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Coleman had been a bad choice—an over-packer who
lagged and turned back before the first plateau, taking with
him the party’s altimeter and bacon. Sluiskin set an eager
pace, urging on Van Trump and Stevens for three days of
hot, hard travel through forests of Douglas fir and Western
hemlock. Van Trump wondered if the guide was taking them
out of their way to pad his pay. Their destination was the
base of a glacier just east of the Nisqually icefield. Recalling
peaks projecting like needles from the valley floor, Stevens
wrote, “It seemed incredible that any human foot could have
followed the course we came.”
Stevens’s methods of acquiring
some 100,000 square miles of ter-
ritory—including Rainier and
environs, which became a federal
reservation—later came under
intense scrutiny, but his son long
treasured their two-horse odyssey.
Camped by the Missouri River in the summer of 1855, the
governor gave his son a long leash. Hazard, whose first
name was his mother’s family name, became a fine horse-
man and an excellent shot. In October, the two were still on
the road, tying up loose ends for the upcoming Blackfeet
Council, at which nine tribes would rendezvous in
north-central Montana to negotiate peace, hunting rights,
and access for whites through the region. Needing to be sure
a chief of the Gros Ventre tribe who lived on the Milk River
would attend, the governor dispatched his
son to find the Indian. The youth made the
150-mile round trip over wind-whipped yel-
low plains in 30 hours, and was thrilled to
report that he had seen a grizzly bear.
On day nine of their climb, Stevens and
Van Trump rose before dawn to prepare
their packs. Scouting the summit the day
before, they decided they could reach the
peak and return in a day. Since leaving
Yelm, they had been sweltering, so they left
their coats and blankets, carrying enough
food for a single meal, one large canteen,
and only the most basic gear, like the
alpine climbing staffs the men
used to steady themselves.
The climbers needed three
hours to reach 10,000 feet, at
which the mountain became
perilously steep. Ascending a
rocky, angular ridge, Stevens
Men at War
Isaac Stevens, seated,
with his staff during
the Civil War. Hazard
Stevens, his adjutant,
is third from left.
River of Ice
Rainier’s Nisqually Glacier
seen from below in 1895.
Mountaineer Gear
Stevens’s pack frame
reflected the materials
and technology of the
era in which he lived.
The next leg troubled Sluiskin. The Englishman’s fast
fade had him doubting his other clients’ grit. Stevens and
Van Trump convinced the guide they were sincere, but still
the Indian pleaded with them to turn back before
they came within range of mudslides, crevasses, and
killing cold—all the work of the mountain spirit, he
said. When the white men insisted, Sluiskin said he
would wait in camp for three days, then travel to
Olympia to report their deaths. Stevens retired to
his bedroll and drifted off to the rumble of ava-
lanches and Sluiskin at fireside, chanting
ominously.
Stevens first forged friendships with Native
Americans on a nine-month trip he made at
age 13 with his father, who had to negotiate
treaties between the region’s tribes and
the federal government. Governor