CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
We left the Flathead Valley and came to the South Fork of Flathead
River, entering a gorge, narrow and precipitous, where the river roared
and thundered against huge rocks. The current was swift, swollen by the
melting of mountain snows under a hot sun. On both sides of the gorge
were sheer cliffs, and, because of the rocks, it was hard and dangerous
going. We followed the river, seeking a place to ford, until we came
upon open flats, where the channel was wider; then with shouting and
shooting of guns, we drove the frightened horses across.
We camped near a band of Kutenai Indians. Their smoke-colored tepees
stood on rising ground. Near by was a grove of trees where a woman was
chopping, and a stream with groups of children swimming and playing in
the water. In a broad meadow many horses were grazing, men driving
picket pins and looking after their horses for the night.
The Kutenai were famed for their good horses. In former days they
brought them across the mountains to run buffalo on the plains and to
race with the Blackfoot. Whenever the scout visited their country, he
traded for horses and took them back across the Rockies to his ranch on
the prairies.
That evening I went with the scout to the Kutenai camp and saw the men
gathered in a gambling game. They sat in a circle, the players in the
center, surrounded by a throng of women spectators. It was a guessing
game, played with marked sticks of bone, with horses and blankets for
stakes. The players sang gambling songs; they joked and taunted each
other; they beat with sticks and drummed. The game came to an end, when
one of the sides which was led by the chief of the Kutenai lost all
their counting-sticks; and then the scout began to trade.
In the meantime, I was on the lookout for a good saddle horse. Near the
circle of gamblers I saw a fine bay tethered. He was a stocky horse,
built from the ground up, a four-year-old with a white star on his
forehead. He had a sleek and glossy coat, slender legs, and a beautiful
pair of brown eyes. He belonged to the chief of the Kutenai, the Indian
who lost the gambling game. He saw me looking at his horse and came
near. He wore a suit of deerskin decorated with colored beads, a beaded
necklace of many strands, white shell earrings, and his hair in long
braids over his shoulders.
We bargained in the sign language, and our trading was short. I asked
him “how much,” by holding out my closed right hand and opening the
fingers, one after the other. He sold me his horse for nine dollars.
And with the money he opened again the gambling game. This time he won
all the counting-sticks and the game was his, while I was the owner of
a fine saddle horse. I named him “Kutenai,” after his Indian tribe.
Then we entered a broad timber belt, where the forest was dense and the
trees large, for the most part giant cedar, hemlock, larch, white pine,
great silver fir and canoe birch. The forest floor was covered with a
thick carpet of moss and ground pine. Sun and wind did not penetrate.
Along the trail the light was dim and the air still. But overhead,
through the tops of the big trees, I heard the rushing of the wind.
We rode through glades rank with dense clumps of fragrant ferns and
grasses growing shoulder high, forded streams and passed foaming
cascades and chains of lovely lakes hidden in deep recesses of the
forest. On the western slope of the Rockies the vegetation is luxuriant
and the forests dense, because of the mild climate and abundant
rainfall. Just across the Continental Divide, on the eastern slope, the
climate is cold and dry, with extreme changes of temperature.
When the trail was blocked with fallen trees, the scout went ahead and
chopped our way through, while I followed driving the pack horses. He
had the marvelous instinct of an Indian for direction and keeping his
course. On the trail he was cheerful; he never disputed, found fault,
or cursed. He rarely said whether he liked or enjoyed anything. He was
courteous and had the quiet manners of a gentleman. If I made mistakes,
I found it was better to remain silent than to apologize, or try to
make excuses.
We camped near the forks of two streams, where a huge white pine
towered above the rest of the forest. I heard the ringing, rippling
song of a water ouzel, almost fierce in its wildness, as if sung by a
free and untamable spirit. So wild was he, and continually on the
alert, he reminded me of a watchful Indian. Springing from rock to
rock, he ran along the shore, filled with nervous energy, ever shaking
himself and bobbing up and down.
That night by our camp-fire Siksikaí-koan told about his life. Most of
his youth was spent north of the Line among the Cree Indians in Canada.
In those early days on the plains, he was daring and reckless, and
suffered permanent injuries. In 1874, he was scout for General Custer
on his expedition to the Black Hills of Dakota, and went with him
against the Sioux. He served under General Miles and General Terry, and
the Government of the Northwest Territories in the Riel Rebellion. Some
of his scouting companions in the Cheyenne Service were the warriors,
White Bull, Beaver Claws, Shell, Two Moons, and Brave Wolf.
On the day when General Custer and his battalion of the Seventh Cavalry
were cut to pieces by the Sioux, Siksikaí-koan was with Reno’s command.
With fifteen scouts he made a stand and tried to stop the Indians. In
that charge, all but two of those brave scouts were killed. Bloody
Knife and Siksikaí-koan alone were left. Then Bloody Knife shook hands
and said: “This is the last day I shall ever fight.” He rushed among
the enemy, killed two and was slain himself. But Siksikaí-koan escaped;
he hid in the underbrush, and lay in the river close to the bank. After
two days and nights of terrible exposure and without food, he made his
way with two white soldiers to Reno’s command on the bluffs above the
river. In the night, Siksikaí-koan led them past the Sioux sentinels,
through his knowledge of the Sioux language. [1]
We left our camp at the big pine in the early morning, when the mists
were lifting from the valley, and came that afternoon to a fine meadow
surrounded by the forest, where we camped because of good pasture,
grass in full seed and thistles, of which the horses were very fond. We
hobbled and tethered them, caught a mess of trout, and a grouse which
the scout killed by a skillful throw of a stone. The day was warm and
bright, and the trout were rising in the river. The scout used bait in
deep water and caught many fish. I stood on a high bank where the
facilities for fly-fishing were of the best. In the clear swift water I
saw many fish swimming over the gravelly bottom, but they scorned a
fly. Finally the scout called: “Try the white entrail of another fish.”
So I baited my hook and cast toward a place where the current eddied in
a deep pool. For a moment I let it lie. Suddenly there was a swirl and
a big form broke the water. I struck and saw a golden flash as he
sprang from the river. “Hold him fast!” shouted the scout. “Don’t
slacken your line.” The fish rushed upstream and across; he struggled
in vain. I reeled him in and pulled him to the shore, and the scout
landed him on the clean stones. He was a five-pound fish, the biggest I
had caught. The scout called him a bull-trout, but he is also known by
the name of “Dolly Varden” (Salmo clarkii). He had a large mouth filled
with sharp teeth, and was dotted all over with small black spots. The
upper half of his body was yellow, the lower half pink, and silvery
white underneath. He was good eating; we had him with the grouse for
our evening meal.
In the night I wakened to the sound of the ever-rushing river, and saw
the forest lighted by moonlight; it made shadows on the trunks of the
big trees and lay in patches on the ground. The air was fragrant with
the smell of leaves, the freshness of the woods and the subtle perfume
of the earth. At daybreak I heard the early chorus of the birds, and
went after our horses in the meadow, wading through masses of wild
flowers and tall grass growing in bunches. I felt in accord with the
world, as though I belonged to the forest. My heart was light; I was as
free as the air.
When I found Kutenai, my saddle horse, he gave a gentle whinny of
recognition and rubbed his soft nose against my hand. He was a good and
faithful companion, just the horse for the Indian country. He was young
and spirited, yet gentle and friendly; I could trust him, and rode him
without saddle or bridle.
Before the sun was high, we had our horses packed and were on our way
toward the Blackfoot country. Our trail led through a broad valley and
along the banks of a swift stream, where the current dashed against
moss-covered boulders. The peaks of the Continental Divide sparkled in
the sunlight, revealing snowfields and glaciers, which over-hung the
mountain sides like ice cataracts. Early in the day the water of the
stream was clear, but in the afternoon changed to a milky white, from
glaciers melting under a hot sun.
I saw a water ouzel dive fearlessly into the foaming rapids and flit
about in the spray. The more boisterous the water, the better he seemed
to enjoy himself. He sat on a rock in midstream and burst into a
cheerful song with delicate trills. Then flew like a flash to his
moss-covered nest on a ledge, so close to the rushing water it was
continually bathed in spray.
We passed through a forest of fir and spruce, the trees tall and
straight, and soon had high peaks and massive mountain ranges towering
over us. We rode along the base of a great mountain, which rose
precipitously several thousand feet. There were lateral valleys with
cirques, formed by the erosion of glaciers. Through each of these
valleys flowed a stream, which had its source in an overhanging glacier
at the head, pine forests sweeping upwards in long and gentle curves.
Finally we entered a great basin, a vast amphitheater. In the center
was a sparkling blue lake with wooded shores, surmounted by walls of
rock several thousand feet in height. The lake was fed by many streams
springing from glaciers and snowdrifts; they fell over high cliffs with
an incessant roar, which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding
walls of rock. We crossed high rock ledges, ravines and gullies, jumped
fallen trees, and forced our way through windfalls and thickets of
balsam and fir.
I marveled at the endurance and sure-footedness of our Indian horses.
In the worst places they rarely stumbled; I did not see one of them
fall. In emergencies they never lost their heads. They walked serenely
along the edges of precipices where I shuddered to look down. Steep
places did not bother them; they sat back on their haunches, bunched
their feet together and slid.
But we had one rattle-brained pack horse. If he happened to get in the
lead, he wavered and hesitated and held back the outfit; he wandered
from the trail to try fool routes of his own, and tore his pack against
rocks and trees.
Our last camp on the western slope of the Rockies was in a grassy park
surrounded by groups of tall firs, spruces and thickets of balsam,
close to huge banks of snow and the precipitous cliffs of the
Continental Divide. A stream of water, cold as ice, flowed through a
meadow of rich grass, fine food for our horses, tired and hungry after
their hard climb.
Hoary marmots greeted us with shrill whistles from the cliffs, and a
red fox barked sharply and ran into his den. We saw a herd of Rocky
Mountain goats feeding on a high shelf in an inaccessible part of the
mountain. They lay in the sunlight near a cavern in the wall-rock,
while their sentinel, an enormous billy with long white beard, stood
like a statue close to the edge of a precipice.
Then from a high elevation above our camp, where everlasting snowdrifts
lay under the shadow of huge rocks, we had a view of massive mountain
ranges, with fields of snow and ice glistening in the sunlight; great
valleys with sky-blue lakes and vast forests stretching toward the west
to meet blue and distant plains. Through a massive rent in the rocky
wall of the Divide, we looked eastward, toward the Blackfoot country
and the end of our journey—a view of plains so vast and distant they
looked like an ocean meeting the horizon.
North, lay Triple Divide Mountain, the Crown of the Continent, where
the watershed divides between the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, and the
Gulf of Mexico. To the northwest was Mount Blackfoot and the Blackfoot
Glacier, a vast expanse of snow and ice; Mount Cleveland (10,438 ft.),
a lofty and massive dome; Mount Siyeh (10,004 ft.), named after the
Blackfoot chief who was to be my Indian father; and Mount Jackson
(10,023 ft.), named after my Indian guide Siksikaí-koan (William
Jackson), because he was the first to climb its steep and rocky slopes.