Chapter 6

6

Sublette and his band Robert Campbell Mr. Wyeth and a band of

"down-easters" Yankee enterprise Fitzpatrick His adventure with

the Blackfeet A rendezvous of mountaineers The battle of Pierre's

Hole An Indian ambuscade Sublette's return

LEAVING CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE and his band ensconced within their

fortified camp in the Green River valley, we shall step back and

accompany a party of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in its

progress, with supplies from St. Louis, to the annual rendezvous

at Pierre's Hole. This party consisted of sixty men, well

mounted, and conducting a line of packhorses. They were commanded

by Captain William Sublette, a partner in the company, and one of

the most active, intrepid, and renowned leaders in this half

military kind of service. He was accompanied by his associate in

business, and tried companion in danger, Mr. Robert Campbell, one

of the pioneers of the trade beyond the mountains, who had

commanded trapping parties there in times of the greatest peril.

As these worthy compeers were on their route to the frontier,

they fell in with another expedition, likewise on its way to the

mountains. This was a party of regular "down-easters," that is to

say, people of New England, who, with the all-penetrating and

all-pervading spirit of their race, were now pushing their way

into a new field of enterprise with which they were totally

unacquainted. The party had been fitted out and was maintained

and commanded by Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston. This

gentleman had conceived an idea that a profitable fishery for

salmon might be established on the Columbia River, and connected

with the fur trade. He had, accordingly, invested capital in

goods, calculated, as he supposed, for the Indian trade, and had

enlisted a number of eastern men in his employ, who had never

been in the Far West, nor knew anything of the wilderness. With

these, he was bravely steering his way across the continent,

undismayed by danger, difficulty, or distance, in the same way

that a New England coaster and his neighbors will coolly launch

forth on a voyage to the Black Sea, or a whaling cruise to the

Pacific.

With all their national aptitude at expedient and resource, Wyeth

and his men felt themselves completely at a loss when they

reached the frontier, and found that the wilderness required

experience and habitudes of which they were totally deficient.

Not one of the party, excepting the leader, had ever seen an

Indian or handled a rifle; they were without guide or

interpreter, and totally unacquainted