Note 59 — Chapter XXV · VOYAGE OF 1863—THE TOBACCO GARDEN MASSACRE.

There are numerous authorities upon the affair of the Tobacco Garden. The reports of both the agents Latta and Reed describe it. Henry A. Boller, in his “Among the Indians,” describes it at length, as does Larpenteur in his “Forty Years a Fur Trader.” The testimony of Captain La Barge and Andy Stinger, who in each other’s presence related the matter to the author, is here produced for the first time.

In his edition of “Larpenteur’s Journal,” referred to above, p. 352, Dr. Elliott Coues makes the following statement: “I have offered in writing to Captain Joseph La Barge to print in this connection any statement concerning the affair that he might wish to make and would be willing to sign; but up to date of going to press have not heard from him.”

The inference from this is that Captain La Barge could not controvert Larpenteur’s statements, or he would have done so when the opportunity was given. This offer was sent to Captain La Barge through the author of the present work. The old gentleman retained in his old age the same spirit of haughty disdain for willful attempts to injure the reputation of others that characterized his whole life, and he indignantly refused to notice the matter. “Time will set this right,” he said. The truth is that Charles Larpenteur, although very long in the Indian country, was never a man of high standing there, and proved a failure in whatever he undertook. Like all such men, he nursed the delusion that the world was in league against him, and he took advantage of the opportunity offered by the preparation of his memoirs to even matters up. Nearly everyone with whom he deals comes in for a round measure of abuse, until one is led to believe that Larpenteur was a saint, solitary and forlorn, wandering disconsolate among the children of Beelzebub. Larpenteur was probably an honest man in his business relations, but never an able man, and his attempts to account for the consequences of his own deficiencies by attributing them to the rascality of others, does not add to the value of his memoirs as historical material. Bad as the early population of that country was, it was not entirely composed of scoundrels.