back in England, Tom,’ said I. ‘So do I, Bill, right heartily,’ said he. ‘East or west, Tom?’ said I. ‘Not west! no, no!’ he answered, with a shudder; ‘we might be caught by another whaler.’ ‘East, then,’ said I, pointing to the rising sun; ‘we may get there some day, but it’s a long way, I’ve a notion.’ ‘If we keep moving on, we shall get there though, long as it may be,’ said Tom. So we crept back to where we had left our goods, and having taken food for a couple of days, we went and hid ourselves in some thick bushes, where we hoped our enemies would not find us. For two days and nights we lay hid, and on the third morning we agreed that we might as well chance it as stay where we were, when the sound of voices, and of people moving through the woods reached our ears, and, peeping out, we saw several warriors passing along at no great distance. From the way they moved we knew that they were not looking for any one, nor believing that any enemy was near; but still, should any one of their quick eyes fall on our trail, they would discover us in an instant. I never felt my scalp sit more uneasy on my head. Suddenly they stopped and looked about; I thought that it was all over with us; the keen eyes of one of them, especially, seemed to pierce through the very thicket where we lay. We scarcely dared to breathe, lest we should betray ourselves. Had there been only five or six we might have sprung out and attacked them with some chance of success, but there were a score at least, and more might be following, and so the odds were too great. They were most of them adorned with scalps – those of our slaughtered friends, we did not doubt, and we longed to be avenged on them. On they came, and just as we thought that we had seen the end of them, more appeared, and several of them looked towards us. How we escaped discovery I do not know. Long after the last had passed on into the forest we came out of our hiding-place, and gathering up all our property, prepared to commence our journey. We pushed on as fast as our legs would carry us, every moment expecting to come upon some of our enemies, or to have them pouncing out upon us from among the trees or rocks. All day we pushed on, almost without stopping, and for several days resting only during the hours of darkness, till at last we hoped that we had put a sufficient distance between our enemies and ourselves to escape an attack. We now camped to catch more game, and to make arrangements for our course. We had got some little learning at school, though most of it was forgotten; but we remembered enough to make us know that England was to the north-east of us, and so we determined to travel on in that direction. I won’t tell you now all about our journey. We had not got far before we found the country so barren that we were obliged to keep to the north, which brought us into the territory owned by the Dakotah people. We knew nothing of the way then, except from the accounts picked up over the camp fires of our former friends, and we had managed hitherto to keep out of the way of all strangers. We were ignorant, too, of the great distance we were from England; and of another thing we were not aware, and that was of the cold of winter. We were still travelling on, when the nights became so cold that we could scarcely keep ourselves from freezing, though sleeping close to our camp fires. It got colder and colder, and then down came the snow, and we found that winter had really set in. To travel on was impossible, so we built ourselves a lodge, and tried to trap and kill animals enough to last us for food till the snow should disappear. They became, however, scarcer and scarcer, and we began to fear that the supply of food we had collected would not last us out till summer. We had, however, a good number of skins, and though we had intended to sell them, we made some warm clothing of them instead.