Indian Trail.--Rough Mountain Travelling.--Sufferings From
Hunger and Thirst--Powder River.--Game in Abundance.-A
Hunter’s Paradise.--Mountain Peak Seen at a Great Distance.--
One of the Bighorn Chain.--Rocky Mountains.--Extent.--
Appearance.--Height.-The Great American Desert.--Various
Characteristics of the Mountains.--Indian Superstitions
Concerning Them.--Land of Souls.--Towns of the Free and
Generous Spirits--Happy Hunting Grounds.
FOR the two following days, the travellers pursued a westerly course for
thirty-four miles along a ridge of country dividing the tributary waters
of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. As landmarks they guided themselves
by the summits of the far distant mountains, which they supposed to
belong to the Bighorn chain. They were gradually rising into a higher
temperature, for the weather was cold for the season, with a sharp frost
in the night, and ice of an eighth of an inch in thickness.
On the twenty-second of August, early in the day, they came upon the
trail of a numerous band. Rose and the other hunters examined the
foot-prints with great attention, and determined it to be the trail of
a party of Crows, returning from an annual trading visit to the Mandans.
As this trail afforded more commodious travelling, they immediately
struck into it, and followed it for two days. It led them over rough
hills, and through broken gullies, during which time they suffered great
fatigue from the ruggedness of the country. The weather, too, which had
recently been frosty, was now oppressively warm, and there was a
great scarcity of water, insomuch that a valuable dog belonging to Mr.
M’Kenzie died of thirst.
At one time they had twenty-five miles of painful travel, without a
drop of water, until they arrived at a small running stream. Here they
eagerly slaked their thirst; but, this being allayed, the calls of
hunger became equally importunate. Ever since they had got among these
barren and arid hills where there was a deficiency of grass, they had
met with no buffaloes; those animals keeping in the grassy meadows near
the streams. They were obliged, therefore, to have recourse to their
corn meal, which they reserved for such emergencies. Some, however,
were lucky enough to kill a wolf, which they cooked for supper, and
pronounced excellent food.
The next morning they resumed their wayfaring, hungry and jaded, and had
a dogged march of eighteen miles among the same kind of hills. At length
they emerged upon a stream of clear water, one of the forks of Powder
River, and to their great joy beheld once more wide grassy meadows,
stocked with herds of buffalo. For several days they kept along the
banks of the river, ascending it about eighteen miles. It was a hunter’s
paradise; the buffaloes were in such abundance that they were enabled
to kill as many as they pleased, and to jerk a sufficient supply of meat
for several days’ journeying. Here, then, they reveled and reposed after
their hungry and weary travel, hunting and feasting, and reclining upon
the grass. Their quiet, however, was a little marred by coming upon
traces of Indians, who, they concluded, must be Crows: they were
therefore obliged to keep a more vigilant watch than ever upon their
horses. For several days they had been directing their march towards
the lofty mountain descried by Mr. Hunt and Mr. M’Kenzie on the 17th of
August, the height of which rendered it a landmark over a vast extent of
country. At first it had appeared to them solitary and detached; but
as they advanced towards it, it proved to be the principal summit of a
chain of mountains. Day by day it varied in form, or rather its lower
peaks, and the summits of others of the chain emerged above the clear
horizon, and finally the inferior line of hills which connected most of
them rose to view. So far, however, are objects discernible in the pure
atmosphere of these elevated plains, that, from the place where they
first descried the main mountain, they had to travel a hundred and fifty
miles before they reached its base. Here they encamped on the 30th of
August, having come nearly four hundred miles since leaving the Arickara
village.
The mountain which now towered above them was one of the Bighorn chain,
bordered by a river, of the same name, and extending for a long distance
rather east of north and west of south. It was a part of the great
system of granite mountains which forms one of the most important and
striking features of North America, stretching parallel to the coast of
the Pacific from the Isthmus of Panama almost to the Arctic Ocean; and
presenting a corresponding chain to that of the Andes in the southern
hemisphere. This vast range has acquired, from its rugged and broken
character and its summits of naked granite, the appellation of the Rocky
Mountains, a name by no means distinctive, as all elevated ranges are
rocky. Among the early explorers it was known as the range of Chippewyan
Mountains, and this Indian name is the one it is likely to retain
in poetic usage. Rising from the midst of vast plains and prairies,
traversing several degrees of latitude, dividing the waters of the
Atlantic and the Pacific, and seeming to bind with diverging ridges
the level regions on its flanks, it has been figuratively termed the
backbone of the northern continent.
The Rocky Mountains do not present a range of uniform elevation, but
rather groups and occasionally detached peaks. Though some of these rise
to the region of perpetual snows, and are upwards of eleven thousand
feet in real altitude, yet their height from their immediate basis
is not so great as might be imagined, as they swell up from elevated
plains, several thousand feet above the level of the ocean. These plains
are often of a desolate sterility; mere sandy wastes, formed of the
detritus of the granite heights, destitute of trees and herbage,
scorched by the ardent and reflected rays of the summer’s sun, and in
winter swept by chilling blasts from the snow-clad mountains. Such is
a great part of that vast region extending north and south along the
mountains, several hundred miles in width, which has not improperly been
termed the Great American Desert. It is a region that almost discourages
all hope of cultivation, and can only be traversed with safety by
keeping near the streams which intersect it. Extensive plains likewise
occur among the higher regions of the mountains, of considerable
fertility. Indeed, these lofty plats of table-land seem to form a
peculiar feature in the American continents. Some occur among the
Cordilleras of the Andes, where cities, and towns, and cultivated farms
are to be seen eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.
The Rocky Mountains, as we have already observed, occur sometimes singly
or in groups, and occasionally in collateral ridges. Between these are
deep valleys, with small streams winding through them, which find their
way into the lower plains, augmenting as they proceed, and ultimately
discharging themselves into those vast rivers, which traverse the
prairies like great arteries, and drain the continent.
While the granitic summits of the Rocky Mountains are bleak and bare,
many of the inferior ridges are scantily clothed with scrubbed pines,
oaks, cedar, and furze. Various parts of the mountains also bear traces
of volcanic action. Some of the interior valleys are strewed with scoria
and broken stones, evidently of volcanic origin; the surrounding rocks
bear the like character, and vestiges of extinguished craters are to be
seen on the elevated heights.
We have already noticed the superstitious feelings with which the
Indians regard the Black Hills; but this immense range of mountains,
which divides all that they know of the world, and gives birth to such
mighty rivers, is still more an object of awe and veneration. They call
it “the crest of the world,” and think that Wacondah, or the master of
life, as they designate the Supreme Being, has his residence among
these aerial heights. The tribes on the eastern prairies call them
the mountains of the setting sun. Some of them place the “happy
hunting-grounds,” their ideal paradise, among the recesses of these
mountains; but say that they are invisible to living men. Here also is
the “Land of Souls,” in which are the “towns of the free and generous
spirits,” where those who have pleased the master of life while living,
enjoy after death all manner of delights.
Wonders are told of these mountains by the distant tribes, whose
warriors or hunters have ever wandered in their neighborhood. It is
thought by some that, after death, they will have to travel to these
mountains and ascend one of their highest and most rugged peaks, among
rocks and snows and tumbling torrents. After many moons of painful toil
they will reach the summit, from whence they will have a view over the
land of souls. There they will see the happy hunting-grounds, with the
souls of the brave and good living in tents in green meadows, by bright
running streams, or hunting the herds of buffalo, and elk, and deer,
which have been slain on earth. There, too, they will see the villages
or towns of the free and generous spirits brightening in the midst of
delicious prairies. If they have acquitted themselves well while living,
they will be permitted to descend and enjoy this happy country; if
otherwise they will but be tantalized with this prospect of it, and
then hurled back from the mountain to wander about the sandy plains, and
endure the eternal pangs of unsatisfied thirst and hunger.