The True Account Read Online Free Page A

why.”
    After recovering somewhat from this rather excruciating experience, my father started to say, “The reason why, dear brother, is that, not to put too fine a point on the matter, you have never been—”
    â€œAh, ah, Charles,” said my mother, smiling and shaking her head, while my uncle now scanned the piece in the
Intelligencer
through the small end of his trumpet, alternately nodding his head in agreement or frowning and shaking it, so that the little bell on the end of his cap jingled like a whole carillon.
    â€œThe reason why, dear elder brother,” my father tried again, “is that—is that—oh, to the devil with it—the reason is that you might as well undertake to guide Captain Lewis to the Great Khan of China, like our ancestor, Chief Tumkin Tumkin.”
    My uncle raised his thickety white eyebrows. “China,” he said, casting a glance out the back window of the kitchen at the stone wall angling up the slope. “China—”
    Hurriedly, to deflect this dangerous train of thought, my father read on. “‘The expedition will travel up the Missouri, whose ultimate source is believed to rise near that of the Columbia, then proceed down that river to the Pacific, in what is projected to be one of the greatest journeys of discovery in history.’”
    â€œDo you see, nephew?” cried my uncle, now gazing at me through the big end of his trumpet. “Exactly our route in reverse. They can’t do it without us. Take a letter, lad.”
    Â 
The Honorable Thomas Jefferson,
President of the United States of America
    Â 
Dear Mr. President,
Having just returned by land from the mouth of the River Columbia and the Oregon Territory, I will undertake, for two dollars a day and found, to lead an expedition safely across Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean, through the land of the all-puissant Blackfeet and the treacherous Sioux, whom I plan to pacify and win over by introducing them to the propagation, cultivation, and inhalation of that panacea for all the spiritual ills of mankind—hemp. Eagerly awaiting your confirmation of this assignment, I remain,
Your friend,
Private True Teague Kinneson
Green Mountain Regiment
First Continental Army
    Â 
    â€œAnd back?” my mother suggested.
    â€œAnd back?” my uncle said.
    â€œYes. To the Pacific and back?”
    â€œOh, yes. Of course ‘and back.’ Write, ‘Postscript—and back,’ Ti.”
    I did so, and then, lest this matter of high state policy fall into the hands of spies, my uncle had me transcribe it into Greek. Not knowing the Hellenic for “Blackfeet” and “Sioux,” I found myself at a standstill. But my unperplexed uncle, thumbing through Xenophon, found a phrase for “sooty-footed Persians,” which took care of the Blackfeet; as for the Sioux, on reflection he thought it safe simply to write—Sioux.
    He posted this proposal the next morning and followed it up with many more communications to the President, including a thirty-page treatise in Latin called
A Brief History of the Flora, Fauna and Native Peoples of the Oregon and Louisiana Territories.
Also, he sent Mr. Jefferson a copy of his revised “Chart of the Interior of North America.”
    The fact that we received not a single word in reply to these missives did not deter or discourage Private True Teague Kinneson in the least. Indeed, I must say that my uncle seemed impervious to discouragement. When he rose in the morning, he never once, so far as I knew, doubted that his commission and summons to Washington would be coming through that very day; throughout the summer and fall of 1803 we made trial runs with my raft on the Kingdom River and compiled lengthy lists of what we would need to take with us.
    Vermont’s red and yellow autumn gave way to winter. At Christmas, from his hemp income my uncle presented me with a new muzzle-loading flintlock rifle, my