Chapter 9

9.

Horses turned loose Preparations for winter quarters Hungry

times Nez Perces, their honesty, piety, pacific habits, religious

ceremonies Captain Bonneville's conversations with them Their

love of gambling

IT WAS GRATIFYING to Captain Bonneville, after so long and

toilsome a course of travel, to relieve his poor jaded horses of

the burden under which they were almost ready to give out, and to

behold them rolling upon the grass, and taking a long repose

after all their sufferings. Indeed, so exhausted were they, that

those employed under the saddle were no longer capable of hunting

for the daily subsistence of the camp.

All hands now set to work to prepare a winter cantonment. A

temporary fortification was thrown up for the protection of the

party; a secure and comfortable pen, into which the horses could

be driven at night; and huts were built for the reception of the

merchandise.

This done, Captain Bonneville made a distribution of his forces:

twenty men were to remain with him in garrison to protect the

property; the rest were organized into three brigades, and sent

off in different directions, to subsist themselves by hunting the

buffalo, until the snow should become too deep.

Indeed, it would have been impossible to provide for the whole

party in this neighborhood. It was at the extreme western limit

of the buffalo range, and these animals had recently been

completely hunted out of the neighborhood by the Nez Perces, so

that, although the hunters of the garrison were continually on

the alert, ranging the country round, they brought in scarce game

sufficient to keep famine from the door. Now and then there was a

scanty meal of fish or wild-fowl, occasionally an antelope; but

frequently the cravings of hunger had to be appeased with roots,

or the flesh of wolves and muskrats. Rarely could the inmates of

the cantonment boast of having made a full meal, and never of

having wherewithal for the morrow. In this way they starved along

until the 8th of October, when they were joined by a party of

five families of Nez Perces, who in some measure reconciled them

to the hardships of their situation by exhibiting a lot still

more destitute. A more forlorn set they had never encountered:

they had not a morsel of meat or fish; nor anything to subsist

on, excepting roots, wild rosebuds, the barks of certain plants,

and other vegetable production; neither had they any weapon for

hunting or defence, excepting an old spear: yet the poor fellows

made no murmur nor complaint; but seemed accustomed to their