Civilization in the Wilderness
A Tale of Adventure on the American Frontier
A Note: This is a work of historical fiction, and being a work of fiction I have taken some creative liberties. While I have made an effort to avoid any historical inconsistencies, if you happen to notice any, please send me an email at hardihoodbooks@substack.com.
Spelling and vocabulary are modern, although occasionally you will encounter characters using words more common in the nineteenth century than in our own. I have avoided having characters use explicit racial slurs, opting for colloquialisms instead. The attitudes of the characters reflect something of the common attitudes of the day (rather than our own), and none of the attitudes represented herein are my own. With that in mind, please read on.
Read Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.
Chapter Five
Robert stuck his hand out. Daniel took it, and then Sagamore.
“Pleased to make your acquaintances,” he said. If he had any qualms about his new traveling companions, he made no sign of them. He was perhaps twenty-one, slightly round of face, with tousled hair. His waistline showed the barest hint of expansion, which would no doubt turn into the roundness of middle age within a decade. He was quick to smile.
By contrast, his uncle was as lean as a snake and rarely smiled, except when he grew animated talking about the expedition into the wilderness. The lines on his face made him look older than he was, while the smooth skin of his nephew made him look younger than he was.
As Daniel and Sagamore sized Robert up, they wondered whether he would be up to the journey. At least he was broad across the shoulders and looked to have some youthful strength. But Daniel didn’t doubt that Mr. Edwards, for all his thinness, could best his nephew in an arm-wrestling contest.
“My nephew is to be the secretary and scribe for our journey,” said Mr. Edwards. But this seemed a thin enough explanation. The shelf behind Edwards was filled with correspondence and notes, and surely he was capable of doing any writing which the journey required. Daniel wondered just how much scribing would be taking place. After all, with a small party they would need to travel light and couldn’t afford to take extensive collections of writing materials.
“When my sister died,” said Edwards to Robert, “I promised her I would look after you. Perhaps this is not what she had in mind, but I do believe that if I left you here, you would start after me the next day.”
Robert grinned. “Of course, I would, uncle,” he said. “How could I stay here in Kentucky while you go off on your grand adventure? Most of my friends have already gone off to settle somewhere. Would you have stayed when you were my age?”
“When I was your age,” said Edwards, “I wasn’t overfond of drinking in taverns. I spent many a night in a wet wood under a cloudy sky. I’m afraid you won’t be ready for the wild. It will humble you in ways you have not begun to reckon with.”
Daniel and Sagamore watched the two converse. All four had remained standing, and now Sagamore leaned back against the wall. He nodded to Daniel as if to indicate that this was a family matter and that the young man and his uncle would be finished whenever they were finished. Daniel shook his head.
“I am ready,” replied Robert. “Besides, you have no choice but to take me with you.”
Edwards shook his head and frowned, but did not contest this.
“Are you afraid I will let you down?” asked Robert.
“I’m afraid none of us will return,” said Edwards. “I’m afraid you will be killed. Out there, in the wild, you will have to work as you are unused to working.”
“Well,” said Robert. “I am prepared for that. I know we might die. I’ve made peace with that. Truly, uncle, if that comes to pass, I will not shed a tear.”
“Let us hope it does not come to that,” said Mr. Edwards.”
“Besides,” added Robert. “You’ve already made up your mind and you know that I’m going. What is the use in worrying about it any further.”
Mr. Edwards nodded stiffly. “Quite right,” he said. He glanced back at Sagamore and Daniel. “I hope you’ll forgive us,” he said. “But I do think it is important that you both know my concerns. If either of you has any objections to my nephew joining us, you can voice them now. I am, at this moment, more convinced that each of you is right for our journey than that he is.”
Sagamore and Daniel looked at one another at this curious turn of events. “Just how green is he?” asked Daniel.
“You can speak for yourself,” said Edwards, but Robert was already speaking.
“I’ve been as far as Lake Michigan and the Mississippi – with my uncle and with other companions. I’ve worked for his company in various capacities since I was a lad of fourteen and in that time I’ve spent nights in the woods. Fewer than I’d have liked, but I’m not new to it. I know what it is to carry a pack and I know how to hunt. I can cook.”
“You can’t dress a wound,” said Edwards.
“True,” said Roberts, “there hasn’t been time for me to learn. But I am as ready as I am going to be.”
“Yes, but are you ready enough?” asked Mr. Edwards.
“I am satisfied,” piped up Daniel. Sagamore nodded, too. Inwardly, each man had reservations. Neither of them knew enough about either the old man, or his nephew. But it was clear that Edwards wanted to be off soon, and he did not want the party to grow any larger. It was also clear that he felt some obligation and that his nephew was therefore going on the journey whether any of them liked it or not.
“We will get to know one another plenty on the journey,” said Mr. Edwards. “Come, you must be curious about the route I have planned.”
“Very much so,” said Daniel.
“Indeed,” said Sagamore.
At that moment, Daniel’s stomach made a noise. Before he could apologize, a light of realization came into Mr. Edwards’ eyes.
“That’s right. You haven’t eaten in some time. A day, was it? More?” he said. “Come, you must be very hungry.”
As they nodded vigorously, he led them out into the hallway and beckoned them towards a stairwell. “My chambers,” he said, indicating the direction in which the stair led. “I don’t have much, but I have bread enough for all of us and plenty of soup and beans. A small bit of beef and cheese left, too, and it may be some time before we taste much of either again.”
Chapter Six
As they entered Mr. Edwards’ chamber, they could see out of the window that the sun was already beginning to set. Edwards busied himself pulling plates out of a cupboard and pouring glasses from a pitcher of water. He ordered Robert about, and the two of them set out a small repast for their guests.
The lodgings were small and very neat. The floor was surprisingly clean and every item on the shelves seemed to have its own place. Daniel glanced at the corners of the room and saw that they, too, were clean. Edwards apologized because he only had two chairs, but he volunteered himself and Robert to stand. Within minutes, the beans were heating on the stove and Sagamore and Daniel were breaking their fast on bread and cheese.
Over supper, the party discussed the journey further. Mr. Edwards had grown mildly animated in the earlier conversation, but now he was subdued. His words, though, were not.
“The men in Congress wish to temper the westward flood of settlers. They believe it must be managed, planned, and slowed. They worry publicly that eagerness in the exploration of the American continent will lead to ruin, but they worry privately that they won’t have a hand in it. I wish to go now, to go privately, to go with a small party, and to go without announcing our journey to the world. Mr. Sagamore and Mr. Daniel, you struck me almost at once as just the pair to accompany my nephew and I.”
“You were remarkably quick in hiring us,” remarked Daniel.
“You were ready to go. Too many of the men I interviewed showed altogether too much rapaciousness. Ours will not be a journey of plunder. Indeed, I will likely incur a serious loss in my fortunes by the time it is over, but that is of no matter to me. More than that, from the first I saw you I knew you were the type of men I was looking for.”
“Why was that?” asked Daniel.
“You did not need me to give you a reason to go.”
He nodded. “You meant we needed no justification but what we already bring.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Edwards continued, “I wanted men who knew the expedition is reason enough itself. It needs no reason beyond it. When I outlined the details, some told me it was folly. I told them that of course it was, but that if that was to be a hinderance to them they had better not go.
Beyond that, I immediately liked the idea of traveling with an Indian and a man who had thrown off the chains of bondage. If this land to our west is to be civilized, it has always seemed natural to me that the tribes who have inhabited this land for many centuries be among the ones to do it. Likewise, I have long opposed the African slave trade and I look forward to a day when that hateful institution, which you had the misfortune of experiencing, is abolished from this country.”
Daniel and Sagamore both nodded. Robert nodded, too, as if to indicate that he shared his uncle’s beliefs. And that would be the last that the subject was spoken of on their journey.
“Moreover,” said Mr. Edwards, “I wished to find men who might share my inclination to travel privately, and without much fuss and announcement. Men who wouldn’t object to my desire to go quickly. Men who wouldn’t want to write the legislature to ask for a military escort.”
Daniel nodded and Sagamore said nothing.
“Daniel, do you have a surname?” asked Mr. Edwards. Daniel shook his head. He said that his father and mother had never gone by any and he wasn’t going to take the surname of his former masters.
“I never felt the need of one,” he added. “But maybe I’ll add a surname someday if I take a liking to any.”
“Well then,” said Edwards. “Sagamore?”
Sagamore shook his head.
“Very well then.”
Edwards got up from the table and went to a bookcase. He began pulling down more maps and charts and laid them on a desk in the corner and he beckoned the others to get up and come over to look at them.
“Here is my planned route. We will head west until we reach the Missouri River, and then we will travel northwest along it until we reach this point here where I have my finger. From there, we will make our way west. We will need to find a pass across the Continental Divide, but I have in mind to cross somewhere to the south of where the Corps of Discovery crossed. I have some ideas for that in mind. The four of us will be on foot, but we will bring two mules along to carry our provisions. I intend to trade with the Indian tribes we come across, for there is no other way for us to cross and remain alive. We will run out of ammunition and other supplies long before we reach the Pacific.”
He began to explain how they would provision themselves. Robert took over at this point, and he did demonstrate a commanding knowledge of what he and his uncle had packed and how they would supply themselves for the journey. When he came to the whiskey, he said that each member of the party would be restricted to a daily ration. Sagamore, who had spoken next to nothing during the entire evening, said that he did not drink alcohol and that perhaps they could leave it behind and make room for something useful. Robert said that they would not do that, and Sagamore said that in that case he would leave his ration to the others.
When it had been dark for several hours, Mr. Edwards stopped Robert. “We must be getting to bed,” he said. “The two of you can stay here tonight. I have room enough for the pair of you. It may be some time before any of us sleeps in a bed again. Get some rest. We will need it. We start at first light.”
“At first light!” cried Daniel.
“Yes,” said Edwards. “We have been packed and ready to go for nearly a month and I have been itching to be off. I assume the two of you – worried as you must be about a posse on your tail – won’t object to an early start.”
“No,” said Sagamore. “It will be good to be out in the wilderness again.”
“Not at all,” said Daniel.
“Glad that’s settled, then.”
Read chapters seven and eight.