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CHAPTER 5
Magnificent scenery Wind River Mountains Treasury of waters A
stray horse An Indian trail Trout streams The Great Green River
Valley An alarm A band of trappers Fontenelle, his
information Sufferings of thirst Encampment on the Seeds-ke-
dee Strategy of rival traders Fortification of the camp The
Blackfeet Banditti of the mountains Their character and habits
IT WAS ON THE 20TH of July that Captain Bonneville first came in
sight of the grand region of his hopes and anticipations, the
Rocky Mountains. He had been making a bend to the south, to avoid
some obstacles along the river, and had attained a high, rocky
ridge, when a magnificent prospect burst upon his sight. To the
west rose the Wind River Mountains, with their bleached and snowy
summits towering into the clouds. These stretched far to the
north-northwest, until they melted away into what appeared to be
faint clouds, but which the experienced eyes of the veteran
hunters of the party recognized for the rugged mountains of the
Yellowstone; at the feet of which extended the wild Crow country:
a perilous, though profitable region for the trapper.
To the southwest, the eye ranged over an immense extent of
wilderness, with what appeared to be a snowy vapor resting upon
its horizon. This, however, was pointed out as another branch of
the Great Chippewyan, or Rocky chain; being the Eutaw Mountains,
at whose basis the wandering tribe of hunters of the same name
pitch their tents. We can imagine the enthusiasm of the worthy
captain when he beheld the vast and mountainous scene of his
adventurous enterprise thus suddenly unveiled before him. We can
imagine with what feelings of awe and admiration he must have
contemplated the Wind River Sierra, or bed of mountains; that
great fountainhead from whose springs, and lakes, and melted
snows some of those mighty rivers take their rise, which wander
over hundreds of miles of varied country and clime, and find
their way to the opposite waves of the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The Wind River Mountains are, in fact, among the most remarkable
of the whole Rocky chain; and would appear to be among the
loftiest. They form, as it were, a great bed of mountains, about
eighty miles in length, and from twenty to thirty in breadth;
with rugged peaks, covered with eternal snows, and deep, narrow
valleys full of springs, and brooks, and rock-bound lakes. From
this great treasury of waters issue forth limpid streams, which,
augmenting as they descend, become main tributaries of the
Missouri on the one side, and the Columbia on the other; and give
rise to the Seeds-ke-dee Agie, or Green River, the great Colorado
of the West, that empties its current into the Gulf of
California.
The Wind River Mountains are notorious in hunters' and trappers'
stories: their rugged defiles, and the rough tracts about their
neighborhood, having been lurking places for the predatory hordes
of the mountains, and scenes of rough encounter with Crows and
Blackfeet. It was to the west of these mountains, in the valley
of the Seeds-ke-dee Agie, or Green River, that Captain Bonneville
intended to make a halt for the purpose of giving repose to his
people and his horses after their weary journeying; and of
collecting information as to his future course. This Green River
valley, and its immediate neighborhood, as we have already
observed, formed the main point of rendezvous, for the present
year, of the rival fur companies, and the motley populace,
civilized and savage, connected with them. Several days of rugged
travel, however, yet remained for the captain and his men before
they should encamp in this desired resting-place.
On the 21st of July, as they were pursuing their course through
one of the meadows of the Sweet Water, they beheld a horse
grazing at a little distance. He showed no alarm at their
approach, but suffered himself quietly to be taken, evincing a
perfect state of tameness. The scouts of the party were instantly
on the look-out for the owners of this animal; lest some
dangerous band of savages might be lurking in the vicinity. After
a narrow search, they discovered the trail of an Indian party,
which had evidently passed through that neighborhood but
recently. The horse was accordingly taken possession of, as an
estray; but a more vigilant watch than usual was kept round the
camp at nights, lest his former owners should be upon the prowl.
The travellers had now attained so high an elevation that on the
23d of July, at daybreak, there was considerable ice in the
waterbuckets, and the thermometer stood at twenty-two degrees.
The rarefy of the atmosphere continued to affect the wood-work of
the wagons, and the wheels were incessantly falling to pieces. A
remedy was at length devised. The tire of each wheel was taken
off; a band of wood was nailed round the exterior of the felloes,
the tire was then made red hot, replaced round the wheel, and
suddenly cooled with water. By this means, the whole was bound
together with great compactness.
The extreme elevation of these great steppes, which range along
the feet of the Rocky Mountains, takes away from the seeming
height of their peaks, which yield to few in the known world in
point of altitude above the level of the sea.
On the 24th, the travellers took final leave of the Sweet Water,
and keeping westwardly, over a low and very rocky ridge, one of
the most southern spurs of the Wind River Mountains, they
encamped, after a march of seven hours and a half, on the banks
of a small clear stream, running to the south, in which they
caught a number of fine trout.
The sight of these fish was hailed with pleasure, as a sign that
they had reached the waters which flow into the Pacific; for it
is only on the western streams of the Rocky Mountains that trout
are to be taken. The stream on which they had thus encamped
proved, in effect, to be tributary to the Seeds-ke-dee Agie, or
Green River, into which it flowed at some distance to the south.
Captain Bonneville now considered himself as having fairly passed
the crest of the Rocky Mountains; and felt some degree of
exultation in being the first individual that had crossed, north
of the settled provinces of Mexico, from the waters of the
Atlantic to those of the Pacific, with wagons. Mr. William
Sublette, the enterprising leader of the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company, had, two or three years previously, reached the valley
of the Wind River, which lies on the northeast of the mountains;
but had proceeded with them no further.
A vast valley now spread itself before the travellers, bounded on
one side by the Wind River Mountains, and to the west, by a long
range of high hills. This, Captain Bonneville was assured by a
veteran hunter in his company, was the great valley of the
Seedske-dee; and the same informant would have fain persuaded him
that a small stream, three feet deep, which he came to on the
25th, was that river. The captain was convinced, however, that
the stream was too insignificant to drain so wide a valley and
the adjacent mountains: he encamped, therefore, at an early hour,
on its borders, that he might take the whole of the next day to
reach the main river; which he presumed to flow between him and
the distant range of western hills.
On the 26th of July, he commenced his march at an early hour,
making directly across the valley, toward the hills in the west;
proceeding at as brisk a rate as the jaded condition of his
horses would permit. About eleven o'clock in the morning, a great
cloud of dust was descried in the rear, advancing directly on the
trail of the party. The alarm was given; they all came to a halt,
and held a council of war. Some conjectured that the band of
Indians, whose trail they had discovered in the neighborhood of
the stray horse, had been lying in wait for them in some secret
fastness of the mountains; and were about to attack them on the
open plain, where they would have no shelter. Preparations were
immediately made for defence; and a scouting party sent off to
reconnoitre. They soon came galloping back, making signals that
all was well. The cloud of dust was made by a band of fifty or
sixty mounted trappers, belonging to the American Fur Company,
who soon came up, leading their pack-horses. They were headed by
Mr. Fontenelle, an experienced leader, or "partisan," as a chief
of a party is called in the technical language of the trappers.
Mr. Fontenelle informed Captain Bonneville that he was on his way
from the company's trading post on the Yellowstone to the yearly
rendezvous, with reinforcements and supplies for their hunting
and trading parties beyond the mountains; and that he expected to
meet, by appointment, with a band of free trappers in that very
neighborhood. He had fallen upon the trail of Captain
Bonneville's party, just after leaving the Nebraska; and, finding
that they had frightened off all the game, had been obliged to
push on, by forced marches, to avoid famine: both men and horses
were, therefore, much travel-worn; but this was no place to halt;
the plain before them he said was destitute of grass and water,
neither of which would be met with short of the Green River,
which was yet at a considerable distance. He hoped, he added, as
his party were all on horseback, to reach the river, with hard
travelling, by nightfall: but he doubted the possibility of
Captain Bonneville's arrival there with his wagons before the day
following. Having imparted this information, he pushed forward
with all speed.
Captain Bonneville followed on as fast as circumstances would
permit. The ground was firm and gravelly; but the horses were too
much fatigued to move rapidly. After a long and harassing day's
march, without pausing for a noontide meal, they were compelled,
at nine o'clock at night, to encamp in an open plain, destitute
of water or pasturage. On the following morning, the horses were
turned loose at the peep of day; to slake their thirst, if
possible, from the dew collected on the sparse grass, here and
there springing up among dry sand-banks. The soil of a great part
of this Green River valley is a whitish clay, into which the rain
cannot penetrate, but which dries and cracks with the sun. In
some places it produces a salt weed, and grass along the margins
of the streams; but the wider expanses of it are desolate and
barren. It was not until noon that Captain Bonneville reached the
banks of the Seeds-ke-dee, or Colorado of the West; in the
meantime, the sufferings of both men and horses had been
excessive, and it was with almost frantic eagerness that they
hurried to allay their burning thirst in the limpid current of
the river.
Fontenelle and his party had not fared much better; the chief
part had managed to reach the river by nightfall, but were nearly
knocked up by the exertion; the horses of others sank under them,
and they were obliged to pass the night upon the road.
On the following morning, July 27th, Fontenelle moved his camp
across the river; while Captain Bonneville proceeded some little
distance below, where there was a small but fresh meadow yielding
abundant pasturage. Here the poor jaded horses were turned out to
graze, and take their rest: the weary journey up the mountains
had worn them down in flesh and spirit; but this last march
across the thirsty plain had nearly finished them.
The captain had here the first taste of the boasted strategy of
the fur trade. During his brief, but social encampment, in
company with Fontenelle, that experienced trapper had managed to
win over a number of Delaware Indians whom the captain had
brought with him, by offering them four hundred dollars each for
the ensuing autumnal hunt. The captain was somewhat astonished
when he saw these hunters, on whose services he had calculated
securely, suddenly pack up their traps, and go over to the rival
camp. That he might in some measure, however, be even with his
competitor, he dispatched two scouts to look out for the band of
free trappers who were to meet Fontenelle in this neighborhood,
and to endeavor to bring them to his camp.
As it would be necessary to remain some time in this
neighborhood, that both men and horses might repose, and recruit
their strength; and as it was a region full of danger, Captain
Bonneville proceeded to fortify his camp with breastworks of logs
and pickets.
These precautions were, at that time, peculiarly necessary, from
the bands of Blackfeet Indians which were roving about the
neighborhood. These savages are the most dangerous banditti of
the mountains, and the inveterate foe of the trappers. They are
Ishmaelites of the first order, always with weapon in hand, ready
for action. The young braves of the tribe, who are destitute of
property, go to war for booty; to gain horses, and acquire the
means of setting up a lodge, supporting a family, and entitling
themselves to a seat in the public councils. The veteran warriors
fight merely for the love of the thing, and the consequence which
success gives them among their people.
They are capital horsemen, and are generally well mounted on
short, stout horses, similar to the prairie ponies to be met with
at St. Louis. When on a war party, however, they go on foot, to
enable them to skulk through the country with greater secrecy; to
keep in thickets and ravines, and use more adroit subterfuges and
stratagems. Their mode of warfare is entirely by ambush,
surprise, and sudden assaults in the night time. If they succeed
in causing a panic, they dash forward with headlong fury: if the
enemy is on the alert, and shows no signs of fear, they become
wary and deliberate in their movements.
Some of them are armed in the primitive style, with bows and
arrows; the greater part have American fusees, made after the
fashion of those of the Hudson's Bay Company. These they procure
at the trading post of the American Fur Company, on Marias River,
where they traffic their peltries for arms, ammunition, clothing,
and trinkets. They are extremely fond of spirituous liquors and
tobacco; for which nuisances they are ready to exchange not
merely their guns and horses, but even their wives and daughters.
As they are a treacherous race, and have cherished a lurking
hostility to the whites ever since one of their tribe was killed
by Mr. Lewis, the associate of General Clarke, in his exploring
expedition across the Rocky Mountains, the American Fur Company
is obliged constantly to keep at that post a garrison of sixty or
seventy men.
Under the general name of Blackfeet are comprehended several
tribes: such as the Surcies, the Peagans, the Blood Indians, and
the Gros Ventres of the Prairies: who roam about the southern
branches of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, together with
some other tribes further north.
The bands infesting the Wind River Mountains and the country
adjacent at the time of which we are treating, were Gros Ventres
of the Prairies, which are not to be confounded with Gros Ventres
of the Missouri, who keep about the lower part of that river, and
are friendly to the white men.
This hostile band keeps about the headwaters of the Missouri, and
numbers about nine hundred fighting men. Once in the course of
two or three years they abandon their usual abodes, and make a
visit to the Arapahoes of the Arkansas. Their route lies either
through the Crow country, and the Black Hills, or through the
lands of the Nez Perces, Flatheads, Bannacks, and Shoshonies. As
they enjoy their favorite state of hostility with all these
tribes, their expeditions are prone to be conducted in the most
lawless and predatory style; nor do they hesitate to extend their
maraudings to any party of white men they meet with; following
their trails; hovering about their camps; waylaying and dogging
the caravans of the free traders, and murdering the solitary
trapper. The consequences are frequent and desperate fights
between them and the "mountaineers," in the wild defiles and
fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains.
The band in question was, at this time, on their way homeward
from one of their customary visits to the Arapahoes; and in the
ensuing chapter we shall treat of some bloody encounters between
them and the trappers, which had taken place just before the
arrival of Captain Bonneville among the mountains.
Content of CHAPTER 5 [Washington Irving's book: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville]
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