Bear Hunt--Sulphur Puddle--The River--Wolves
and their Fare--Dog Eating--Little Snake
River--Thirst--Deserts--Mountains--Mountain Hottentots--Brown's
Hole--Fort David Crockett--Traders--Winter and its
Hilarities--Love--The Way to get a Wife--A Recommendation to
Civilized People--The Colorado of the West--Club Indians--The
Shoshonies--An Indian Temperance Society--The Crows--The
Blackfeet--Unburied Skeletons--The Arrapahoes, and Citizenship
among them--War Parties--Lodge of the Great Spirit--Religious
Ceremonies--The Vow and an Incident--The First Shoshonie who
saw a White Man.
6th August. Eighteen miles to-day over the barren intervales of
the river. The wild wormwood and prickly pear were almost the only
evidences of vegetative powers which the soil presented. A rugged
desolation {2} of loam and sand bluffs, barren vales of red earth,
and an occasional solitary boulder of granite; no mountains even,
to relieve the dreary monotony of the sickening sight. About twelve
o'clock it was pleasant to see a small band of antelopes show
themselves on the brink of a bluff.
We halted, and attempted to approach them; but they had been hunted
a few days before by the French trappers, whom we had met, and by no
means relished our companionship. Away they ran like the wind. Our
hopes of finding game were at an end; the French trappers had seen,
on all their way out, no other game than this band of antelopes. Our
faithful greyhound could be eaten as a last resource, and we travelled
on. Our excellent guide insisted upon walking nearly all the way that
I might ride. This was inestimably kind in him. The act flowed from
his own goodness; for, during our long journey together, he had never
failed to take every opportunity to make me comfortable. We arranged
our camp to-night with unusual care. The Sioux were among the hills
on the right, and every preparation was therefore made to receive an
attack from them. But like many other expectations of the {3} kind,
this vanished as the beautiful mountain morn dawned upon the silent
desert.
7th. To-day we travelled across a great southward bend in the
river.[152] The face of the country a desert--neither tree nor shrub,
nor grass, nor water in sight. During the afternoon we fell in with
an old grisly bear and two cubs. It was a dangerous business, but
starvation knows no fear.
Kelly and Smith, having horses that could run, determined to give chase
and shoot one cub, while the greyhound should have the honour of a
battle with the other. Under this arrangement the chase commenced. The
old bear, unfaithful to her young, ran ahead of them in her fright, and
showed no other affection for them than to stop occasionally, raise
herself on her hind feet, and utter a most piteous scream. The horses
soon ran down one cub, and the greyhound the other, so that in half an
hour we were on the route again with the certain prospect of a supper
when we should encamp. Had we found water and wood where we killed our
meat, we should have believed it impossible to have proceeded further
without food; but as necessity seldom deals in mercy, she {4} compelled
us in this case, to travel till dark, before we found wood enough to
cook our food, and water enough to quench our parching thirst. At
last, turning from our track and following down a deep ravine that
ran toward the river, we came upon a filthy, oozing sulphurous puddle
which our horses, though they had had no water the entire day, refused
to drink. There was no alternative, however, between drinking this
and thirsting still, and we submitted to the lesser of two evils. We
drank it; and with the aid of dry wormwood for fuel, boiled our meat
in it. These cubs were each of about twelve pounds weight. The livers,
hearts, heads, and the fore quarters of one of them, made us a filthy
supper. It, however, served the purpose of better food as it prevented
starvation. We had travelled eighteen miles.
8th. The morning being clear and excessively warm, we thought it
prudent to seek the river again, that we might obtain water for
ourselves and animals. They had had no grass for the last twenty-four
hours; and the prospect of finding some for the poor animals upon
the intervales, was an additional inducement to adopt this course.
We accordingly wound down the ravine two {5} or three miles, struck
the river at a point where its banks were productive, and unpacked to
feed them, and treat ourselves to a breakfast of cub meat. Boiled or
roasted, it was miserable food. To eat it, however, or not to eat at
all, was the alternative. Furthermore, in a region where lizards grow
poor, and wolves lean against sand banks to howl, cub soup, without
salt, pepper, &c., must be acknowledged to be quite in style.
Having become somewhat comfortable by feasting thus, we travelled on
down this river of deserts twenty miles, and encamped again on its
banks. At this encampment we ate the last of our meat; and broke the
bones with our hatchet for the oily marrow in them. The prospect of
suffering from hunger before we could arrive at Brown's Hole, became
every hour more and more certain. The country between us and that point
was known to be so sterile, that not even a grisly bear was to be hoped
for in it. It was a desert of black flint, sand and marl, rendered
barren by perpetual drought.
9th. Travelled twenty-three miles along the river--nothing to eat,
not even a thistle stalk. At night we tried to take {6} some fish; the
stream proved as ungenerous as the soil on its banks.
10th. Made fifteen miles to-day; country covered with wild wormwood;
at intervals a little bunch grass--dry and dead; face of the country
formerly a plain, now washed into hills. Our dog was frantic with
hunger; and although he had treated us to a cub, and served us with
all the fidelity of his race, we determined in full council to-night,
if our hooks took no fish, to breakfast on his faithful heart in the
morning. A horrid night we passed: forty-eight hours without a morsel
of food! Our camp was eight miles above the junction of Little Bear and
Little Snake Rivers.
11th. This morning we tried our utmost skill at fishing. Patience
often cried 'hold' but the appearance of our poor dog would admonish
us to continue our efforts to obtain a breakfast from the stream. Thus
we fished and fasted till eight o'clock. A small fish or two were
caught--three or four ounces of food for seven starving men! Our guide
declared the noble dog must die! He was accordingly shot, his hair
burnt off, and his fore quarters boiled and eaten! Some of the men
declared that dogs made excellent mutton; but on this point, there {7}
existed among us what politicians term an honest difference of opinion.
To me, it tasted like the _flesh of a dog_, _a singed dog_; and
appetite keen though it was, and edged by a fast of fifty hours, could
not but be sensibly alive to the fact that, whether cooked or barking,
a dog is still a dog, every where. After our repast was finished, we
saddled and rode over the plains in a northerly direction for Brown's
Hole. We had been travelling the last five days, in a westerly course;
and as the river continued in that direction, we left it to see it no
more, I would humbly hope, till the dews of Heaven shall cause its
deserts to blossom and ripen into something more nutritive than wild
wormwood and gravel.
We crossed Little Snake River about ten o'clock. This stream is similar
in size to that we had just left.[153] The water was clear and warm;
the channel rocky and bordered by barren bluffs. No trees grew upon
its banks where we struck it; though I was informed that higher up, it
was skirted with pretty groves of cotton wood. But as the Sioux war
party which had attacked the French trappers in this neighbourhood,
was probably not far from our trail, perhaps on it, and near us, we
spent little time in examining either groves or deserts; for {8} we
were vain enough to suppose that the mere incident of being scalped
here would not be so interesting, to ourselves at least, as would be
our speedy arrival at Craig and Thomson's post--where we might eat
Christian food and rest from the fatigues of our journey. For these,
and several other palpable reasons, we drove on speedily and silently,
with every eye watchful, every gun well primed, every animal close to
his fellows, till ten o'clock at night. We then halted near a place
where we had been told by the French trappers, we could find a spring
of water. The day had been excessively warm, and our thirst was well
nigh insufferable. Hence the long search for the cooling spring to
slake its burnings. It was in vain. Near midnight therefore it was
abandoned by all, and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets, hungry,
thirsty, and weary, and sunk to rest upon the sand. Another dreadful
night! Thirst, burning thirst! The glands cease to moisten the mouth,
the throat becomes dry and feverish, the lungs cease to be satisfied
with the air they inhale, the heart is sick and faint; and the nerves
preternaturally active, do violence to every vital organ. It is an
incipient throe of death.
12th. We arose at break of day, and {9} pursued our journey over the
grey, barren wastes. This region is doomed to perpetual sterility.
In many portions of it there appears to be a fine soil. But the
trappers say that very little rain or snow falls upon it; hence its
unproductiveness. And thus it is said to be with the whole country
lying to the distance of hundreds of miles on each side of the whole
course of the Colorado of the West. Vast plateaux of desolation,
yielding only the wild wormwood and prickly pear! So barren, so hot,
so destitute is it of water that can be obtained and drunk, that the
mountain sheep, and hare even, animals which drink less than any
others that inhabit these regions, do not venture there. Travellers
along that stream are said to be compelled to carry it long distances
upon animals, and draw it where it is possible so to do, with a rope
and skin bucket from the chasm of the stream. And yet their animals
frequently die of thirst and hunger; and men often save their lives by
eating the carcasses of the dead, and by drinking the blood which they
from time to time draw from the veins of the living.
Between this river and the Great Salt Lake, there is a stream called
Severe River, which rises in the high plateaux to the S. E. {10} of
the lake, and running some considerable distance in a westerly course,
terminates in its own lakes. On the banks of this river there is said
to be some vegetation, as grasses, trees, and edible roots. Here
live the "Piutes" and "Land Pitches," the most degraded and least
intellectual Indians known to the trappers. They wear no clothing
of any description--build no shelters. They eat roots, lizards,
and snails. Their persons are more disgusting than those of the
Hottentots.[154]
They provide nothing for future wants. And when the lizard and snail
and wild roots are buried in the snows of winter, they are said to
retire to the vicinity of timber, dig holes in the form of ovens in the
steep sides of the sand hills, and, having heated them to a certain
degree, deposit themselves in them, and sleep and fast till the weather
permits them to go abroad again for food. Persons who have visited
their haunts after a severe winter, have found the ground around these
family ovens strewn with the unburied bodies of the dead, and others
crawling among them, who had various degrees of strength, from a bare
sufficiency to gasp in death, to those that crawled upon their hands
and feet, {11} eating grass like cattle. It is said that they have no
weapons of defence except the club, and that in the use of that they
are very unskilful. These poor creatures are hunted in the spring of
the year, when weak and helpless, by a certain class of men, and when
taken, are fattened, carried to Santa Fé and sold as slaves during
their minority. "A likely girl" in her teens brings oftentimes £60 or
£80. The males are valued less.
At about eleven o'clock we came to a stream of good water and halted
to slake our thirst and cook the remainder of our dog mutton. Our
animals' sufferings had nearly equalled our own. And while we ate and
rested under the shade of a tree, it added much to our enjoyment to see
the famished beasts regale themselves upon a plat of short wiry grass
beside the stream. Some marks of dragging lodge poles along the now
well defined trail, indicated to us that a portion of the Shoshonie or
Snake tribe had lately left Brown's Hole. From this circumstance we
began to fear what afterwards proved true, that our hopes of finding
the Snakes at that post and of getting meat from them would prove
fallacious. Our filthy meal being finished, we gathered {12} up our
little caravan and moved forward at a round pace for three hours, when
the bluffs opened before us the beautiful plain of Brown's Hole.[155]
As we entered it we crossed two cool streams that tumbled down from the
stratified cliffs near at hand on the right; and a few rods beyond, the
whole area became visible. The Fort, as it is called, peered up in the
centre, upon the winding bank of the Sheetskadee. The dark mountains
rose around it sublimely, and the green fields swept away into the deep
precipitous gorges more beautifully than I can describe.
How glad is man to see his home again after a weary absence! Every step
becomes quicker as he approaches its sacred portals; and kind smiles
greet him; and leaping hearts beat upon his; and warm lips press his
own. It is the holy sacrament of friendship. Yet there is another
class of these emotions that appears to be not less holy. They arise
when, after having been long cut off from every habit and sympathy of
civilized life, long wandering among the deep and silent temples of the
eternal mountains, long and hourly exposed to the scalping knife of
savages and the agonies of {13} starvation, one beholds the dwellings
of civilized men--kindred of the old Patriot blood, rearing their
hospitable roofs among those heights, inviting the houseless, wayworn
wanderer to rest; to relax the tension of his energies, close his long
watching eyes, and repose the heart awhile among generous spirits
of his own race. Is not the hand that grasps yours then, an honest
hand? Does it not distil, by its sacred warmth and hearty embrace,
some of the dearest emotions of which the soul is capable; friendship
unalloyed, warm, holy, and heavenly?
Thus it seemed to me, at all events, as we rode into the hollow square
and received from St. Clair, the person in charge, the hearty welcome
of an old hunter to "Fort David Crockett."[156] A room was appropriated
immediately for our reception, our horses were given to the care of
his horse guard, and every other arrangement within his means, was
made, to make us feel that within that little nest of fertility, amid
the barrenness of the great Stony Range--far from the institutions of
law and religion--far from the sweet ties of family relations, and all
those nameless endearing influences that shed their rich {14} fragrance
over human nature in its cultivated abiding places--that there even
could be given us the fruits of the sincerest friendship. Such kindness
can be appreciated fully by those only who have enjoyed it in such
places; who have seen it manifested in its own way; by those only,
who have starved and thirsted in these deserts and been welcomed, and
made thrice welcome, after months of weary wandering, to "Fort David
Crockett."
After partaking of the hospitality of Mr. St. Clair, I strolled out to
examine more minutely this wonderful little valley. It is situated
in or about latitude 42° north; one hundred miles south of Wind River
mountains, on the Sheetskadee (Prairie Cock) River. Its elevation is
something more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. It
appeared to be about six miles in diameter; shut in, in all directions,
by dark frowning mountains, rising one thousand five hundred feet above
the plain. The Sheetskadee, or Green River, runs through it, sweeping
in a beautiful curve from the north-west to the south-west part of
it, where it breaks its way through the encircling mountains, between
cliffs, one thousand feet in height, broken and hanging as {15} if
poised on the air. The area of the plain is thickly set with the rich
mountain grasses, and dotted with little copses of cotton wood and
willow trees. The soil is alluvial, and capable of producing abundantly
all kinds of small grains, vegetables, &c., that are raised in the
northern States. Its climate is very remarkable. Although in all the
country, within a hundred miles of it, the winter months bring snows,
and the severe cold that we should expect in such a latitude, and at
such an elevation above the level of the sea, yet in this little nook,
the grass grows all the winter; so that, while the storm rages on the
mountains in sight, and the drifting snows mingle in the blasts of
December, the old hunters here heed it not. Their horses are cropping
the green grass on the banks of the Sheetskadee, while they themselves
are roasting the fat loins of the mountain sheep, and laughing at the
merry tale and song.
The Fort is a hollow square of one story log cabins, with roofs and
floors of mud, constructed in the same manner as those of Fort William.
Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the
white trappers, who were away on their "fall hunt," and also the
lodges of a few {16} Snake Indians, who had preceded their tribe to
this, their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of Mr. Robinson, a
trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians
and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse; and buffalo
robes were spread upon the ground and counter, on which he displayed
his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and whisky. In
exchange for these articles he receives beaver skins from trappers,
money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would
believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business. And indeed,
when all the "independent trappers" are driven by approaching winter
into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake village, two or three
thousand strong, impelled by the same necessity, pitch their lodges
around the Fort, and the dances and merry makings of a long winter are
thoroughly commenced, there is no want of customers.
These winters in Brown's hole are somewhat like winters among the
mountains of New England, in the effects they produce on the rise and
progress of the art of all arts--the art of love. For, as among the
good old hills of my native clime, quiltings, {17} and singing-schools,
and evening dances, when the stars are shining brightly on the snow
crust, do soften the heart of the mountain lad and lassie, and cause
the sigh and blush to triumph over all the counsels of maiden aunts
and fortune-tellers; so here in this beautiful valley, and in the skin
lodge village of the Snakes, there are bright evenings, beaming stars,
and mellow moons, and social circles for singing the wild ditties
of their tribe, and for sewing with the sinews of the deer, their
leggings, moccasins and buffalo robes, and for being bewitched with the
tender passion.
The dance, too, enlivens the village. The musician chants the wild
song, and marks the time by regular beatings with a stick upon a
sounding board; and light heels, and sturdy frames, and buxom forms
respond to his call. To these, and other gatherings, the young go, to
see who are the fairest, and best, and most loved of the throng. Our
friend Cupid goes there too. Yes, Cupid at an Indian dance! And there
measuring bow and arrow with those who invented them, he often lays at
his feet, I am told, the proudest hawk's feather that adorns the brow
of Chief or Chiefess. For, on the {18} morning after the dance, it not
unfrequently happens that he of the beard is compelled, by force of
certain uneasy sensations about the heart, to apply to some beardless
one for the balm of sweet smiles for his relief.
He does not wait for the calm hour of a Sunday night. Nor does he
delay putting the question by poetical allusions to the violet and
firmament. No! Calm hours and the poetry of nature have no charms for
him. He wants none of these. Our friend Cupid has cast an arrow into
his heart, bearded with the stings of irresistible emotion; and he
seeks that mischievous fair one, her alone who selected the arrow and
the victim; her alone who was a "particeps criminis" in the loss of
that great central organ of his life, called in the annals of Christian
countries, "the heart." No! his course is vastly more philosophical and
single-minded, (I mean no offence to my countrymen--none to you, ye
Britons over the waters,) than the ginger-bread, sugar-candy courtships
of Christian people. He first pays his addresses to his band of horses;
selects the most beautiful and valuable of them all, and then goes
with his chosen horse to the lodge of his chosen {19} girl's father or
mother, or if both these be dead, to the lodge of her eldest sister,
ties the animal to the tent pole, and goes away. After his departure,
the inmates of the lodge issue from it, and in due form examine the
horse, and if it appears to be worth as much as the girl whom the owner
seeks, an interview is had, the horse taken by the parents, or sister,
as the case may be, and the lover takes the girl. A fair business
transaction, you perceive, my readers--"a quid pro quo"--a compensation
in kind.
The girl, received in exchange for the horse, becomes the absolute
personal property of the enamoured jockey, subject to be re-sold
whenever the state of the market and his own affection will allow. But
if those, whose right it is to judge in the matter, are of opinion that
the girl is worth more than the horse, another is brought; and if these
are not enough, he of the beard may bring another, or get Cupid to
shoot his heart in another direction.
There are many benefits in this mode of obtaining that description of
legal chattels called a wife, over the mode usually adopted among us.
As for example: by this mode there is a price given for a valuable
article. Now to my apprehension, this is an improvement upon our plan;
for it {20} removes entirely from certain old daddies, the necessity
of disposing of their daughters by gift, to certain worthless,
portionless young men, who are merely virtuous, talented, honest and
industrious; an evil of no small magnitude, as may be learned by
inquiry in the proper quarter. But the Indian system of matrimony
extirpates it. Wealth measures off affection and property by the peck,
yard or dollar's worth, as circumstances require; and no young lady
of real genuine property, respectability and standing, and family,
will think of placing her affections upon a talented, virtuous and
industrious, promising and prosperous coxcomb of poverty; nor, vice
versâ, will a young man of these vulgar qualities have unfathomable
barefacedness to propose himself to a young lady of real genuine
property respectability, property form, property face, property
virtue, property modesty, and property intelligence.
No, bless the day! such impudence will cease to interfere with the
legitimate pretensions of those who are able--while they declare their
passion mighty, unalterable and pure--to place in the hands from which
they receive the dear object of their property love, the last quoted
prices of the family stock.
{21} But I pass to the consideration of another view of this matter
which I deem, if possible, of still greater importance. As, if in
disposing of young ladies in marriage, a valuation in money should be
made of their property beauty, property modesty, property intelligence,
&c., and required to be paid before marriage, the false opinion that
honesty, probity, intelligence, integrity, virtue and respectability
can exist without a property basis, would gradually fade away before
the influence of our rich daddies' daughters. Oh the age that would
then bless our earth! The piety of the church would fan itself in the
property pew. The forum of jurisprudence would then echo to the lofty
strains of property eloquence. The groves of Academus would breathe
the wisdom of property philosophy. The easel of the artist would cast
upon the canvas the inspirations of property genius. And music, and
sculpture, and poetry, born in garrets, would give place to another
race of these arts--a property race, that could be kept in one's
apartments without compelling one to blush for their origin. We should
then have a property fitness of things, that would place our property
selves in a state of exalted property beatitude. {22} It is hoped that
the Legislators of the world will bestow upon this matter their most
serious attention, and from time to time pass such laws as will aid
mankind in attaining this splendid and brilliant exaltation of our
nature, when the precious metals shall be a universal measure of value.
This is diverging. But after my reader is informed that the only
distinct aim I proposed to myself in writing my journal, was to keep
the day of the month correctly, and in other respects "keep a blotter,"
the transition from this strain of true philosophy, to a notice of the
white men and their squaws, will be thought easy and natural.
If, then, a white man is disposed to take unto himself a squaw among
the Snakes, he must conform to the laws and customs of the tribe, which
have been ordained and established for the regulation of all such
matters. And, whether the colour in any individual case be of black or
white, does not seem to be a question ever raised to take it out of the
rules. The only difference is, that the property, beauty, &c. of the
whites frequently give them the preference on 'change, and enable them
to {23} obtain the best squaws of the nation. These connexions between
the white trappers and squaws I am told, are the cause of so many of
the former remaining during life in these valleys of blood.--They seem
to love them as ardently as they would females of their own colour.
A trader is living there with a young Eutaw squaw, through whose charms
he has forsaken friends, wealth and ease, and civilization, for an
Indian lodge among all the dangers and wants of a wilderness. This
gentleman is said to have a standing offer of £140 for his dear one,
whenever, in the course of a limited time, he will sell her graces. But
it is believed that his heart has so much to do with his estimation
of her value, that no consideration could induce him voluntarily to
deprive himself of her society.
The above anecdotes were related to me during the first evening I spent
at Fort David Crockett. It was a bright ethereal night. The Fort
stood in the shade of the wild and dark cliffs, while the light of
the moon shone on the western peaks, and cast a deeper darkness into
the inaccessible gorges on the face of the mountains. The Sheetskadee
flowed silently among the alders {24}--the fires in the Indian lodges
were smouldering; sleep had gathered every animate thing in its
embrace. It was a night of deep solitude. I enjoyed the lovely scene
till near midnight in company with Mr. St. Clair; and when at last
its excitements and the thrilling pleasure of being relieved from the
prospect of death by hunger allowed me to slumber, that gentleman
conducted me to his own room and bed, and bade me occupy both while
I should remain with him. He expressed regret that he had so little
provisions in the Fort;--a small quantity of old jerked meat; a little
tea and sugar.
"But," said he, "share it with me as long as it lasts. I have hunters
out; they will be here in ten or twelve days; you have been starving;
eat while there is any thing left, and when all is gone we'll have a
mountain sheep, or a dog to keep off starvation till the hunters come
in."
My companions and guide were less fortunate. We purchased all the
meat which either money or goods could induce the Indians to sell. It
amounted to one day's supply for the company. And as there was supposed
to be no game within a circuit of one hundred miles, it became {25}
matter of serious inquiry whether we should seek it in the direction
of Fort Hall, or on the head waters of Little Snake River, one hundred
miles off our proper route to Oregon.
In the latter place there were plenty of fine, fat buffalo; but on
the way to the other point there was nothing but antelope, difficult
to kill, and poor. A collateral circumstance turned the scale of our
deliberations. That circumstance was dog meat. We could get a supply
of these delectable animals from the Indians; they would keep life
in us till we could reach Fort Hall; and by aid thereof we could
immediately proceed on our journey, cross the Blue Mountains before the
snow should render them impassable, and reach Vancouver, on the lower
Columbia, during the autumn. On the contrary, if we sought meat on the
waters of Little Snake River, it would be so late before we should be
prepared to resume our journey, that we could not pass those mountains
until May or June of the following spring.
The dogs, therefore, were purchased; and preparations were made for
our departure to Fort Hall, as soon as ourselves and our animals
were sufficiently {26} recruited for the undertaking. Meanwhile my
companions ate upon our stock of barking mutton. And thus we spent
seven days--delightful days; for although our fare was humble and
scanty, yet the flesh began to creep upon our skeletons, our minds to
resume their usual vivacity, and our hearts to warm again with the
ordinary emotions of human existence.
The trials of a journey in the western wilderness can never be detailed
in words. To be understood, they must be endured. Their effects upon
the physical and mental system are equally prostrating. The desolation
of one kind and another which meets the eye every where; the sense
of vastness associated with dearth and barrenness, and of sublimity
connected with eternal, killing frost;--of loneliness coupled with a
thousand natural causes of one's destruction; perpetual journeyings
over endless declivities, among tempests, through freezing torrents;
one half the time on foot, with nothing but moccasins to protect the
feet from the flinty gravel and the thorns of the prickly pear along
the unbeaten way; and the starvings and thirstings wilt the muscles,
send preternatural activity into the nervous system, and through the
whole {27} animal and mental economy a feebleness, an irritability
altogether indescribable.
At Fort David Crockett there were rest, and food, and safety; and
old Father Time, as he mowed away the passing moments and gathered
them into the great garner of the Past, cast upon the Future a few
blossoms of hope, and sweetened the hours, now and then, with a bit
of information about this portion of his ancient dominion. I heard
from various persons, more or less acquainted with the Colorado of
the West, a confirmation of the account of that river given in the
journals of previous days; and also that there resides at the lower end
of its great kenyon, a band of the Club Indians--very many of whom are
seven feet high, and well proportioned; that these Indians raise large
quantities of black beans upon the sandy intervales on the stream;
that the oval-leaf prickly-pear grows there from fifteen to twenty
feet in height; that these Indians make molasses from its fruit; that
their principal weapon of warfare is the club, which they wield with
amazing dexterity and force; that they inhabit a wide extent of country
north-west, and south-east of this lower part of the river; that they
have never been subdued by the {28} Spaniards, and are inimical to all
white people.[157] Subsequent inquiry in California satisfied me that
this river is navigable only thirty or forty miles from its mouth, and
that the Indians who live upon its barren banks near the Gulf, are such
as I have described.
The Snakes, or Shoshonies, are a wandering tribe of Indians who
inhabit that part of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and
Green River branches of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great
Bear River, the habitable shores of the Great Salt Lake, a considerable
portion of country on Snake River above and below Fort Hall, and
a tract extending two or three hundred miles to the west of that
post. Those who reside in the place last named, are said to subsist
principally on roots; they, however, kill a few deer, and clothe
themselves with their skins. The band living on Snake River subsist on
the fish of the stream, buffalo, deer, and other game. Those residing
on the branches of the Colorado, live on roots, buffalo, elk, deer,
the mountain-sheep, and antelope. The Snakes own many horses. These,
with their thousands of dogs, constitute all the domestic animals
among them. They have {29} conical skin-lodges, a few camp-kettles,
butcher-knives and guns. Many of them, however, still use the bow and
arrow. In dress, they follow the universal Indian costume--moccasins,
leggings, and the hunting-shirt. Nothing but the hair covers the head;
and this, indeed, would seem sufficient, if certain statements made
in relation to it be true; as that it frequently grows four and five
feet in length, and in one case eleven feet. In these instances, it is
braided and wound round the head in the form of a Turkish turban. If
only two or three feet in length, it is braided on the female head in
two queues, which hang down the back: on the male, it is only combed
behind the ears, and lies dishevelled around the shoulders. The female
dress differs from that of the male in no other respect than this:
the shirt or chemise of the former extends down to the feet. Beaver,
otter, bear and buffalo skins, and horses are exchanged by them with
the Arrapahoes, and the Americans, and British traders, for some few
articles of wearing apparel; such as woollen blankets and hats. But as
their stock of skins is always very limited, they find it necessary to
husband it with much care, to obtain therewith a supply of tobacco,
arms and ammunition.
{30} From the first acquaintance of the whites with them, these people
have been remarkable for their aversion to war, and those cruelties
generally practised by their race. If permitted to live in peace among
their mountains, and allowed to hunt the buffalo--that wandering
patrimony of all the tribes--when necessity requires, they make war
upon none, and turn none hungry away from their humble abodes. But
these peaceable dispositions in the wilderness, where men are left to
the protection of their impulses and physical energies, have yielded
them little protection. The Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux and Eutaws have
alternately fought them for the better right to the Old Park, and
portions of their Territory, with varied success; and, at the present
time, do those tribes yearly send predatory parties into their borders
to rob them of their horses. But as the passes through which they
enter the Snake country are becoming more and more destitute of game
on which to subsist, their visits are less frequent, and their number
less formidable. For several years, they have been in a great measure
relieved from these annoyances.
From the time they met Lewis and Clark on the head-waters of the
Missouri[158] to the {31} present day, the Snakes have opened their
lodges to whites, with the most friendly feelings. And many are the
citizens of the States, and the subjects of Britain, who have sought
their villages, and by their hospitality have been saved from death
among those awful solitudes. A guest among them is a sacred deposit of
the Great Spirit. His property, when once arrived within their camp,
is under the protection of their honour and religious principle; and
should want, cupidity, or any other motive, tempt any individual to
disregard these laws of hospitality, the property which may have been
stolen, or its equivalent, is returned, and the offender punished. The
Snakes are a very intelligent race. This appears in the comforts of
their homes, their well-constructed lodges, the elegance and useful
form of their wardrobes, their horse-gear, &c.
But more especially does it exhibit itself in their views of sensual
excesses and other immoralities. These are inhibited by immemorial
usages of the tribe. Nor does their code of customs operate upon those
wrong doings only which originate among a savage people. Whatever
indecency is offered them by their intercourse with the {32} whites,
they avoid. Civilized vice is quite as offensive as that which grows
up in their own untrained natures. The non-use of intoxicating liquor
is an example of this kind. They abjured it from the commencement
of its introduction among them. And they give the best of reasons for
this custom:--"It unmans us for the hunt, and for defending ourselves
against our enemies; it causes unnatural dissensions among ourselves;
it makes the Chief less than his Indian; and by its use, imbecility and
ruin would come upon the Shoshonie tribe."
Whatever difference of opinion may exist among civilized men on this
matter, these Indians certainly reason well for themselves, and, I
am inclined to think, for all others. A voice from the depth of the
mountains--from the lips of a savage--sends to our ears the startling
rebuke--"Make not, vend not, give not to us the _strong water_. It
prostrates your superior knowledge, your enlarged capacities for
happiness, your cultivated understandings. It breaks your strong laws;
it rots down your strong houses; it buries you in the filthiest ditch
of sin. Send it not to us; we would rather die by the arrows of the
Blackfeet."
The Crows[159] are a wandering tribe, and {33} usually found in the
upper plains around the head-waters of the north fork of Great Platte,
Snake, and Yellowstone rivers. Their number is estimated to be about
five thousand. They are represented as the most arrant rascals among
the mountains. The traders say of them that "they have never been known
to keep a promise or do an honourable act." No white man or Indian
trusts them. Murder and robbery are their principal employments. Much
of their country is well watered, timbered, and capable of yielding an
abundant reward to the husbandman.
The Blackfeet Indians reside on the Marias and other branches of
the Missouri above the Great Falls. In 1828 they numbered about two
thousand five hundred lodges or families. During that year they
stole a blanket from the American Fur Company's steamboat on the
Yellowstone, which had belonged to a man who had died of the small-pox
on the passage up the Missouri. The infected article being carried to
their encampment upon the "left hand fork of the Missouri," spread
the dreadful infection among the whole tribe. They were amazed at the
appearance of the disease. The red blotch, the bile, congestion of the
lungs, {34} liver, and brain, were all new to their medicine-men; and
the rotten corpse falling in pieces while they buried it, struck horror
into every heart. In their frenzy and ignorance they increased the
number of their sweat ovens upon the banks of the stream, and whether
the burning fever or the want of nervous action prevailed; whether
frantic with pain, or tottering in death, they were placed in them,
sweated profusely and plunged into the snowy waters of the river. The
mortality which followed this treatment was a parallel of the Plague in
London. They endeavoured for a time to bury the dead, but these were
soon more numerous than the living. The evil-minded medicine-men of all
ages had come in a body from the world of spirits, had entered into
them, and were working the annihilation of the Blackfeet race.
The Great Spirit had also placed the floods of his displeasure between
himself and them. He had cast a mist over the eyes of their conjurors,
that they might not know the remedial incantation. Their hunts
were ended; their bows were broken; the fire in the Great Pipe was
extinguished for ever; their graves called for them; and the call was
now answered by a thousand dying {35} groans. Mad with superstition and
fear, brother forsook sister; father his son; and mother her sucking
child; and fled to the elevated vales among the western heights, where
the influences of the climate, operating upon the already well-spent
energies of the disease, restored the remainder of the tribe again
to health. Of the two thousand five hundred families existing at the
time the pestilence commenced, one or more members of eight hundred
only survived its ravages; and even to this hour do the bones of seven
or eight thousand Blackfeet lie unburied among the decaying lodges
of their deserted village, on the banks of the Yellowstone. But this
infliction has in no wise humanized their blood-thirsty nature. As ever
before, they wage exterminating war upon the traders and trappers, and
the Oregon Indians.[160]
The Arrapahoes reside south of the Snakes.[161] They wander in the
winter season over the country about the head of the Great Kenyon of
the Colorado of the West, and to a considerable distance down that
river; and in summer hunt the buffalo in the New Park, or "Bull Pen,"
in the "Old Park" on Grand River, and in "Boyou Salade," on the south
fork of the Platte. Their {36} number is not well ascertained. Some
estimate it at three thousand, others more, and others still less. They
are said to be a brave, fearless, thrifty, ingenious, and hospitable
people. They own large numbers of horses, mules, dogs, and sheep. The
dogs they fatten and eat. Hence the name Arrapahoes--dog eaters. They
manufacture the wool of their sheep into blankets of a very superior
quality. I saw many of them; possessed one; and believe them to be
made with something in the form of a darning-needle. They appeared to
be wrought, in the first time, like a fishing-net; and on this, as a
foundation, darned so densely that the rain will not penetrate them.
They are usually striped or checked with yellow and red.
There is in this tribe a very curious law of naturalization; it is
based upon property. Any one, whether red or white, may avail himself
of it. One horse, which can run with sufficient speed to overtake a
buffalo cow, and another horse or mule, capable of bearing a pack of
two hundred pounds, must be possessed by the applicant.
These being delivered to the principal chief of the tribe, and his
intentions being made known, he is declared a citizen of the {37}
Arrapahoe tribe, and entitled to a wife and other high privileges
thereunto appertaining. Thus recognized, he enters upon a life of
savage independence. His wife takes care of his horses, manufactures
his saddles and bridles, and leash ropes and whips, his moccasins,
leggings, and hunting-shirts, from leather and other materials prepared
by her own hands; beats with a wooden adze his buffalo robes, till they
are soft and pleasant for his couch; tans hides for his tent covering,
and drags from the distant hills the clean white-pine poles to support
it; cooks his daily food and places it before him. And should sickness
overtake him, and death rap at the door of his lodge, his squaw watches
kindly the last yearnings of the departing spirit. His sole duty, as
her lord in life, and as a citizen of the Arrapahoe tribe, is to ride
the horse which she saddles and brings to his tent, kill the game which
she dresses and cures; sit and slumber on the couch which she spreads;
and fight the enemies of the tribe. Their language is said to be
essentially the same as that spoken by the Snakes and Cumanches.[162]
This, and other tribes in the mountains, and in the upper plains, have
a custom, the {38} same in its objects as was the ceremony of the "toga
virilis" among the Romans.
When ripened into manhood, every young man of the tribe is expected
to do some act of bravery that will give promise of his disposition
and ability to defend the rights of his tribe and family. Nor can this
expectation be disregarded. So, in the spring of the year, those of
the age alluded to, associate themselves forty or fifty in a band,
and devote themselves to the duties of man's estate in the following
manner:--They take leave of their friends, and depart to some secret
place near the woodlands; collect poles twenty or thirty feet in
length, and raise them in the form of a cone; and cover the structure
so thickly with leaves and boughs as to secure the interior from the
gaze of persons outside. They then hang a fresh buffalo's head inside,
near the top of the lodge where the poles meet; and below this, around
the sides, suspend camp-kettles, scalps, and blankets, and the skin
of a white buffalo, as offerings to the Great Spirit. After the lodge
is thus arranged, they enter it with much solemnity, and commence
the ceremonies which are to consecrate themselves to war, and the
destruction of their own enemies, and those of the tribe. The {39}
first act, is to seat themselves in a circle round a fire built in the
centre of the lodge, and "make medicine;" that is,--invoke the presence
and aid of protecting spirits, by smoking the great mystic pipe.
One of their number fills it with tobacco and herbs, places upon the
bowl a bright coal from the fire within the lodge, draws the smoke into
his lungs, and blows it thence through his nostrils. He then seizes the
stem with both hands, and leaning forward, touches the ground between
his feet with the lower part of the bowl, and smokes again as before.
The feet, and arms, and breast, are successively touched in a similar
way; and after each touching, the sacred smoke is inhaled as before.
The pipe is then passed to the one on his right, who smokes as his
fellow has done. And thus the Great Pipe goes round, and the smoke
rises and mingles with the votive offerings to the Great Spirit which
are suspended above their heads. Immediately after this smoking is
believed to be a favoured time for offering prayer to the Great Spirit.
They pray for courage, and victory over their foes in the campaign they
are about to undertake; and that they may be protected from the spirits
of evil-minded medicine men. They then make a solemn and irrevocable
vow, that if {40} these medicine men do not make them sick--do not
enter into their bosoms and destroy their strength and courage, they
will never again see their relatives and tribe, unless they do so in
garments stained with the blood of their enemies.
Having passed through these ceremonies, they rise and dance to the
music of a war chant, till they are exhausted and swoon. In this state
of insensibility, they imagine that the spirits of the brave dead visit
them and teach them their duty, and inform them of the events that will
transpire during the campaign. Three days and nights are passed in
performing these ceremonies; during which time, they neither eat nor
drink, nor leave the lodge. At early dawn of the fourth day they select
a leader from their number, appoint a distant place of meeting; and
emerging from the lodge, each walks away from it alone to the place of
rendezvous. Having arrived there, they determine whose horses are to
be stolen, whose scalps taken, and commence their march. They always
go out on foot, wholly dependent upon their own energies for food and
every other necessary. Among other things, it is considered a great
disgrace to be long without meat and the means of riding.
It sometimes happens that these parties {41} are unable to satisfy the
conditions of their consecration during the first season; and therefore
are compelled to resort to some ingenious and satisfactory evasion
of the obligations of their vow, or to go into winter quarters till
another opening spring allows them to prosecute their designs. The
trappers relate a case of this kind, which led to a curious incident.
A war party of Blackfeet had spent the season in seeking for their
enemies without success. The storms of approaching winter had begun
to howl around, and a wish to return to the log fires and buffalo
meat, and hilarities and friendships of the camp of the tribe in the
high vales of the Upper Missouri, had become ardent, when a forlorn,
solitary trapper who had long resided among them, entered their camp.
Affectionate and sincere greetings passed at the moment of meeting.
The trapper, as is the custom, was invited to eat; and all appeared
friendly and glad. But soon the Indians became reserved, and whispered
ominously among themselves. At length came to the ear of the trapper
high words of debate in regard to his life. They all agreed that
his white skin indubitably indicated that he belonged to the "Great
Tribe" of their natural enemies, and that {42} with the blood of a
white upon their garments, they would have fulfilled the terms of
their vow, and could return to their friends and tribe. A part of
them seriously questioned whether the sacred names of friend and
brother, which they had for years applied to him, had not so changed
his natural relationship to them, that the Great Spirit, to whom they
had made their vow, had sent him among them in the character which
they themselves had given him--as a friend and brother. If so, they
reasoned that the sacrifice of his life would only anger Him, and by no
means relieve them from the obligations of their vow.
Another party reasoned that the Great Spirit had sent this victim
among them to test their fidelity to Him. He had indeed been their
friend; they had called him brother, but he was also their natural
enemy; and that the Great One to whom they had made their vow, would
not release them at all from its obligations, if they allowed this
factitious relation of friendship to interfere with obedience to
Himself. The other party rejoined, that although the trapper was
their natural enemy, he was not one within the meaning of their vow;
that the taking of his life would be an evasion of its sacred {43}
obligations, a blot upon their courage, and an outrage upon the laws
of friendship; that they could find other victims, but that their
friend could not find another life. The other party rebutted, that the
trapper was confessedly their natural enemy; that the conditions of
their vow required the blood of their natural enemy; and that the Great
Spirit had sufficiently shown His views of the relative obligations of
friendship and obedience to Himself in sending the trapper to their
camp.
The trapper's friends perceiving that the obstinacy of their opponents
was unlikely to yield to reason, proposed as a compromise, that, since,
if they should adjudge the trapper their enemy within the requirements
of their vow, his blood only would be needed to stain their garments,
they would agree to take from him so much as might be necessary for
that purpose; and that in consideration of being a brother, he should
retain enough to keep his heart alive. As their return to their tribe
would be secured by this measure, little objection was raised to it.
The flint lancet was applied to the veins of the white man; their
garments were dyed with his blood; they departed for their nation's
village, and the poor trapper for the beaver among the hills.
{44} My worthy old guide, Kelly, had often seen these medicine lodges.
He informed me that many of the votive offerings, before mentioned,
are permitted to decay with the lodge in which they are hung; that the
penalty to any mortal who should dare appropriate them to his use was
death. A certain white man, however, who had been robbed of his blanket
at the setting in of winter, came upon one of these sacred lodges,
erected by the young Arrapahoes which contained, among other things,
a blanket that seemed well calculated to shield him from the cold. He
spread it over his shivering frame, and very unadvisedly went into the
Arrapahoe village. The Indians knew the sacred deposit, held a council,
called the culprit before them, and demanded why he had stolen from the
Great Spirit? In exculpation, he stated that he had been robbed; that
the Great Spirit saw him naked in the wintry wind; pitied him; showed
him the sacred lodge, and bade him take the blanket. "That seems to be
well," said the principal chief to his fellow-counsellors. "The Great
Spirit has an undoubted right to give away his own property;" and the
trader was released.
Among the several personages whom I {45} chanced to meet at Brown's
Hole, was an old Snake Indian, who saw Messrs. Lewis and Clark on
the head-waters of the Missouri in 1805. He is the individual of his
tribe, who first saw the explorers' cavalcade. He appears to have
been galloping from place to place in the office of sentinel to the
Shoshonie camp, when he suddenly found himself in the very presence of
the whites. Astonishment fixed him to the spot. Men with faces pale
as ashes, had never been seen by himself or nation. "The head rose
high and round, the top flat; it jutted over the eyes in a thin rim;
their skin was loose and flowing, and of various colours." His fears at
length overcoming his curiosity, he fled in the direction of the Indian
encampment; but being seen by the whites, they pursued and brought him
to their camp; exhibited to him the effects of their fire-arms, loaded
him with presents, and let him go. Having arrived among his own people,
he told them he had seen men with faces pale as ashes, who were makers
of thunder, lightning, etc. This information astounded the whole tribe.
They had lived many years, and their ancestors had lived many more, and
there were many legends which spoke of many wonderful {46} things; but
a tale like this they never had heard.
A council was, therefore, assembled to consider the matter. The man of
strange words was summoned before it, and he rehearsed, in substance,
what he had before told to others, but was not believed. "All men were
red, and therefore he could not have seen men as pale as ashes." "The
Great Spirit made the thunder and the lightning; he therefore could
not have seen men of any colour that could produce these. He had seen
nothing; he had lied to his chief, and should die."
At this stage of the proceedings, the culprit produced some of the
presents which he had received from the pale men. These being quite
as new to them as pale faces were, it was determined "that he should
have the privilege of leading his judges to the place where he declared
he had seen these strange people; and if such were found there, he
should be exculpated; if not, these presents were to be considered
as conclusive evidence against him, that he dealt with evil spirits,
and that he was worthy of death by the arrows of his kinsfolks." The
pale men, the thunder-makers, were found, and were witnesses of {47}
the poor fellow's story. He was released; and has ever since been
much honoured and loved by his tribe, and every white man in the
mountains.[163] He is now about eighty years old, and poor. But as he
is always about Fort David Crockett, he is never permitted to want.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] This is the first chapter of volume ii of Farnham's
_Travels_.--ED.
[152] Between Fortification and Lay creeks, the Yampah makes a southern
bend for about twenty-five miles.--ED.
[153] Little Snake is the largest affluent of the Yampah. Rising in Elk
Head Mountains, it flows west and south-west, debouching at a small
plain known as Lily's Park--ED.
[154] For the Paiute see our volume xviii, p. 140, note 70. Concerning
the Sanpitch (not Land Pitch), consult De Smet's _Letters_ in our
volume xxvii, p. 166, note 37.--ED.
[155] Brown's Hole, now known as Brown's Park, is in the north-western
corner of Colorado, on Green River. It is thought to have been named
for an early trapper. The valley, which is about thirty miles long by
five or six in width, is formed by an expansion of the cañon walls of
the river, so that all about it cliffs rise to a great height. The
only entrance is a rocky chasm at the east, about sixty yards wide.
The valley is so sheltered that it possesses an unusual climate,
with seldom snow enough to cover the pasturage; it was, therefore, a
favorite wintering ground for trappers and hunters.--ED.
[156] Fort David Crockett was not long maintained; erected before
Farnham's visit, it was a ruin when Frémont passed here in 1844.
Wislizenus, who arrived a few days after Farnham, declares it the
poorest building seen on his travels, and that the distance from any
well-worn route of travel and the lack of game on the neighboring hills
had given it the name of Fort Misery. It was owned jointly by Thomson,
Craig, and St. Clair.--ED.
[157] Farnham refers here to tribes of the Yuman stock; see our volume
xviii, p. 131, note 65. The Yuma proper are large physically, and
finely proportioned. A recent writer declares that their men are nearly
all over six feet in height--see Eugene J. Trippel, "Yuma Indians,"
in _Overland Monthly_, xiii, xiv. They are an agricultural people and
depend largely upon the mesquite harvest, which Farnham refers to as
black beans. The Yuma were made known to the Spaniards by the reports
of the Franciscan padre, Francisco Garcés, who in 1771 visited them
from his mission on the Gila. They received him with joy, and begged
for his return; he revisited them in 1774. Shortly after this a Yuman
chief called Palma was conveyed to Mexico. Awed by what he saw, he
consented to baptism, and requested a mission in his own land. But it
was not until 1779 that the foundation of a mission was laid, and in
the following year two small colonies were begun--one on the site of
Fort Yuma, and the other eight miles lower down. The natives, however,
found their new neighbors troublesome and exacting, and rising in
revolt July 17, 1781, with clubs massacred almost the entire garrison,
including four missionary padres; see Coues, _Francisco Garcés_, i, pp.
10-24. Hence the appellation, "Club Indians." In 1857 the Yuma suffered
a severe defeat from their neighbors, the Pima and Maricopa, wherein
over a third of their warriors perished. They have generally been on
friendly terms with the United States government, which has recently
arranged a system of irrigation for their lands. About fifty-six Yuma
still live on their reservation, and have a reputation for industry
beyond that of most tribesmen; see U. S. Indian Commissioner's
_Report_, 1904, pp. 158-161.--ED.
[158] For particulars of this meeting, which had been eagerly desired
by the explorers, consult Thwaites, _Original Journals of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition_, ii, pp. 329-360.--ED.
[159] For a brief sketch of the Crow Indians, see Bradbury's _Travels_,
in our volume v, p. 226, note 121.--ED.
[160] The Blackfeet are noted in Bradbury's _Travels_, our volume v, p.
225, note 120. A detailed description is to be found in Maximilian's
_Travels_, our volume xxiii, pp. 95-122. The year of the small-pox
scourge was 1837 (not 1828), and it was a Mandan (not a Blackfoot)
chief who stole the infected blanket. However, the disease reached the
Blackfeet by the same steamer that carried it to the Mandan. See our
volume xxii, p. 36, note 13.--ED.
[161] A brief note on the Arapaho is in our volume v, p. 225, note 120.
The significance of the tribal name is uncertain, but is supposed to
mean "he who buys or trades." The Caddo and Comanche had epithets for
this tribe, that signified "dog-eaters."--ED.
[162] This is incorrect, the Shoshonean differing widely from the
Algonquian language stock. On the Arapaho language, consult James
Mooney, "Ghost Dance Religion," in U. S. Bureau of Ethnology _Report_,
1892-93, p. 1012.--ED.
[163] With this fanciful tradition, compare that of Lewis in _Original
Journals_, ii, pp. 329-351.--ED.