Chapter 14
Consolidation and Exploring
Up the Mongol, 3-4 K
(Up the Missouri River, SD, MT, 1371-2)
When we got back, I immediately showed Henry the ore. He had built a blast furnace, but it wasn’t quite right, so I showed him what was wrong. He had done better with the coking oven and had produced some pretty good-looking coke. He had also found limestone some distance upriver, but not very much. We decided to wait until the move downriver to fire up the blast furnace. Meanwhile some of the recruits had shown interest in his work and he was training them. Others among them had shown interest in other skills of the Ordu and were becoming very much integrated. The training of the army had been going very well. Although the recruits didn’t look much like Mongols, they rode like Mongols.
The only problems were the kumis and nawak’osis. The locals had never used and had no tolerance for alcohol, they would quickly become intoxicated and some had been injured in falls and fights. The Mongols had never used and had no tolerance for the nawak’osis; many became addicted to it and wasted much time smoking it. The locals felt the Mongols were abusing the nawak’osis and the Mongols made fun of the locals for not being able to hold their kumis. Kaidu had no intention of letting this nonsense ruin all his plans, however. He forbade use of nawak’osis except at meetings and kumis except at celebrations. He also limited the amount of either that would be available. Of course, rules were broken occasionally, but punishment was swift and harsh and without discrimination. I was rather glad I had missed all the excitement.
Juchi finally rode in a few days after I did and we both went to see Kaidu. He had wanted to wait and see us together. Juchi had been able to get some of the Kensistenoug to agree to join up in confederation, but had found out as I had that they extended very far to the east and had a very loose organization. The bands in the western part had agreed to join, but the eastern bands were still not sure, they would let us know. The other tribe that lived between the Kensistenoug and the Dzitsiistas, the Inuna ina, were very much like the Dzitsiistas and had agreed to join in confederacy since they had heard that the latter had joined. His only problem with them was delicately trying to explain how it was we hadn’t asked them first. The Yanktonai splinter, who the Kensistenoug called the Asinipoituk, had only agreed to confederate like the Western Kensistenoug, and that reluctantly. They looked just like the Ocheti shakowin but dressed and lived more like the Kensistenoug whom they seemed to emulate.
I reported on my successful mission. The two tribes (the Anishinabe and the Dzitsiistas) had confederated and the other one, the Ocheti shakowin, had joined outright. The Anishinabe had offered to contact two allied tribes in the east and extend our invitation to them. I had found two sources of iron ore, both quite extensive; I had also found copper ore, but no tin. There was also no good coal so far, only the veins of brown coal I had found the previous winter and the hills containing brown coal near our old camp. We had not yet found much limestone either, but I was sure we would around here somewhere. The Anishinabe had agreed to provide us with the iron ore in exchange for iron tools, and had offered to train our men in forest warfare.
Juchi offered that he had seen quite a bit of limestone in the Inuna ina lands and was sure they wouldn’t mind sending some. He also strongly urged we take up the Anishinabe on their offer to train us in forest warfare because it looked as though the whole eastern part of the land was forest and Mongols were not used to fighting in the forest.
Kaidu thanked us for our efforts and accomplishments. He agreed that we should hear what the Anishinabe had to say about forest warfare, but felt that we would have to build on it, since it was most unlikely that they would be able to fathom the Mongol scale of warfare. Still, he would send one of his best tacticians to learn from them, and adapt it to our needs. He outlined the accomplishments and problems that had occurred in our absence. He was confident he had handled the problems and was very pleased with the accomplishments. The recruits had managed the more complex Mongol maneuvers with remarkable skill and he was sure we’d be able to march on the Hotcangaras the following fall. The herds had greatly increased and the harvest had been excellent again. Further, many of the recruits had shown interest in learning important skills and had proved quite capable.
Meanwhile, since the Numakiki did not object, we would move downriver to my coal seams within a few days, and then go out for the fall hunt. The latter was quite different now. A herd of the plains oxen was located and then our hunters would come at them from all sides, taking down as many as we needed in a running “battle.” Other game would be taken as it presented itself, or someone got the urge to hunt. He urged us to rest up this winter because he wanted us to explore westward in the spring and return by late summer for the fall campaign.
We were both glad we could stay put for the winter but not exactly thrilled at the long trek we’d have next year. The move downriver was fairly smooth. There were no major rivers on the north side of our river, and anyway, all the rivers were low at this time of year. The biggest problem was the steepness of the descents to the rivers from the plains. This required a bit of planning, but since I had already come this way and found the easiest passages for the carts, it was not difficult. The site we chose looked as though it had been settled at some time in the past. There were remnants of postholes and vague outlines of houses just visible on careful study. One of the Numakiki said that it was likely one of their old abandoned villages. We set up camp quickly, and most of the men went out on the fall hunt. I stayed behind to help Henry set up the blast furnace. I was quite anxious to make sure our iron problem was solved and didn’t want an oversight to set us back again. Just as we were ready to get it fired up, the rest of Ocheti shakowin started coming into camp. To our surprise, they had a cart full of iron ore with them. The clever Anishinabe had not only mined it all summer long, but had made copies of our carts and brought them to the Ocheti shakowin. The latter had been able to hitch the carts up to horses when their people had ridden back to get them. There would be several more carts along presently.
I congratulated Odinigun on his people’s initiative and trust. He reminded me that I had left the iron tools with Gagewin, and he probably felt he was just paying us for them. We got the furnace going, and it worked perfectly. The newly arriving ore was also reduced to iron over the rest of the fall. As Juchi had promised, the Inuna ina brought in a load of limestone, and the coal seams continued to produce. I finally had to blast away some of the overlaying rock with some gunpowder. This created quite a stir in the camp and required quite a bit of explanation. I had been hoarding our gunpowder supply until I located a source of saltpeter, but this really helped the coal mining. I used the occasion to see if anyone was familiar with saltpeter, but while they all thought it looked like salt, they agreed it was quite different and not at all familiar to them. I wasn’t surprised, since it only occurred in the hot and humid areas of the old Khanate, and I had learned that it was never found in temperate areas.
Once the iron production was running smoothly, I got down to teaching reading and writing to any takers. Motsoyouf and Odinigun were in the first group along with several of their fellow tribesmen; also a few from each of the other tribes were interested as well. Some did not persist, but most did, and to a few that seemed to have a facility for drawing, I taught mapmaking. Paula and Mathilde helped with teaching, and a few of the native women also learned. Padraig could just barely read, so he confined himself to training the warriors with swords, which were finally becoming available.
Fall slipped into winter and Paula finally told me what had been apparent for a while now, she was pregnant. She had held off saying anything since she was afraid she might miscarry, a problem in her family. The child should arrive before I went west in spring, she assured me. I mentioned her fears to Givevneu, and he gave me some sort of concoction for her to take. He had gotten the formula from one of his local colleagues, and it had worked for another woman in the Ordu. Paula used it, and sure enough, in late winter she presented me with our first-born, a son. I named him George after my favorite grandfather.
Juchi finally married that winter. He had been smitten by a winsome Kensistenoug girl, whose ponderous name was Wahsakapeequay, and had finally persuaded her father to let her go. Kaidu was very pleased that he had married a local girl, and a few other such marriages also took place, not only between the Mongols and the locals but also between the different tribes. It was inevitable, of course, for we were now the minority in our huge camp.
With spring, the herds kidded and foaled again, the plains turned green, the sky was filled with migrating birds, the bottom was cleared and planted after the floods, and Juchi and I got ready to leave. We had decided to return toward our old settlement, now a small permanent mostly Siksika camp. Then, one of us would follow our river upstream, and the other would follow the Absaroke River upstream. We would then come back east and hopefully pick up another river that flowed into our river south of our new camp. My best mapmaking pupils would go with Juchi, and I’d take the others. I charged Odinigun with keeping the iron ore coming and made sure the furnaces were in good shape before I left.
It was almost mid spring when we left. Eight days later, we came to the junction where we would split up. Juchi decided he wanted to explore the Absaroke River, so after cautioning him not to go too far south by the stars and admonishing my apprentice mapmakers to do their best, I continued on to our old camp. We were welcomed profusely, and a couple of the Siksika joined us. For the duration of the trip, they were called by the Mongol names Iron Arrow and Felt Lodge. Both names changed again later on. Wanbli Sapa had come along with me as had Nitsiza. One of the Tsattine had gone with Juchi, as had Motsoyouf, my most promising mapmaker. Woksihi and Mahohivas (both also Dzitsiistas), Shingabaossin, an Anishinabe and Pesaquan, a Kensistenoug were the apprentice mapmakers with me. Doqus’ brother Ussu also had joined me. We must have been quite a sight.
We followed our river almost due west from the camp for four days. I had been along this course the year we arrived as far as the first major river. It joined our river from the north, but shortly turned northwest. I had named it the Little Sungari since its tan color reminded me of that much larger river. Our river soon turned south and then more southwest. The river was more channeled and more swift throughout this bend and beyond, it widened and its bottoms were quite extensive and heavily timbered. Occasionally, we would see an island in the river. While the short grasses predominated on the steppe, the land was hardly flat. There were hills, mountains and buttes, some quite high, constantly interrupting the steppe. Game was plentiful and frequently in sight, but rarely in bow shot. There were antelope, plains oxen, deer, and an odd-looking mountain sheep with big curved horns. There were also large colonies of a type of ground rodent. It lived in holes dug in the ground and many stood up on the rim of the holes to act as lookouts scolding whatever approached with what sounded like a small dog’s bark. The going was easier along the bottoms because the steppe was getting increasingly rough and broken.
After six days, the river made a steep loop to the south to meet a good-sized river flowing due north, then straightened out and turned due west again. At this point we came in sight of a high hill at the eastern end of a row of hills. Iron Arrow called it Mouyistsimokam or Hairy Hat, and said it was a well known lookout point the Siksika used when they hunted in the area. It was covered with evergreens on the top and rather steep and free of trees on the sides. I was surprised to hear that the Siksika ranged this far south. I asked him if he had been here before, but he had only been to the lookout, not down to the river. On the other side of the river, the land looked rather bleak. It was dotted with dark scantily treed buttes. They looked black from this angle or perhaps just dark brown, but I could see lighter sandstone with it also. They were cut with deep ravines that were heavily wooded. I wondered if Juchi was fighting his way through country like that.
We soon found the bottom getting too narrow and sometimes underwater, so we had to scramble back up to the plateau. This slowed us down considerably since there were so many ravines, but it also introduced us to a strange-looking plant. It was composed of flat padlike pieces apparently stuck together at random. The pieces were green, but otherwise there were no leaves or stems. The pieces were also covered with a formidable array of thorns. This strange plant was blooming and had a very pretty, large yellow flower. Felt Lodge said that the plant yielded a very good fruit in the late summer and was also found farther north. It was, as well, a handy source of water. We also found a similar although more cylindrically shaped plant with red or greenish yellow flowers and a small, round-shaped one with light red to purple flowers. I had never seen anything like them in the old Khanate. The grasses were different here as well. The most common one was a fuzzy gray-green pungent-smelling grass that grew in tufts and sometimes looked more like a bush. There were also some blue-green grasses and a green threadlike grass, but the smelly one was most common, and the horses were constantly releasing its aroma for us as we passed.
The land had another surprise for us. The soil was seemingly dry and hard, and then it rained. It wasn’t much of a rain, but it turned the ground into a sticky mud, and along the slopes, it was dangerously slippery. We found it best to wait out the rainstorms, which were fortunately infrequent. The wind on the plateau dried the soil out rather quickly, but made the slippery slopes even more dangerous. Four days later, we got another surprise. We climbed up out of another ravine, and far in the distance was a range of snow-capped mountains extending both north and south of our position. They seemed to be blue from this distance and appeared to jut out starkly from the plain, for we couldn’t see their base. They were probably the southern extension of the mountains we had traversed far to the north during our memorable trek to our new home. I had the feeling we wouldn’t be going across them, but we should at least get to them.
Two days later, we came upon another north-flowing river just after the bottoms opened up again enabling us to go along the riverbank. I decided to cross our river and have a look at the other river, since the former looked fordable here. It was fairly shallow but was also rather swift, and I was more than a little wet when I got to the other side. The north-flowing river proved to be clear, unlike most of the other rivers we had come across, and it had a good-sized tree-covered bottom of its own, so I mapped it for a short distance upstream and named it the Paula River. There were a great many of a small ground bird, a bit larger than a pigeon, of a rather dull coloration. I got back to the others just before dark and dried out from my second dunking by the campfire. The bottom on the north side was wider and deeper and was also cut by a stream that seemed to flow from the northwest. We rested up an extra day at this pleasant site, and a few of the men went hunting.
The next day, the bottoms quickly narrowed, and our river turned northwest just after another river joined it from the south. Shortly before dusk, we came upon a dark cliff about 500 feet high on the north side of the river. This marked the entrance to a strange canyon in which we rarely had much room between the river and the walls. The walls of the canyon were multihued with large horizontal white streaks sometimes interrupted with perpendicular dark streaks. These were eroded into massive, strange, heroic shapes, rounded, pointed or squared. On the second day, we came upon what looked like a stone wall on either side of the river, which, after extending up a few hundred feet, merged into the smooth cliff face. The stones were of varying sizes and shapes but overlapped so as to appear to be intentionally placed. Having seen the Great Wall, I had to admit this one was more impressive. From the looks of the breach the river had made in it, it was no more effective, however. The only game we saw along here was the mountain sheep. Finally, the river opened up into extensive tree-filled bottoms again just before turning generally southwest. At this point, we were again treated to a view of the blue snow-capped mountains ahead. They ran in a line from southeast to northwest and seemed to be in multiple rows as far as I could see. A formidable barrier!
We made particularly good time the next day, following the river southwest along its broad bottoms. Then in the late afternoon, we came upon a junction with another river from the northwest. It was about the same size as our river and was as silty and turbulent and may indeed have appeared more logically to be our river, but we decided to cross it and continue southwest with the clearer, more swift river, since that was the general direction we wished to follow. It turned out that a much-later expedition found the other river was not quite as long or impressive farther upstream. We eventually named it the Tungus River for the tribes that lived north of the Mongols.
The next day, a loop in the river forced us north enough so that we found a small river flowing parallel to our river. It likely flowed into the Tungus. We followed it until it turned north through a pass in the ridge that bounded the broad bottom in the north. We returned to the Mongol. The following afternoon, the bottoms began to narrow again and finally showed signs of becoming another canyon. We camped for the night among the trees near the river. Before dawn, we were awakened by the horses and rose to find them under attack by a huge bear. We quickly fired arrows at him and that drew him angrily toward us. Arrow after arrow found its mark but did not stop the bear as he furiously rushed at one after the other of us. Finally, he seemed to weaken and tried to break off contact, but thinking him too dangerous I pulled my sword and, while Ussu drew his attention, ran him through on his left side. Fortunately, he fell in the act of turning back to me. No less than forty arrows had pierced the bear, some surely mortally, but none had been able to drop him. This was a formidable animal. In the morning light, it appeared to be of immense size with a silvery sheen to its back. The Siksika called it Nitapi Kaiyo, which meant real bear, and they assured me that they had seen bigger ones and recommended we bring along spears next time we want to hunt bear. Measuring the length of the bear’s arms and the size of its claws, I decided long spears were called for. Meanwhile, we fashioned rude spears by securely fastening our knives to spear-length poles. This turned out to be a very wise move.
We had barely started out when the horses started to shy away from our path and protest nervously. Hafting our “spears,” we dismounted and started forward just as another huge bear charged us. He snapped most of our makeshift spears like twigs but not until they had found their mark, especially Iron Arrow’s which resulted in a flood of blood and the fall of the giant. We repaired our “spears” this time using stouter shafts, before continuing. The Siksika insisted on bringing along some of the bear meat assuring us it was quite good. They also took the skins and the claws. The latter were apparently used for decoration.
I decided we had had enough excitement for one day, and we climbed out of the bottoms and onto the plateau above. This made travel easier, albeit drier, for there was no water worth drinking here. We made a few trips back down to the river along the way for water, but camped up on the plateau for safety. The next day before we had gone very far, we could see what looked like a mist in the canyon, and soon we began to hear a dull roar like distant thunder that grew louder as we continued. Near midday we saw it: about two hundred feet below us the river poured over a precipice almost ninety feet high. The spectacular sight held us in awe for some time. Even the locals were impressed. Eventually, we continued our journey, remaining on the plateau. Just before we stopped for the night, we heard again the sound of a waterfall and pressed on to find a smaller drop only about twenty feet and from a rather crooked cliff. As we got closer, we could hear a louder roar and continued on to find yet another waterfall gently curving about a li and a half from bank to bank, falling at least fifty feet straight down and sending billows of foaming mist way down the canyon.
The following morning, we continued on our journey and found two more falls. The first was only a six-foot drop, but the second was at least a thirty-foot drop. Beyond this, the river was at the level of the plateau, and the terrain was hilly but fairly open except for the aspen-lined riverbanks. We seemed to be surrounded by mountains from the east to the northwest. By midmorning, we crossed a river that emptied into our river from the west. The latter had by now turned south only to bend into some lazy turns gradually shifting it to the southwest again. We climbed a higher plateau where we could see and thus avoid all the turns in the river. Two days later, we seemed to be entering the foothills of the mountains, the river was narrower, and the high plateaus were closing in on either side. Late the next day, the river swerved south and just slightly east. The following day, we passed through another hemmed-in area; then the plain opened up again much like it had been above the falls. This area was watered with many creeks, and streams and beavers had dammed up most of them. There seemed to be a remarkable concentration of the creatures here. There was also a sizable herd of the plains oxen in the open country south of the river. The beaver lakes attracted moose, elk and deer. Unfortunately, the bears were also in residence here. We had to set a double watch each night and keep the horses close to us. One night a type of small leopard—or more likely a lynx—was chased off.
The next three days, we followed the river slightly east of south. Our river’s banks narrowed again as ever-higher fir- and pine-coated mountains gradually began to hem us in. Still the land sloped gently up from the river to the mountains, which then rose starkly and abruptly. The evergreens probably made them look blue from the distance. The following day, the river seemed to veer to the southwest again, and after some thought, I decided to follow it a little farther. Toward midafternoon, we cleared a small rise, and right before us was a large ring of conical tents open on the east, facing the river. We had also been spotted, but while it caused a commotion, no one moved for his weapons. Felt Lodge said that his people had occasionally come into contact with these dark, stocky people, but he didn’t know what they were called. Since they didn’t seem hostile, but rather seemed unsurprised by our advent, I decided to go on into their camp.