THREE RIVERS INDIAN TERRITORY
©2006
Part One
Gray haired and slight framed Stormy sat rocking back and forth staring at the many colors dancing in the flickers of flames burning in the fireplace. Her family had all gone home leaving her in silence to contemplate the birthday she just celebrated, her 100th, the year was 1906. Pulling the shawl tighter about her rounded shoulders to buffer against the creeping pain from the cold, she looks at her aged wrinkled hands and with a sigh closes her eyes letting her mind drift back to the day her Poppa died in 1825 when she was just seventeen years old.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to..."
The beautiful young woman stared blankly at the plain wooden box the four men lowered into the grave with ropes, a single tear sliding down her cheek as she heard the minister’s voice drone on. The cool fall air whipping her black hair in her face also caused dust devils to dance across the ground.
“’Tis alright Stormy, lassie. No, need for you to be worryin’ yourself. I will marry ye child and take you as me wife. The preacher said he could wed us as soon as your father is laid to rest.”
The young woman looked up at the broad shouldered, stocky, bearded, older man who stood before her with a look of confusion on her face. “What?”
“I said we can be wed as soon as old Jean Chouteau is restin’ in his grave. Do ye want to be changin’ out of that black frock before we wed lass?”
“Marry you? Shawn, where did you get such an idea? I will not be marrying you or any one else this day or the next.”
“Ye must marry. What’ll become of you and old Jean’s tradin’ post if ye do’na marry? An why not me? I’m a strong, healthy man, and ye’ll give me many sons lass.”
“I do not need to marry; I’ll be fine on my own. I’ve worked with my father since I was a wee one in the trading post and I’ve gone with him on every trappin’ since I was nine. I’ll do just fine, no thanks to you Shawn Thornton.”
The woman reached down to take the damp earth in her hand and threw the handful on the coffin. Lightning flared in her golden hazel eyes as she turned on her heel to leave the cemetery.
“That’s alright lass, ye think on it a might. I’ll be stayin’ ‘round for a fortnight ye have plenty of time to be seein’ the light. I’ll be campin’ down by the Verdigris River ye may come to me when you’re ready to wed.” Shawn liked the spirit of the retreating woman, and looked forward to bedding her. “Aye, I’ll be waitin’ lass.”
The young woman just kept walking, back straight and proud, she didn’t turn to acknowledge the foolish man’s suggestion, even as he continued to talk at her back.
“Marry him? Who does he think he is? I need no man to get by. I can run my Poppa’s trading post by myself.” She kicked at rocks and dirt clods as she stomped along the trail leading to the trading post at Three Rivers mumbling to herself.
Stormy or Unula, as her mother called her, slowed her pace as the trading post came into view. The sturdy log structure was nearly 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. She could see the marks in the hand hewed logs, marks that her father made as he lovingly built the trading post before she was born. She could imagine him wielding the big axe, and adze and draw knives as he shaped each log. Focusing on the carved sign, the weight of her loss bore down on her. Her father would not be there ever again to add more detail to the beautifully carved sign or come through the door with his bright smile, twinkling eyes and ready laugh. Touching his masterpiece, she dropped to the ground to cry over his death, the first heartfelt cry she’d allowed her self since he died.
What will I do? She thought to herself. Can I run the post without help?
She then thought of what her Poppa always told her “Stormy mon petit chou, you can do anything you want if you set your heart to it cheri.”
She looked again at the sign, squared her shoulders, and decided right then that she would make her own way in the world or die trying. She picked her self up from the dust and entered the trading post with determination to stand on her own.
***
Stormy rose before the sun to tend to the pack mules and the few chickens she had behind the trading post. The actions were habitual and freed her mind to think of her father. Jean Auguste Chouteau came to the Three Rivers area of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804, after resigning his commission with the United States Army. His honest nature and honor quickly earned the trust of the Osage Indians. He traded goods and food stuffs for furs, baskets and occasionally horses. Although the Intercourse Act forbid the sale or buying of horses (amongst other things) from Native Americans. Jean Auguste Chouteau didn’t believe anyone would know or care about it way out here in the wilderness.
He founded the Neosho Fur Company with his brother Pierre who died two years earlier, childless. The company thrived because of the high quality of the furs they sold. So now, Stormy was the sole owner of the Neosho Fur Company, though the U.S. government would not acknowledge her ownership since she was both a woman and a breed. Her mother was a full blood Cherokee woman that Jean married and brought with him into the wilderness from Georgia. She had died in childbirth bearing the still born son of Jean Chouteau when Stormy was six. Stormy decided then and there that she would never have children.
Stormy watched the sun climb over the hills in the east casting a red glow in the sky. She loved the Three Rivers area named for the convergence of the Arkansas, Neosho and Verdigris rivers. Game was bountiful in the area the water sweet and there was plenty of wild edible plant life too. The Osage tribe that traded at the post was a tribe of large men and women, standing no less than six feet tall and often as much as seven feet tall. They loved adornment and often tattooed their bodies. Their lands were diminishing as the white man migrated west. Military forts were being built and manned to provide protection for the many white men heading out west, who sought land and fortunes. The natives didn’t give up their lands easily and attacked savagely. General Mathew Arbuckle and the Seventh United States Infantry came to the Three Rivers area to build Fort Gibson in April of 1824. The Army men frequented the trading post, when possible, to talk with the pretty Stormy, who wanted nothing to do with them out side of friendship.
Finished with tending the livestock Stormy headed back into the trading post to start breakfast for her self and several of the men who frequented the post. She would cook biscuits, eggs, side pork and canned apples. Each man in turn would leave a nickel and his thanks for a hot, home cooked meal. As she was rolling, the biscuits out she decided that tomorrow she would treat everyone to pancakes with chocolate gravy and some country ham she had been saving. She smiled remembering her mother fixing chocolate gravy for her as a small child. Stormy missed her mother and it worried her that she had problems remembering what she looked like.
Finished with her morning chores, and fixing breakfast for what turned out to be nine men and her self, she cleaned up to open the trading post for the day. Her main task for the day would be to start inventorying the goods in preparation for the long winter that lay ahead. She wiped her hands on the rag she wore as an apron tied around her small waist, and passed through the doorway that separated her small kitchen, where she fed the men, and the store. Taking a deep breath, Stormy set about opening the store and dove headlong into the inventory.
Mid way through the inventory of the canned goods, Stormy realized that it was less than four weeks before she needed to go up into the mountains and set traps on her father’s trap line. She needed to check with Lizzie, the wife of the blacksmith Ora Woolman better known as Paddy, to make sure she would run the store again this winter while she was out on the trap lines. Stormy loved Lizzie as her second mother. When Stormy’s mother passed, her father Jean had sent for his wife’s cousin and husband to come to the trading post. He set Paddy up as the blacksmith and counted on Lizzie to care for his young daughter. Stormy learned all her womanly duties like cooking and sewing at her Momma Lizzie’s knee, she learned many things about her Cherokee heritage there, too. Lizzie was not only the cousin of Stormy’s mother; she was also the matriarch of the bird clan of the Cherokee tribe.
Lizzie and Paddy Woolman had ten children of their own, five girls and five boys, all but the first three where born out here in the wilderness. With no doctors to be found or any mid-wives within a weeks ride, Lizzie bore her children on her own not even receiving help from her husband, who always stayed outside during the birthing. Lizzie was tough frontier stock and she taught her daughters including Stormy to be the same way.
***
The daylight hours where getting shorter and the air colder, signaling the approach of winter. Stormy looked out at the hazy sky and decided she should leave for the trap line the next morning. She needed to get her base camp set before the first snow and she had a long trip to make up the river to get there.
“TeeSquantee go ask your mother Lizzie to come to the store I need to speak with her.”
The youngest son of Lizzie and Paddy helped Stormy to chop wood and care for the animals nodded his acknowledgment and ran out the door for his mother’s cabin.
Soon Lizzie came walking in carrying a baby on her hip and two little ones following behind tied to their momma’s apron by a thin strip of cloth. She looked tired, but had a ready smile on her face when Stormy turned towards her and the children entering the store. “Si-yo Unula” she greeted Stormy in her native language.
“Tsi-lu-gi e-tsi Lizzie” Stormy responded back “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Yes child that would be very welcome. You must be leaving soon for the trap line since you called me away from my baking just now.”
“Yes Mother Lizzie, I’d like to leave in the morning if you are ready to care for the store in my absence.”
“Of course child, you have only to say the word and I will be here. The girls will care for our cabin, their father and brothers. I will bring the three I have with me now and TeeSquantee will continue to come over daily to chop wood and care for the animals. It will be a nice change for me to get away for awhile.” Lizzie smiled warmly with her wise eyes at the young woman she thought of as a daughter. “But I ask you again to take one or two of the boys with you on the trap line.”
Stormy stopped pouring the coffee and held her chin high “Mother Lizzie, why do I need to take the boys with me? Do you not think me capable of running the lines on my own? Have you not taught me to be strong and self sufficient? Did my Poppa not teach me the ways of the woods and how to set and run lines? Am I not one of the best dressers of hides in the territory?”
Lizzie smiled broadly at the defiant woman standing before her. “Yes, yes child I have, your Poppa did and you are. Your mother would be proud of you Unula, very proud, as am I my a-da-na-ta daughter. You are a very strong and brave woman.”
Stormy smiled set the coffee in front of Lizzie and offered her the sugar bowl. “Then it is settled I’ll leave in the morning with two of the pack mules and return in the spring.
“It is settled.” Lizzie agreed adding the fourth teaspoon of sugar to her coffee then filling three strips of cloth with a teaspoon each and tying them into knots before giving them to the children to suck on the “sugar teats”.
The women sat sipping their coffee and discussing the tasks Stormy had before her. It would be a four day journey up river and then across into the interior highlands and the mountain region where she would run her traps along the Flat Rock and Beaver Creeks.
She was going to trap for beaver, muskrat, mink and coons but if she were lucky, she would be able to shoot a few elk and possibly even a bear.
Part Two