it divides itself into two equal and beautiful streams. One of these
branches rises in the west-southwest, near the headwaters of the
Arkansas. Up the course of this branch, as Captain Bonneville was well
aware, lay the route to the Camanche and Kioway Indians, and to the
northern Mexican settlements; of the other branch he knew nothing. Its
sources might lie among wild and inaccessible cliffs, and tumble and
foam down rugged defiles and over craggy precipices; but its direction
was in the true course, and up this stream he determined to prosecute
his route to the Rocky Mountains. Finding it impossible, from
quicksands and other dangerous impediments, to cross the river in this
neighborhood, he kept up along the south fork for two days, merely
seeking a safe fording place. At length he encamped, caused the bodies
of the wagons to be dislodged from the wheels, covered with buffalo
hide, and besmeared with a compound of tallow and ashes; thus forming
rude boats. In these, they ferried their effects across the stream,
which was six hundred yards wide, with a swift and strong current. Three
men were in each boat, to manage it; others waded across pushing the
barks before them. Thus all crossed in safety. A march of nine miles
took them over high rolling prairies to the north fork; their eyes being
regaled with the welcome sight of herds of buffalo at a distance, some
careering the plain, others grazing and reposing in the natural meadows.
Skirting along the north fork for a day or two, excessively annoyed by
musquitoes and buffalo gnats, they reached, in the evening of the 17th,
a small but beautiful grove, from which issued the confused notes of
singing birds, the first they had heard since crossing the boundary
of Missouri. After so many days of weary travelling through a naked,
monotonous and silent country, it was delightful once more to hear
the song of the bird, and to behold the verdure of the grove. It was
a beautiful sunset, and a sight of the glowing rays, mantling the
tree-tops and rustling branches, gladdened every heart. They pitched
their camp in the grove, kindled their fires, partook merrily of their
rude fare, and resigned themselves to the sweetest sleep they had
enjoyed since their outset upon the prairies.
The country now became rugged and broken. High bluffs advanced upon the
river, and forced the travellers occasionally to leave its banks and
wind their course into the interior. In one of the wild and solitary
passes they were startled by the trail of four or five pedestrians, whom
they supposed to be spies from some predatory camp of either Arickara
or Crow Indians. This obliged them to redouble their vigilance at
night, and to keep especial watch upon their horses. In these rugged
and elevated regions they began to see the black-tailed deer, a
species larger than the ordinary kind, and chiefly found in rocky and
mountainous countries. They had reached also a great buffalo range;
Captain Bonneville ascended a high bluff, commanding an extensive view
of the surrounding plains. As far as his eye could reach, the country
seemed absolutely blackened by innumerable herds. No language, he says,
could convey an adequate idea of the vast living mass thus presented to
his eye. He remarked that the bulls and cows generally congregated in
separate herds.
Opposite to the camp at this place was a singular phenomenon, which
is among the curiosities of the country. It is called the chimney. The
lower part is a conical mound, rising out of the naked plain; from the
summit shoots up a shaft or column, about one hundred and twenty feet
in height, from which it derives its name. The height of the whole,
according to Captain Bonneville, is a hundred and seventy-five yards.
It is composed of indurated clay, with alternate layers of red and white
sandstone, and may be seen at the distance of upward of thirty miles.
On the 21st, they encamped amidst high and beetling cliffs of indurated
clay and sandstone, bearing the semblance of towers, castles, churches,
and fortified cities. At a distance, it was scarcely possible to
persuade one’s self that the works of art were not mingled with these
fantastic freaks of nature. They have received the name of Scott’s
Bluffs, from a melancholy circumstance. A number of years since, a party
were descending the upper part of the river in canoes, when their frail
barks were overturned and all their powder spoiled. Their rifles being
thus rendered useless, they were unable to procure food by hunting
and had to depend upon roots and wild fruits for subsistence. After
suffering extremely from hunger, they arrived at Laramie’s Fork, a small
tributary of the north branch of the Nebraska, about sixty miles above
the cliffs just mentioned. Here one of the party, by the name of Scott,
was taken ill; and his companions came to a halt, until he should
recover health and strength sufficient to proceed. While they were
searching round in quest of edible roots, they discovered a fresh trail
of white men, who had evidently but recently preceded them. What was to
be done? By a forced march they might overtake this party, and thus be
able to reach the settlements in safety. Should they linger, they might
all perish of famine and exhaustion. Scott, however, was incapable of
moving; they were too feeble to aid him forward, and dreaded that such
a clog would prevent their coming up with the advance party. They
determined, therefore, to abandon him to his fate. Accordingly, under
presence of seeking food, and such simples as might be efficacious in
his malady, they deserted him and hastened forward upon the trail.
They succeeded in overtaking the party of which they were in quest, but
concealed their faithless desertion of Scott; alleging that he had died
of disease.
On the ensuing summer, these very individuals visiting these parts in
company with others, came suddenly upon the bleached bones and grinning
skull of a human skeleton, which, by certain signs they recognized for
the remains of Scott. This was sixty long miles from the place where
they had abandoned him; and it appeared that the wretched man had
crawled that immense distance before death put an end to his miseries.
The wild and picturesque bluffs in the neighborhood of his lonely grave
have ever since borne his name.
Amidst this wild and striking scenery, Captain Bonneville, for the first
time, beheld flocks of the ahsahta or bighorn, an animal which frequents
these cliffs in great numbers. They accord with the nature of such
scenery, and add much to its romantic effect; bounding like goats from
crag to crag, often trooping along the lofty shelves of the mountains,
under the guidance of some venerable patriarch with horns twisted lower
than his muzzle, and sometimes peering over the edge of a precipice,
so high that they appear scarce bigger than crows; indeed, it seems
a pleasure to them to seek the most rugged and frightful situations,
doubtless from a feeling of security.
This animal is commonly called the mountain sheep, and is often
confounded with another animal, the “woolly sheep,” found more to the
northward, about the country of the Flatheads. The latter likewise
inhabits cliffs in summer, but descends into the valleys in the winter.
It has white wool, like a sheep, mingled with a thin growth of long
hair; but it has short legs, a deep belly, and a beard like a goat. Its
horns are about five inches long, slightly curved backwards, black as
jet, and beautifully polished. Its hoofs are of the same color. This
animal is by no means so active as the bighorn; it does not bound much,
but sits a good deal upon its haunches. It is not so plentiful either;
rarely more than two or three are seen at a time. Its wool alone gives
a resemblance to the sheep; it is more properly of the flesh is said to
have a musty flavor; some have thought the fleece might be valuable, as
it is said to be as fine as that of the goat Cashmere, but it is not to
be procured in sufficient quantities.
The ahsahta, argali, or bighorn, on the contrary, has short hair like a
deer, and resembles it in shape, but has the head and horns of a sheep,
and its flesh is said to be delicious mutton. The Indians consider it
more sweet and delicate than any other kind of venison. It abounds in
the Rocky Mountains, from the fiftieth degree of north latitude,
quite down to California; generally in the highest regions capable of
vegetation; sometimes it ventures into the valleys, but on the least
alarm, regains its favorite cliffs and precipices, where it is perilous,
if not impossible for the hunter to follow.
4.
An alarm--Crow--Indians--Their appearance--Mode of approach
--Their vengeful errand--Their curiosity--Hostility between
the Crows and Blackfeet--Loving conduct of the Crows--
Laramie’s Fork--First navigation of the--Nebraska--Great
elevation of the country--Rarity of the atmosphere--Its
effect on the wood-work of wagons--Black Hills--Their wild
and broken scenery--Indian dogs--Crow trophies--Sterile and
dreary country--Banks of the Sweet Water--Buffalo hunting--
Adventure of Tom Cain the Irish cook
WHEN ON THE MARCH, Captain Bonneville always sent some of his best
hunters in the advance to reconnoitre the country, as well as to look
out for game. On the 24th of May, as the caravan was slowly journeying
up the banks of the Nebraska, the hunters came galloping back, waving
their caps, and giving the alarm cry, Indians! Indians!
The captain immediately ordered a halt: the hunters now came up and
announced that a large war-party of Crow Indians were just above, on the
river. The captain knew the character of these savages; one of the
most roving, warlike, crafty, and predatory tribes of the mountains;
horse-stealers of the first order, and easily provoked to acts of
sanguinary violence. Orders were accordingly given to prepare for
action, and every one promptly took the post that had been assigned him
in the general order of the march, in all cases of warlike emergency.
Everything being put in battle array, the captain took the lead of his
little band, and moved on slowly and warily. In a little while he beheld
the Crow warriors emerging from among the bluffs. There were about sixty
of them; fine martial-looking fellows, painted and arrayed for war, and
mounted on horses decked out with all kinds of wild trappings. They
came prancing along in gallant style, with many wild and dexterous
evolutions, for none can surpass them in horsemanship; and their
bright colors, and flaunting and fantastic embellishments, glaring
and sparkling in the morning sunshine, gave them really a striking
appearance.
Their mode of approach, to one not acquainted with the tactics and
ceremonies of this rude chivalry of the wilderness, had an air of direct
hostility. They came galloping forward in a body, as if about to make a
furious charge, but, when close at hand, opened to the right and left,
and wheeled in wide circles round the travellers, whooping and yelling
like maniacs.
This done, their mock fury sank into a calm, and the chief, approaching
the captain, who had remained warily drawn up, though informed of the
pacific nature of the maneuver, extended to him the hand of friendship.
The pipe of peace was smoked, and now all was good fellowship.
The Crows were in pursuit of a band of Cheyennes, who had attacked their
village in the night and killed one of their people. They had already
been five and twenty days on the track of the marauders, and were
determined not to return home until they had sated their revenge.
A few days previously, some of their scouts, who were ranging the
country at a distance from the main body, had discovered the party of
Captain Bonneville. They had dogged it for a time in secret, astonished
at the long train of wagons and oxen, and especially struck with the
sight of a cow and calf, quietly following the caravan; supposing them
to be some kind of tame buffalo. Having satisfied their curiosity, they
carried back to their chief intelligence of all that they had seen. He
had, in consequence, diverged from his pursuit of vengeance to behold
the wonders described to him. “Now that we have met you,” said he to
Captain Bonneville, “and have seen these marvels with our own eyes, our
hearts are glad.” In fact, nothing could exceed the curiosity evinced by
these people as to the objects before them. Wagons had never been seen
by them before, and they examined them with the greatest minuteness; but
the calf was the peculiar object of their admiration. They watched it
with intense interest as it licked the hands accustomed to feed it, and
were struck with the mild expression of its countenance, and its perfect
docility.
After much sage consultation, they at length determined that it must
be the “great medicine” of the white party; an appellation given by the
Indians to anything of supernatural and mysterious power that is guarded
as a talisman. They were completely thrown out in their conjecture,
however, by an offer of the white men to exchange the calf for a horse;
their estimation of the great medicine sank in an instant, and they
declined the bargain.
At the request of the Crow chieftain the two parties encamped together,
and passed the residue of the day in company. The captain was
well pleased with every opportunity to gain a knowledge of the
“unsophisticated sons of nature,” who had so long been objects of his
poetic speculations; and indeed this wild, horse-stealing tribe is one
of the most notorious of the mountains. The chief, of course, had
his scalps to show and his battles to recount. The Blackfoot is the
hereditary enemy of the Crow, toward whom hostility is like a cherished
principle of religion; for every tribe, besides its casual
antagonists, has some enduring foe with whom there can be no permanent
reconciliation. The Crows and Blackfeet, upon the whole, are enemies
worthy of each other, being rogues and ruffians of the first water. As
their predatory excursions extend over the same regions, they often come
in contact with each other, and these casual conflicts serve to keep
their wits awake and their passions alive.
The present party of Crows, however, evinced nothing of the invidious
character for which they are renowned. During the day and night that
they were encamped in company with the travellers, their conduct was
friendly in the extreme. They were, in fact, quite irksome in their
attentions, and had a caressing manner at times quite importunate. It
was not until after separation on the following morning that the captain
and his men ascertained the secret of all this loving-kindness. In the
course of their fraternal caresses, the Crows had contrived to empty the
pockets of their white brothers; to abstract the very buttons from their
coats, and, above all, to make free with their hunting knives.
By equal altitudes of the sun, taken at this last encampment, Captain
Bonneville ascertained his latitude to be 41 47’ north. The thermometer,
at six o’clock in the morning, stood at fifty-nine degrees; at two
o’clock, P. M., at ninety-two degrees; and at six o’clock in the
evening, at seventy degrees.
The Black Hills, or Mountains, now began to be seen at a distance,
printing the horizon with their rugged and broken outlines; and
threatening to oppose a difficult barrier in the way of the travellers.
On the 26th of May, the travellers encamped at Laramie’s Fork, a clear
and beautiful stream, rising in the west-southwest, maintaining an
average width of twenty yards, and winding through broad meadows
abounding in currants and gooseberries, and adorned with groves and
clumps of trees.
By an observation of Jupiter’s satellites, with a Dolland reflecting
telescope, Captain Bonneville ascertained the longitude to be 102 57’
west of Greenwich.
We will here step ahead of our narrative to observe that about three
years after the time of which we are treating, Mr. Robert Campbell,
formerly of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, descended the Platte
from this fork, in skin canoes, thus proving, what had always been
discredited, that the river was navigable. About the same time, he built
a fort or trading post at Laramie’s Fork, which he named Fort William,
after his friend and partner, Mr. William Sublette. Since that time, the
Platte has become a highway for the fur traders.
For some days past, Captain Bonneville had been made sensible of the
great elevation of country into which he was gradually ascending by the
effect of the dryness and rarefaction of the atmosphere upon his wagons.
The wood-work shrunk; the paint boxes of the wheels were continually
working out, and it was necessary to support the spokes by stout props
to prevent their falling asunder. The travellers were now entering one
of those great steppes of the Far West, where the prevalent aridity
of the atmosphere renders the country unfit for cultivation. In these
regions there is a fresh sweet growth of grass in the spring, but it is
scanty and short, and parches up in the course of the summer, so that
there is none for the hunters to set fire to in the autumn. It is a
common observation that “above the forks of the Platte the grass does
not burn.” All attempts at agriculture and gardening in the neighborhood
of Fort William have been attended with very little success. The grain
and vegetables raised there have been scanty in quantity and poor in
quality. The great elevation of these plains, and the dryness of the
atmosphere, will tend to retain these immense regions in a state of
pristine wildness.
In the course of a day or two more, the travellers entered that wild and
broken tract of the Crow country called the Black Hills, and here their
journey became toilsome in the extreme. Rugged steeps and deep ravines
incessantly obstructed their progress, so that a great part of the
day was spent in the painful toil of digging through banks, filling up
ravines, forcing the wagons up the most forbidding ascents, or swinging
them with ropes down the face of dangerous precipices. The shoes of
their horses were worn out, and their feet injured by the rugged and
stony roads. The travellers were annoyed also by frequent but brief
storms, which would come hurrying over the hills, or through the
mountain defiles, rage with great fury for a short time, and then pass
off, leaving everything calm and serene again.
For several nights the camp had been infested by vagabond Indian dogs,
prowling about in quest of food. They were about the size of a large
pointer; with ears short and erect, and a long bushy tail--altogether,
they bore a striking resemblance to a wolf. These skulking visitors
would keep about the purlieus of the camp until daylight; when, on the
first stir of life among the sleepers, they would scamper off until they
reached some rising ground, where they would take their seats, and keep
a sharp and hungry watch upon every movement. The moment the travellers
were fairly on the march, and the camp was abandoned, these starving
hangers-on would hasten to the deserted fires, to seize upon the
half-picked bones, the offal and garbage that lay about; and, having
made a hasty meal, with many a snap and snarl and growl, would follow
leisurely on the trail of the caravan. Many attempts were made to coax
or catch them, but in vain. Their quick and suspicious eyes caught
the slightest sinister movement, and they turned and scampered off. At
length one was taken. He was terribly alarmed, and crouched and trembled
as if expecting instant death. Soothed, however, by caresses, he began
after a time to gather confidence and wag his tail, and at length was
brought to follow close at the heels of his captors, still, however,
darting around furtive and suspicious glances, and evincing a
disposition to scamper off upon the least alarm.
On the first of July the band of Crow warriors again crossed their path.
They came in vaunting and vainglorious style; displaying five Cheyenne
scalps, the trophies of their vengeance. They were now bound homewards,
to appease the manes of their comrade by these proofs that his death had
been revenged, and intended to have scalp-dances and other triumphant
rejoicings. Captain Bonneville and his men, however, were by no means
disposed to renew their confiding intimacy with these crafty savages,
and above all, took care to avoid their pilfering caresses. They
remarked one precaution of the Crows with respect to their horses; to
protect their hoofs from the sharp and jagged rocks among which they had
to pass, they had covered them with shoes of buffalo hide.
The route of the travellers lay generally along the course of the
Nebraska or Platte, but occasionally, where steep promontories advanced
to the margin of the stream, they were obliged to make inland circuits.
One of these took them through a bold and stern country, bordered by a
range of low mountains, running east and west. Everything around bore
traces of some fearful convulsion of nature in times long past. Hitherto
the various strata of rock had exhibited a gentle elevation toward the
southwest, but here everything appeared to have been subverted, and
thrown out of place. In many places there were heavy beds of white
sandstone resting upon red. Immense strata of rocks jutted up into crags
and cliffs; and sometimes formed perpendicular walls and overhanging
precipices. An air of sterility prevailed over these savage wastes. The
valleys were destitute of herbage, and scantily clothed with a stunted
species of wormwood, generally known among traders and trappers by the
name of sage. From an elevated point of their march through this region,
the travellers caught a beautiful view of the Powder River Mountains
away to the north, stretching along the very verge of the horizon, and
seeming, from the snow with which they were mantled, to be a chain of
small white clouds, connecting sky and earth.
Though the thermometer at mid-day ranged from eighty to ninety, and even
sometimes rose to ninety-three degrees, yet occasional spots of snow
were to be seen on the tops of the low mountains, among which the
travellers were journeying; proofs of the great elevation of the whole
region.
The Nebraska, in its passage through the Black Hills, is confined to
a much narrower channel than that through which it flows in the plains
below; but it is deeper and clearer, and rushes with a stronger current.
The scenery, also, is more varied and beautiful. Sometimes it glides
rapidly but smoothly through a picturesque valley, between wooded banks;
then, forcing its way into the bosom of rugged mountains, it rushes
impetuously through narrow defiles, roaring and foaming down rocks and
rapids, until it is again soothed to rest in some peaceful valley.
On the 12th of July, Captain Bonneville abandoned the main stream of the
Nebraska, which was continually shouldered by rugged promontories, and
making a bend to the southwest, for a couple of days, part of the time
over plains of loose sand, encamped on the 14th on the banks of the
Sweet Water, a stream about twenty yards in breadth, and four or five
feet deep, flowing between low banks over a sandy soil, and forming one
of the forks or upper branches of the Nebraska. Up this stream they now
shaped their course for several successive days, tending, generally, to
the west. The soil was light and sandy; the country much diversified.
Frequently the plains were studded with isolated blocks of rock,
sometimes in the shape of a half globe, and from three to four hundred
feet high. These singular masses had occasionally a very imposing, and
even sublime appearance, rising from the midst of a savage and lonely
landscape.
As the travellers continued to advance, they became more and more
sensible of the elevation of the country. The hills around were more
generally capped with snow. The men complained of cramps and colics,
sore lips and mouths, and violent headaches. The wood-work of the wagons
also shrank so much that it was with difficulty the wheels were kept
from falling to pieces. The country bordering upon the river was
frequently gashed with deep ravines, or traversed by high bluffs, to
avoid which, the travellers were obliged to make wide circuits through
the plains. In the course of these, they came upon immense herds of
buffalo, which kept scouring off in the van, like a retreating army.