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 and Two.
Chapter Three
They stood in the street in front of the door for two full minutes until it was opened by a tall, straight-backed man with a mustache and close-cropped hair.
“You’re looking for men for a westward expedition?” asked Daniel.
The tall man nodded. “Come inside,” he said.
Inside, he led them to a small office and bade them sit in the chairs facing a wide desk, which he sat behind. He shook their hands before they sat down. He said his name was Edwards.
“Dozens of men have inquired prior to you,” he said, “and none of them were to my liking. By all means, tell me about yourselves. I’ll let you know if you meet the qualifications. Be honest. Leave nothing out. Most men have some reason for wanting to leave the settled states. I won’t report any crimes you may have committed to the authorities, but I must know of them.”
“What do you want to know?” said Daniel.
“Who you are. Where you came from. How you came to this part of the world. How you came to be traveling together. Any requisite experience or other qualifications or expertise which you may lend to an expedition of westward exploration. Any other details you think I might need to know.”
The two newcomers looked at one another. “I guess I can go first,” said Daniel.
“My name is Daniel. I was born on a plantation in South Carolina. When I was twelve, I was sold to a plantation in Georgia. At twenty, I married one of the women who worked in the big house. We were married ten years and had a child, but she died in infancy. Two years ago, the old man who owned the plantation died and his son took over. Last year, his son tried to have his way with my wife. When she fought back, he killed her.
You may have heard the rest of this story. I know the news has made its way up here to Kentucky. I killed my young master and three of his men and run off. First, I stole a couple guns and a horse. They sent a posse after me and I killed most of ‘em, but they killed my horse. These last ten months I’ve made my way from state to state, dodging slave patrols and getting into fights. Been helped along the way some, but I won’t say by who because I ain’t going to get them in no trouble. Killed a few more men, too, along the way.
A few days ago, some fellows jumped me at a tavern here in Kentucky. This man, Sagamore, he saved my life. We got out o’ there, but we got blood on our hands and a posse after us. Guess that’s mainly all there is to tell. Sagamore can tell his bit. I can work pretty damn hard and I ain’t afraid o’ the sun or the snow. I don’t shy away from pain and privation and I don’t know what else you need to know. I don’t know much woodcraft but enough to get me up here. I can shoot and hunt and read and write.”
“Who taught you to shoot?” asked Mr. Edwards.
“The old man, my ole’ master, he wasn’t too mean a fellow. He showed me how to use a gun and how to read and write.”
“It’s a crime in Georgia to teach a slave to use a gun,” said Mr. Edwards.
“It’s a crime to kill a man in every state, and I done enough of that.”
“I won’t turn you in for killing a man who killed your wife,” said Mr. Edwards.
“The old man wanted someone to read to him,” said Daniel. “His eyes were getting bad. He wanted to hunt, too, and he wanted some men to go with him who could make up for him when his shooting was bad, which it increasingly was. If you know what I’m saying, he wouldn’t have wanted too many white men to know he couldn’t shoot straight anymore. He taught a few of his slaves to shoot and figured we wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Mr. Edwards nodded, seemingly satisfied. He turned to the Wampanoag man. “What’s your story?” he asked.
“My people are from the coast. In what is today Massachusetts. I was born in the year before your American war of independence. By that time, my tribe was small. I have little memory of that time, and only later learned that my parents died of fever when I was less than a year old. Fever would later take many of the rest of my village. That was when the yellow fever swept through Massachusetts.
I contracted the fever, and for two days I lay near death. On the evening of the second day, my fever broke. I slept that night and awoke the next morning, strong enough to walk again. All of my kinsmen – any who hadn’t fled – lay dead. There was plenty of food and water in the camp, so I stayed until my strength was back. Then I left, never to return to that land.
I have wandered the states these several years. I’ve gone into the Territories and been to Lakes Eire and Huron and Michigan. I’ve been down to Georgia and up into Canada. In some states, I was shown hospitality and in others I was threatened. Often, I have lived on the edge of whatever society I have known.”
“Why didn’t you go to your people? Surely yellow fever did not kill all of the Wampanoag in other villages.”
Sagamore was quiet for some time. “Everyone I loved,” he said. “Was dead. Or had abandoned me. Some had been killed earlier by white men. Some had been killed by other tribes. The rest were killed by fever or fled in fear of it. Why does a white man, when his family is killed and his friends are gone, leave the place where he was born and wander in another part of the world? Why does he not go to the nearest village and ask them to take him in?”
“Some do.”
“Many don’t.”
“Your tribe would have taken you. Men and women and children you had never met would have taken you in. You could have gone to another village.”
“I did not wish to.”
“Why didn’t you join a different tribe?”
“They are not my people. That is why. And more than that, I wanted to turn my back on the life I had known.”
Edwards nodded, satisfied. “You came to meet this man, Daniel, in a tavern brawl.”
“Some white men cornered him. It wasn’t a fair fight.”
“Fair enough. You’ve killed a couple white men, then?”
“Yes.”
“Had you killed any before that?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. I’ve got no quarrel with you and I’ve got no loyalty to those men you killed. I didn’t know ‘em. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“What can we get from you, though?” asked Daniel.
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Edwards. “What can you get from me?”
“Where are we going?” he replied. “What’s this overland journey about?”
“Ah,” said Edwards, and he smiled for the first time. “That.”
Chapter Four
Mr. Edwards reached into a drawer and pulled out two maps. One was of North America – a rough estimate of coastline and approximate distances. One was of the Louisiana Territory. This one was based on reports from French fur traders.
Both maps had yawning gaps in the middle.
“For thousands of miles to our west,” said Edwards laying the maps out on the desk, “lies open land. Unmapped. Unsettled. Known only to some few trappers and the Indian tribes which have inhabited it since the beginning of time. The wide expanse of it dwarfs our little coastal nation, but where some see bleakness, others – including myself – see opportunity.
We stand, gentlemen, at the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind. Already, settlers are beginning to pour into the land of the Louisiana Territory. Any who are hardy enough and able enough to brave the lonely winters and blasted summers are staking their claims. Someday, it will fill up with men of all races and creeds, each longing only for a plot of land to call his own.
But that day is far in our future. Today, the land is untamed. You will, of course, have heard the news of the Corps of Discovery?”
The two men nodded, but neither of them knew much of it. Sagamore had lived too long on the edges of society to take more than a passing interest in the affairs of the American nation, and Daniel had likewise had little reason to marvel at the news of the young nation.
“Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Already those are household names across our country. Baby boys are being christened Meriwether and William, and young men are plotting their own westward expeditions. The Corps of Discovery was a government expedition, commissioned by President Jefferson, but if this land is to be settled, and settled by Americans, it will fall to private citizens like you and me to do much of the exploring and the settling. I intend to be one of those citizens. My goal, gentlemen, is to – like Clark and Lewis – conduct a westward journey across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, and to return to tell of it. A private expedition.”
“Why a private expedition? Are you wanting to repeat what Lewis and Clark did for yourself?” asked Daniel.
“My good man, I will not wait on this government for my turn to explore the land. It will be years before they have the funds to send another expedition. I, myself, having prospered in the fur trade, have the resources to go right now.”
Daniel nodded. He seemed satisfied with this. Neither he, nor Sagamore, seemed to need much convincing, or even much of a reason, justification, explanation, or excuse.
Edwards indicated the map again. “Before you,” he said, “lies the richest and most fertile country in the world, a wilderness paradise, a land that is ripe and ready. It will be a grand adventure to the ones to go exploring it. If you are ready to undertake a journey of some years, a journey that may result in each of our deaths, you can partake in that grand adventure.”
“I will go,” said Sagamore.
“There is nothing for us here in society,” said Daniel. “We will take our chances in the wilderness.”
“Good,” said Edwards. “Gentlemen, over one hundred men have responded to my ad. Not one of them possessed the qualities I desired. The two of you are the only men who have convinced me to my satisfaction that they could handle such a journey as the one I plan to make. I need men who were born to survive, men who know how to handle themselves and who aren’t afraid of dying, men who won’t want to come scurrying back to the civilized world as soon as the rain turns cold.”
Sagamore nodded and Daniel muttered that he had nothing to lose.
“Very well, then,” said Mr. Edwards. “Our party will be small. It will be the two of you, myself, and one other fellow. My nephew. He is green, but he must come with us.”
Daniel and Sagamore exchanged a glance, but neither said anything and the captain went on.
“That will be it. It will be the four of us. I weighed provisioning a larger party and decided that a smaller expedition would stand a better chance of survival.”
Daniel furrowed his brow, as if he disagreed, but Sagamore nodded.
“Each of you has learned to fend for himself, and therefore you make ideal candidates for an expedition in which we will have to fend for ourselves. Indeed, some of us, perhaps all of us, will not return. And it may fall to the others to carry on. Therefore, we will need to be capable of making the journey with or without any number of our party. I, myself, have spent many a month alone in the territory just west of our current location. In my business in the fur trade, I eventually prospered to the point of employing a large number of men, and at times I led them out – all together, or in smaller parties – into the wilderness. But in my early years, I was alone.”
“Tell us about that,” said Daniel, shifting in his wooden seat. Some time had passed since they had entered the office, but neither he nor Sagamore had a pocket watch and there was no clock in the room, so they had no way of knowing just how long it had been.
Edwards gave a small smile. “I was born in the colony of Pennsylvania,” he said, “and I was a boy when the war broke out. I managed to enlist in the final year of the war, lying about my age to an officer who probably wasn’t fooled, but the war ended before I saw action. My father died when I was very young and I learned to hunt from my uncle. When he came back from the War for Independence, he took me out into the Northwest Territory to hunt beaver. In my youth, I worked alongside him, and later I worked for myself. He left the business after the Constitution was ratified. His children were young then and he decided it was too dangerous and he didn’t want to be gone for months at a time.
I kept up the business and practically lived in the wilderness, returning only to sell my furs and take on new provisions. For long stretches every year, I spoke to no man save the odd hunter or trapper I came across, or my friends among some of the Indian tribes in the area in which I hunted. My uncle taught me early that it was better to have them as my friends than my enemies, so I always made a point to deal charitably with them and do honest business with them in any trade we made.
Being unattached and never married, I poured all the money I earned – and it was considerable – back into my business, and in time I grew quite the little trading empire. I employed two dozen men at the high point. We were headquartered not far from here, but in January of this year I sold the business and set up my offices here, to plot this journey west and prepare.
I have quite a fondness for this young country of ours, but the civilized world never fit quite right with me, so when I had made my fortune and settled my accounts, I resolved to make off for the wilderness with all due haste, before I grew too old to have such grand adventures. Who knows? Perhaps I will never return. It would be no great sorrow to me, so long as my nephew is cared for.
My sister died when he was quite small, and her husband is gone too now. He is a young man yet, and inexperienced, but I feel an obligation to him and that is why he must come along to join us. He will be along any minute now, in fact, and you’ll get a chance to meet him.”
At that moment, Daniel’s stomach made a noise. He began to apologize, but the captain waved him away. “Forgive me,” he said. “You must be hungry. Would you like something to eat?”
They nodded. “It has been some time since we’ve eaten a decent meal,” said Daniel.
“Has it been days?” Edwards asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, we can retire to my chambers shortly. I will have food enough for all of us, though it may be plain fare. Robert, my nephew, will be along any minute now… ah, here he is now.”
The door opened and a youthful man walked through. He was smiling at nothing. He nodded to Sagamore and Daniel, and looked at his uncle.
“This is my nephew, Robert.” said Edwards. “Robert, these men are to be our traveling companions.”
Read Chapters Five and Six.