Chapter 12 - Page 2

other of the mountain tribes within

the buffalo range. Many of the Indian warriors and hunters

encamped around Captain Bonneville possess from thirty to forty

horses each. Their horses are stout, well-built ponies, of great

wind, and capable of enduring the severest hardship and fatigue.

The swiftest of them, however, are those obtained from the whites

while sufficiently young to become acclimated and inured to the

rough service of the mountains.

By degrees the populousness of this encampment began to produce

its inconveniences. The immense droves of horses owned by the

Indians consumed the herbage of the surrounding hills; while to

drive them to any distant pasturage, in a neighborhood abounding

with lurking and deadly enemies, would be to endanger the loss

both of man and beast. Game, too, began to grow scarce. It was

soon hunted and frightened out of the vicinity, and though the

Indians made a wide circuit through the mountains in the hope of

driving the buffalo toward the cantonment, their expedition was

unsuccessful. It was plain that so large a party could not

subsist themselves there, nor in any one place throughout the

winter. Captain Bonneville, therefore, altered his whole

arrangements. He detached fifty men toward the south to winter

upon Snake River, and to trap about its waters in the spring,

with orders to rejoin him in the month of July at Horse Creek, in

Green River Valley, which he had fixed upon as the general

rendezvous of his company for the ensuing year.

Of all his late party, he now retained with him merely a small

number of free trappers, with whom he intended to sojourn among

the Nez Perces and Flatheads, and adopt the Indian mode of moving

with the game and grass. Those bands, in effect, shortly

afterward broke up their encampments and set off for a less

beaten neighborhood. Captain Bonneville remained behind for a few

days, that he might secretly prepare caches, in which to deposit

everything not required for current use. Thus lightened of all

superfluous encumbrance, he set off on the 20th of November to

rejoin his Indian allies. He found them encamped in a secluded

part of the country, at the head of a small stream. Considering

themselves out of all danger in this sequestered spot from their

old enemies, the Blackfeet, their encampment manifested the most

negligent security. Their lodges were scattered in every

direction, and their horses covered every hill for a great

distance round, grazing upon the upland bunch grass which grew in

great abundance, and though dry, retained