July 14, 1833
In the morning, clear, calm weather; at 7:30, 66°F [18.9°C], soon warm. The region through which we navigated is low on all sides; forest and willow thickets everywhere. We traveled upstream along the left bank [and] at eight o’clock reached a prairie completely overgrown with white Artemisia. Here we found a deer and a skunk hanging on a dead tree; our hunters, Papin and Deschamps, who had gone out early today, had left [them] there. The skunk was big and old; they had cut out its scent glands. I hardly had it on deck [when] a Frenchman (an engagé) came and wanted to eat it. This morning someone had found a chest with some tobacco and [also] a small barrel of whiskey. [They] came from the wreck of the keelboat last year [and] had been washed ashore by the river. Our navigation in this region was made more difficult [by] high water; swampy, half-flooded points; and brushwood and trees piled up before them. People assure me that they have never had so unfavorable a journey as this one. Papin shot one more doe and Deschamps, two: all told, four head of Cervus virginianus this morning, all of them does.
At nine o’clock we ran aground on a sandbar not far from shore. We were hard aground there for at least one and a half hours and worked terribly [to get free]. The men undressed and tried everything: they pulled, pushed, fastened crossbeams in the cabins and pushed on them; finally, they unloaded many barrels, lead, and other things. Only after the greatest exertion did we succeed in getting afloat again. The heat was now great. [A] light wind blew across the water, which finally allowed us to hoist the sail for a short while. We went back a stretch, then upstream in another channel, where we put in about two o’clock at the left bank to take in carved-up venison that the hunters had ready here. They had shot five elk cows, had left three lying, and had brought to the bank the venison and hides from two of them, which we now loaded.
We had scarcely departed when we saw three buffalo over on the bank. Mr. Culbertson had seen ten buffalo cows on the prairie to the left. We sent out the boatwith boat with Papin, Deschamps, and Dreidoppel. The three animals did not wait for them but swam across the river ahead of us. Mr. Mitchell and four or five men with rifles went toward them on this side of the river, and the boat approached them from the rear. As the first one came ashore, it was struck by a bullet and turned around; from our boat ten or twelve shots were fired, and five or six from shore, at the swimming animals. They came too close to the dinghy, and it pursued them again up to our bank, so they would not be killed until they reached land. They were both killed, and Dreidoppel gave one of them the fatal shot. The buffalo that had been hit first reached the opposite bank, climbed ashore with difficulty, disappeared into the willow thickets, and was not pursued. Both dead buffalo were lying so deep in the mud of the bank that one [of them] was left untouched and only a small part of the meat from the other was brought back. This is how they deal with animals here: they kill everything they can reach and thereby destroy their own future.
When all the hunters returned, the journey was continued. Dreidoppel brought along a nice plant similar to the Tagethes, with fiery-yellow petals and individual specimens with half velvet-brown ones; it is [— —]. Our men, who were pulling on the prairie along the bank, killed a big rattlesnake and, despite our objections, struck off the head and rattles. Dreidoppel prepared the skunk that the hunter Deschamps had killed with a long stick. The region is still flat; hills are no longer to be seen; woods, willow thickets, or prairie cover the banks. At the place where the wounded buffalo had gone ashore, we soon saw a white wolf appear on the bank. When he saw us, [he] calmly lay down; soon he would make use of the buffalo. Below the steep bank, along which we had been moving for a long time, the situation was not good. The sand was continually caving in and often huge masses plunged down, which could be very dangerous if they collided directly with us. At six o’clock Papin brought in a black-tailed deer; it was a big buck, the antlers had eight points in velvet. I hurriedly took its measurements.
We continued navigating until about seven o’clock and then stopped for the night at a forest on the right bank. The evening was splendid; our men bathed in the river. The forest, where we were moored, was tall, shady, and beautiful. One gazed, so to speak, into dark colonnades; the light-colored, thick trunks gleamed far in the gloomy darkness, where one could see quite far. An old Indian wooden hut stood at the place where the boat was anchored. High above the river a few Caprimulgus were hovering, and numerous bats flew as swiftly as arrows above the surface of the water. The plants we had observed this afternoon also grew here; in the prairie behind the forest, the small round Cactus that is regarded as a mammillaris was very common. On shore the mosquitoes were somewhat annoying, but on ship we had somewhat of a respite. At ten o’clock, a faint aurora borealis in the north.