Niagara

1825

THE INDIAN GIRL watched the path. A number of men from the boat had already taken the trail through the woods. She had seen them emerge onto the big platform of grass and rock, and start at the sudden roar of the water.

She was nine. She had come to the mighty waterfall with her family. Soon they would continue into Buffalo.

Frank walked beside his father. It was a bright October day. Above the trees the sky was blue. They were alone, but he could tell from the crushed red and yellow leaves on the trail that many people had been that way.

“We’re nearly there,” said his father. Weston Master was wearing a homespun coat, which he’d unbuttoned. The mist had made it damp, but it was being warmed by the sun. He had tied a big handkerchief around his neck. Today he’d fastened a wampum belt round his waist. It was an old belt and Weston did not wear it often, so as to preserve it. He was carrying a stout walking stick and smoking a cigar. He smelled good.

Frank knew his father liked to have his family around him. “I don’t remember my mother at all,” he would say. “As for my father, he was away fighting when I was a boy. And after I went to Harvard, I never saw him again.” At home in the evening he’d sit in his wing chair by the fire, and his wife and five children—the four girls and young Frank—would all have to be there, and he’d play games or read to them. Weston would read amusing books, like Washington Irving’s tale of Rip Van Winkle, or the funny history of New York, told by his invented Dutchman Diedrich Knickerbocker. “Why is he called Diedrich?” he would ask. “Because he Died Rich,” the children would chorus.

Every summer, the whole family would spend two weeks with Aunt Abigail and her family in Westchester County, and another couple of weeks with their cousins up in Dutchess County. The more members of his family he had around him, the happier Weston Master seemed to be.

But last month, when the governor had invited him to come north for the opening of the big canal, Weston had said: “I’ll just take Frank with me.”

It wasn’t the first time Frank had been up the Hudson River. Three years earlier, soon after his seventh birthday, there had been a bad outbreak of yellow fever in New York. There was often some fever in the port. “The ships bring it from the south,” his father would say. “And we’re always at risk. New York’s as hot as Jamaica in the summer, you know.” But when a lot of people in the city had started dying, Weston had taken his whole family upriver to Albany until it was over.

Frank had enjoyed that journey. On the way up, they’d gazed west at the Catskill Mountains, and his father had reminded them: “That’s where Rip Van Winkle fell asleep.” Frank had liked Albany. The busy town was the capital of New York State now. His father had said this was a good idea, since Manhattan was at the bottom end of the state, and had plenty of business anyway, but Albany was nearer the middle, and growing fast. One day, Weston had taken them all to the old fort at Ticonderoga, and told them how the Americans had taken it from the British. Frank wasn’t very interested in history, but he’d enjoyed seeing the geometric lines of the old stone walls and the gun emplacements.

This time, after coming up the Hudson as far as Albany, Frank and his father had headed west. First they’d taken a coach along the old turnpike road across the northern lip of the Catskills to Syracuse, then along the top of the long, thin Finger Lakes, past Seneca and Geneva, and after that, all the way across to Batavia and finally Buffalo. It had taken many days.

Frank reckoned he knew why his father had brought him. Of course, he was the only boy in the family, but it wasn’t only that. He liked to know how things worked. At home, he enjoyed it when his father took him onto the steamboats and let him inspect their furnaces and the pistons. “It’s the same principle as the big steam-powered cotton gins they have in England,” Weston had explained. “The plantations we finance in the South mostly produce raw cotton, which we ship across the ocean to those gins.” Sometimes Frank would go down to the waterside to watch the men packing the cargoes of ice, so that it would stay frozen all the way down to the kitchens of the big houses in tropical Martinique. When the workmen had installed gas lighting in their house that spring, he’d watched every inch of piping as it went in.

So it was only natural, he supposed, that his father should have chosen him of all his children to accompany him now, to witness the opening of the huge engineering project in the North.

Weston Master took a draw on his cigar. The path was like a tunnel, but a short way ahead there was an arch of bright sky, where the trees ended. He glanced down at his son and smiled to himself. He was glad to have Frank with him. It was good for a boy to spend time alone with his father. And besides, there were some particular things he wanted to share with his son on this journey.

More than thirty years had passed since the unexpected death of his own father in England. The letter, which had come from old Mr. Albion, who had gone to some trouble to discover all the details of the affair, explained that he had been set upon by ruffians in the city, probably intent only upon theft. James Master had put up such a fight, though, that one of the fellows had struck him a terrible blow with a cudgel, from which he had not recovered. The news had not only come as a great shock to Weston, it had also set the seal on a prejudice that remained with him for the rest of his life. All through his New York childhood, for reasons he never quite understood, England had seemed to claim the mother who was missing from his home. It was the war with England, also, which kept his father away, and made the other boys at school call his father a traitor. And these wounds had only partly healed when this news came that, like some ancient god who can never be satisfied, England had taken his father’s life as well. Even though he was a rational young man at Harvard when it happened, it was not so surprising that a primitive sense of aversion to England and all things English had settled in his soul.

As time passed, the scope of this aversion grew wider. While he was at Harvard, at the time of the French Revolution, it had seemed to Weston that perhaps in that country, inspired by the example of America, a new European freedom might be dawning. But as the liberal constitution for which Lafayette and his friends had hoped gave way first to the bloodbath of the Terror, and then to Napoleon’s empire, Weston had concluded that the freedoms of the New World might never be possible in the Old. Europe was too mired in ancient hatreds and rivalries between nations. The whole Continent, in Weston’s imagination, was a dangerous place, and he wanted as little to do with it as possible.

He was in excellent company. Hadn’t Washington, in his farewell address, warned the new American nation to avoid foreign entanglements? Jefferson, that standard-bearer of the European Enlightenment, and former resident of Paris, had likewise declared that America should stick to honest friendship with all nations, but entangling alliances with none. Madison agreed. Even John Quincy Adams, the great diplomat, who’d lived in countries from Russia to Portugal, said the same. Europe was trouble.

Proof of their wisdom had come a dozen years ago, when Britain and Napoleon’s empire were locked in their great struggle and the United States, bound to France by a treaty of friendship, had found itself trapped between the conflicting powers. Weston had felt first irritation as Britain, unable to tolerate America’s neutral trade with her enemy, had started to harass American shipping; then despair, as the disputes grew into a wider conflict; and then fury when, in 1812, America and Britain had once again found themselves at war.

His memories of that war were bitter. The British blockade of New York harbor had nearly ruined his trade. The fighting all along the eastern seaboard, and up in Canada, had cost tens of millions of dollars. The damn British had even burned down the president’s mansion in Washington. When the wretched business finally drew to a close after three years, and Napoleon had left the stage of history, Weston’s relief was matched by an iron determination.

Never again should America be in such a position. She must be strong, like a fortress. Strong enough to stand entirely alone. Recently, President Monroe had taken the idea even further. To make America really secure, he had declared, the whole of the western side of the Atlantic—North America, the Caribbean, South America—should be an American sphere of influence. The other nations could squabble in Europe if they liked, but not in the Americas. It was a daring claim, but Weston was in total agreement with it.

For why should Americans need the Old World across the ocean, when they had their own, huge continent on their doorstep? Mighty river systems, rich valleys, endless forests, magnificent mountains, fertile plains—a land of endless opportunities, stretching westward beyond the sunset. The freedom and wealth of a continent, thousands of miles of it, was theirs for the taking.

And it was this great truth, this grand vision, that Weston wanted to impress upon his son on their journey west.

For New York at least, and for the Master family in particular, the great canal that had just been built was an integral part of this grand new equation. And before they had left the city, he’d tried to show Frank its importance. Spreading out a map of North America on the table in his library, he had pointed to some key features.

“See, Frank, here are the Appalachian Mountains, beginning way down in Georgia, and extending all the way up the eastern side of the country. In North Carolina they become the Smoky Mountains. Then they run right up through Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and into New York, where they become the Catskills first, and then the Adirondacks. The old Thirteen Colonies were all on the east side of the Appalachians. But the other side is the future, Frank. The great American West.” And he had grandly swept his hand across the map all the way to the Pacific.

The parts of the map that already belonged to the United States were colored. The territory in the far west, beyond the Rocky Mountains, was not. After the War of 1812, the Spanish had given up Florida, but their huge Mexican empire still swept all the way up the Pacific coast until it came to Oregon Country, the open territory which America and Britain controlled together. The vast swathe of territory east of the Rockies, however, from Canada all the way down to New Orleans, was colored. This was the Louisiana Purchase, as big as the old thirteen states put together, and which Jefferson had bought from Napoleon for a song. “Napoleon was a great general,” Weston told Frank, “but a lousy businessman.” Most of the Louisiana Purchase hadn’t been organized into states yet, though Weston believed that that would come in time. It was the nearer west, however, under the Great Lakes, to which he had directed his son’s attention.

“Look at these new states, Frank,” he said. “Ohio, Indiana, Illinois—with Michigan territory above them, and the states of Kentucky and Tennessee below. They’re rich in everything, especially grain. The future breadbasket of the world. But New York doesn’t benefit. All the grain, and the hogs and the other goods from the west are flowing south, down the Ohio River, then down the Mississippi”—he traced the line of the huge river systems with his finger—“until they finally come to New Orleans for shipment.” He smiled. “So that, my boy, is why we have built the Erie Canal.”

Geography had certainly been kind to the New York men. Up near Albany, on the western side of the River Hudson where the Mohawk River came to join it, the huge, broad gap between the Catskills and the Adirondack Mountains offered a viable terrain through which to lay a canal. From the Hudson, the canal ran westward all the way to the edge of the Great Lakes in the Midwest.

“Here,” said Weston, “just below Lake Ontario and above Lake Erie, lies the town of Buffalo. All kinds of produce come in there. And the canal ends just below Buffalo.”

“So now we can use the canal to ship goods east instead of south?”

“Exactly. Bringing loads overland is expensive, and slow. But barges filled with grain can get from Buffalo to New York in only six days. As for the cost … that drops from a hundred to only five dollars a ton. It’ll change everything. The wealth of the West will flow through New York.”

“Not so good for New Orleans, I guess.”

“No … Well, that’s their problem.”

Yesterday, Weston and Frank had spent the day inspecting the final sections of the canal. Those had been happy hours. An engineer had shown them round. Frank had been doing what he liked best, and Weston had been proud to see that the engineer was impressed with the boy’s questions.

But today there was something else he wanted to share with his son.

He had introduced the subject already, once or twice, during their journey. As they started up the Hudson, he had looked back, past the stately cliffs of the Palisades to where, in the distance, New York harbor was a haze of golden light, and remarked: “It’s a fine sight, isn’t it, Frank?” But it had been hard to tell what the boy was thinking. As they came to West Point, and stared at the splendor of the Hudson Valley as it wound its way northward—a sight that always brought a thrill of romance to his own heart—Weston had again called the scene to his son’s attention. “Mighty fine, Pa,” Frank had said, but only, his father suspected, because he reckoned it was expected of him. As they’d taken the long road westward, passed lakes and mountains, seen magnificent panoramas and gorgeous sunsets, Weston had gently pointed them out, and let the boy take them in.

For as well as the continent’s scope and wealth, it was America’s spiritual lineaments he wanted to show his son. The vast splendor of the land, the magnificence of its freedom, the glory of nature and its testimony to the sublime. The Old World had nothing better than this—equally picturesque perhaps, but never so grand. Here in the beauty of the Hudson Valley, it stretched to the plains and deserts and soaring mountains of the west: nature, untrameled, under the hand of God. America, as seen by its native sons, for countless centuries before his own ancestors came. He wanted to share it with his son, and see its mighty wonder thrill the boy’s heart.

That’s why he had brought him here today. If the stupendous sight they were about to see didn’t stir the boy, then he didn’t know what would.

“Lake Ontario is higher than Lake Erie,” he said quietly to Frank, as they came toward the end of the path, “so as the water flows through the channel that leads between them, it comes to a place where it has to drop. It’s a pretty big drop, as you’ll see.”

Frank had enjoyed preparing for the journey. Back in the city, he’d been interested, when his father had demonstrated the purpose of the canal on the map. Frank liked maps. In his library, his father also had a big framed print of the commissioners’ plan for New York City. It showed a long, perfect grid of streets. The city had already advanced several miles from its old limits under the British, but the plan was that one day the grid should run all the way up to Harlem. Frank loved the simple, harsh geometry of the plan, and the fact that it was about the future, not the past.

He’d enjoyed inspecting the canal yesterday, too. The Big Ditch, people called it, for a joke. But there was nothing to joke about really, because the canal was truly amazing. Frank knew every fact about it. The canal plowed its mighty furrow westward for a hundred and sixty miles up the Mohawk River Valley, and then another two hundred miles across to the channel near the town of Buffalo. In the course of its long journey, the level of the canal had to rise six hundred feet, by means of fifty locks, each with a twelve-foot drop. Irish laborers had dug the trench; imported German masons had built its walls.

Yesterday, he had been allowed to operate the sluices and help move the massive gates of one of the locks, and the engineer had told him how many gallons of water were displaced, and at what rate, and he’d measured the time it took with a stopwatch. And this had made him very happy.

Tomorrow at the official opening, Governor DeWitt Clinton was going to welcome them aboard a barge that would take them through all fifty locks and down the Hudson to New York. The governor was the nephew of the old Patriot Governor Clinton from the time of the War of Independence. He was taking two big buckets of water from Lake Erie, so he could pour them into New York harbor at the end of the journey.

Frank and his father were at the end of the path now. As they came out of the trees, Frank blinked in the bright light, and the roar of the waters hit him. People were scattered in groups on the broad ledge; some of them had climbed up onto some rocks for an even more dizzying view of the falls. He noticed a group of Indians, sitting twenty yards away on the right.

“Well, Frank, there it is,” said his father. “Niagara Falls.”

They gazed at the falls in silence. The stupendous curve of the great curtain of water was the biggest thing Frank had ever seen. The spray boomed up in billowing clouds from the river far below.

“Sublime,” said his father quietly. “The hand of the divine, Frank. The voice of God.”

Frank wanted to say something, but he did not know what. He waited a little. Then he thought he had an inspiration.

“How many gallons of water go over it in a minute?”

His father didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know, son,” he said finally. His voice sounded disappointed. Frank lowered his head. Then he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. “Just listen to it, Frank,” he said.

Frank listened. He’d been listening for a little while when he noticed the Indian girl. She was about his own age, he reckoned, and she was staring toward them. Perhaps she was looking at him. He wasn’t sure.

Frank wasn’t much interested in girls, but there was something about the Indian girl that made him glance at her again. She was small, but neatly made. He guessed she was pretty. And she was still staring in his direction, as if something interested her.

“Pa,” said Frank, “that Indian girl is staring at us.”

His father shrugged. “We could go down to the river, if you like,” his father said, “and look up at the falls from below. There’s a path. Takes a while, of course, but they say it’s worth it.”

“All right,” said Frank.

Then Frank saw that the Indian girl was coming toward them. She moved with such a light step, she seemed almost to float over the ground. His father saw too and stopped to look at her.

Frank knew a bit about Indians. When the War of 1812 had come, a great leader called Tecumseh had persuaded a lot of them to fight for the British. Here in Mohawk Country, many of the local Indians had joined him, which had been a big mistake. Tecumseh had been killed, and they’d lost out badly. But there were still plenty of Mohawks around these parts. He supposed that’s what she must be.

The other people on the ledge were watching the Indian girl and smiling. Nobody seemed to mind her coming up to them like that. She was such a pretty little thing.

Frank had thought the girl was looking at him, but as she came close, he realized with a shade of disappointment that her eyes were focused, not upon him, but his father. She went right up to him and pointed at his waist.

“It’s my wampum belt she’s interested in,” his father said.

The girl seemed to want to touch it. Weston nodded, to let her know she could. She put her fingers on the wampum. Then she walked round his father, who obligingly lifted aside his coat so that she could see all of the belt. When she had done, she stood in front of his father, looking up at him.

She was wearing moccasins, but Frank could see that she had neat little feet. He also noticed that, although her skin was brown, her eyes were blue. His father noticed too.

“Look at her eyes, Frank. That means she’s got some white blood in her somewhere. You see that occasionally.” He addressed the girl. “Mohawk?”

She signed that she was not. “Lenape,” she said quietly.

“You know who the Lenape are, Frank?” said his father. “That’s what they call the Indians that used to live around Manhattan. You hardly see any now. What was left of them scattered, joined larger tribes, went west. There’s quite a few in Ohio, I believe. But one group stayed together and settled at the far end of Lake Erie. The Turtle clan, they’re called. There’s not a lot of them, and they don’t give trouble. Keep to themselves, mostly.”

“So her people were around when our family first came to Manhattan?”

“Probably.” He gazed down at her. “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

Frank didn’t answer, but then the girl turned and stared into his eyes, and he felt awkward, and looked away.

“She’s all right, I guess,” he said.

“You want my wampum belt, don’t you?” his father said to the girl. He used a calm, friendly voice, the same as when he was talking to the dog at home. “Well, you can’t have it.”

“Can she understand you, Pa?” asked Frank.

“No idea,” said his father. Then something caught his eye. “Hmm,” he said. “What’s that?” And he signed to the girl that he wanted to look at an object hanging round her neck. Frank could see that the girl didn’t want him to, but since his father had let her look at his belt, she couldn’t very well refuse.

Without making any sudden movement, his father reached forward.

It was so neatly made. Two tiny rings of wood glued together formed a little double-sided frame, with a cross of twine binding them together for extra security. A thin leather thong passing through the frame made a loop, so that the girl could hang it round her neck. The precious object in the little frame gleamed softly in the light as his father held it up and examined it.

“Well, I’m damned,” he said. “Do you know what this is, Frank?”

“Looks like a new dollar.”

“It is and it isn’t. We’ve been minting US dollars one way or another for forty years now, but this is older. It’s a Dutch dollar. A lion dollar, they used to call them.”

“I never heard of that.”

“People still used them when I was a boy, but they were so old and worn by then, we called them dog dollars. This one’s never been in circulation, I’d swear. It must be a hundred and fifty years old—maybe more—but you can see it’s still like new.” He shook his head in wonderment, and handed it to Frank.

Frank looked at the coin. He could see there was a splendid lion depicted on the front and a knight of some sort on the back. He gave it back to his father.

His father looked at the girl, considering. “I wonder if she’d sell it to me,” he said. He made a sign to the girl that he wanted to buy it. She looked alarmed, and shook her head. “Hmm,” said his father. He thought for a moment. Then he pointed to the wampum belt. “Trade?”

Frank saw the girl hesitate, but only for a moment. Then she shook her head again, and put out her hand for the coin. She looked unhappy.

But his father wasn’t a man to give up easily. He smiled at her and offered again, keeping the coin well out of her reach.

Again she shook her head and held out her hand.

His father looked over to where the Indians were sitting. They were watching impassively.

“That’ll be her family, I should think,” he said. “Maybe they’ll tell her to sell it to me.” He wound the leather thong round the coin, making a little package of it. “I reckon I’ll speak to them,” he said.

By now the girl was visibly distressed. She thrust out her hand again, urgently.

“Give it back to her, Pa,” said Frank suddenly. “Leave her alone.”

His father turned to him with a frown, surprised. “What’s the matter, son?”

“It’s hers, Pa. You should give it back to her.”

His father paused a moment. “I thought maybe you might have liked it.”

“No.”

His father wasn’t too pleased, but he handed the coin back to the girl with a shrug. She took it and, clasping it tightly, ran back across the grass to her family.

His father stared out irritably at the water.

“Well,” he said, “I guess that’s Niagara Falls.”

After they had started back along the path, his father said: “Don’t get emotional when you’re trading, Frank.”

“I won’t, Pa.”

“That girl. She may have got white blood, somewhere back, but she’s still a savage, you know.”

That evening, they ate with the governor in a big hall, and all the people who were coming on the boat tomorrow toasted the new canal and said how grand it would be. Frank was pretty excited at the thought of the trip ahead, and all the locks they would be going through.

Then after the meal, while the men were sitting at the table, drinking and smoking their cigars, Frank asked his father if he could go outside for a while.

“Course you can, son—only don’t go too far. Then when you come back, we’ll go to the lodgings and turn in. Get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.”

Buffalo was quite small. People referred to it as a village, but Frank reckoned it was a small town really, and you could see the place was expanding. There was no one about, so it was quiet. It was clear overhead, but it wasn’t cold.

He crossed over the canal and came to a short stretch of riverfront where there was an open area, with some rocks and a stand of pine trees, and he sat on one of the rocks and gazed at the water. He could feel a light breeze pressing softly on his cheek, and soon he reckoned that it was getting a little stronger because he could hear it, now, up in the trees.

And as he sat there, the image of the girl came into his mind, and he thought about her for a while. He was glad for what he had done, and he wondered where she was now, and if maybe she was thinking about him too. And he hoped she might be. So although he was getting a little cold, he stayed there some time, and thought of her some more, and listened to the voice of the wind, sighing in the trees.

After that, he went back.