Part 14

In the midst of their gayety a hunter came galloping into the camp, shouting, or rather yelling, “A trail! a trail!--lodge poles! lodge poles!”

These were words full of meaning to a trapper’s ear. They intimated that there was some band in the neighborhood, and probably a hunting party, as they had lodge poles for an encampment. The hunter came up and told his story. He had discovered a fresh trail, in which the traces made by the dragging of lodge poles were distinctly visible. The buffalo, too, had just been driven out of the neighborhood, which showed that the hunters had already been on the range.

The gayety of the camp was at an end; all preparations for musk-rat trapping were suspended, and all hands sallied forth to examine the trail. Their worst fears were soon confirmed. Infallible signs showed the unknown party in the advance to be white men; doubtless, some rival band of trappers! Here was competition when least expected; and that too by a party already in the advance, who were driving the game before them. Captain Bonneville had now a taste of the sudden transitions to which a trapper’s life is subject. The buoyant confidence in an uninterrupted hunt was at an end; every countenance lowered with gloom and disappointment.

Captain Bonneville immediately dispatched two spies to overtake the rival party, and endeavor to learn their plans; in the meantime, he turned his back upon the swamp and its musk-rat houses and followed on at “long camps”, which in trapper’s language is equivalent to long stages. On the 6th of April he met his spies returning. They had kept on the trail like hounds until they overtook the party at the south end of Godin’s defile. Here they found them comfortably encamped: twenty-two prime trappers, all well appointed, with excellent horses in capital condition led by Milton Sublette, and an able coadjutor named Jarvie, and in full march for the Malade hunting ground. This was stunning news. The Malade River was the only trapping ground within reach; but to have to compete there with veteran trappers, perfectly at home among the mountains, and admirably mounted, while they were so poorly provided with horses and trappers, and had but one man in their party acquainted with the country-it was out of the question.

The only hope that now remained was that the snow, which still lay deep among the mountains of Godin’s River and blocked up the usual pass to the Malade country, might detain the other party until Captain Bonneville’s horses should get once more into good condition in their present ample pasturage.

The rival parties now encamped together, not out of companionship, but to keep an eye upon each other. Day after day passed by without any possibility of getting to the Malade country. Sublette and Jarvie endeavored to force their way across the mountain; but the snows lay so deep as to oblige them to turn back. In the meantime the captain’s horses were daily gaining strength, and their hoofs improving, which had been worn and battered by mountain service. The captain, also was increasing his stock of provisions; so that the delay was all in his favor.

To any one who merely contemplates a map of the country this difficulty of getting from Godin to Malade River will appear inexplicable, as the intervening mountains terminate in the great Snake River plain, so that, apparently, it would be perfectly easy to proceed round their bases.

Here, however, occur some of the striking phenomena of this wild and sublime region. The great lower plain which extends to the feet of these mountains is broken up near their bases into crests, and ridges resembling the surges of the ocean breaking on a rocky shore.

In a line with the mountains the plain is gashed with numerous and dangerous chasms, from four to ten feet wide, and of great depth. Captain Bonneville attempted to sound some of these openings, but without any satisfactory result. A stone dropped into one of them reverberated against the sides for apparently a very great depth, and, by its sound, indicated the same kind of substance with the surface, as long as the strokes could be heard. The horse, instinctively sagacious in avoiding danger, shrinks back in alarm from the least of these chasms, pricking up his ears, snorting and pawing, until permitted to turn away.

We have been told by a person well acquainted with the country that it is sometimes necessary to travel fifty and sixty miles to get round one of these tremendous ravines. Considerable streams, like that of Godin’s River, that run with a bold, free current, lose themselves in this plain; some of them end in swamps, others suddenly disappear, finding, no doubt, subterranean outlets.

Opposite to these chasms Snake River makes two desperate leaps over precipices, at a short distance from each other; one twenty, the other forty feet in height.

The volcanic plain in question forms an area of about sixty miles in diameter, where nothing meets the eye but a desolate and awful waste; where no grass grows nor water runs, and where nothing is to be seen but lava. Ranges of mountains skirt this plain, and, in Captain Bonneville’s opinion, were formerly connected, until rent asunder by some convulsion of nature. Far to the east the Three Tetons lift their heads sublimely, and dominate this wide sea of lava--one of the most striking features of a wilderness where everything seems on a scale of stern and simple grandeur.

We look forward with impatience for some able geologist to explore this sublime but almost unknown region.

It was not until the 25th of April that the two parties of trappers broke up their encampments, and undertook to cross over the southwest end of the mountain by a pass explored by their scouts. From various points of the mountain they commanded boundless prospects of the lava plain, stretching away in cold and gloomy barrenness as far as the eye could reach. On the evening of the 26th they reached the plain west of the mountain, watered by the Malade, the Boisee, and other streams, which comprised the contemplated trapping-ground.

The country about the Boisee (or Woody) River is extolled by Captain Bonneville as the most enchanting he had seen in the Far West, presenting the mingled grandeur and beauty of mountain and plain, of bright running streams and vast grassy meadows waving to the breeze.

We shall not follow the captain throughout his trapping campaign, which lasted until the beginning of June, nor detail all the manoeuvres of the rival trapping parties and their various schemes to outwit and out-trap each other. Suffice it to say that, after having visited and camped about various streams with varying success, Captain Bonneville set forward early in June for the appointed rendezvous at the caches. On the way, he treated his party to a grand buffalo hunt. The scouts had re ported numerous herds in a plain beyond an intervening height. There was an immediate halt; the fleetest horses were forthwith mounted and the party advanced to the summit of the hill. Hence they beheld the great plain below; absolutely swarming with buffalo. Captain Bonneville now appointed the place where he would encamp; and toward which the hunters were to drive the game. He cautioned the latter to advance slowly, reserving the strength and speed of the horses until within a moderate distance of the herds. Twenty-two horsemen descended cautiously into the plain, conformably to these directions. “It was a beautiful sight,” says the captain, “to see the runners, as they are called, advancing in column, at a slow trot, until within two hundred and fifty yards of the outskirts of the herd, then dashing on at full speed until lost in the immense multitude of buffaloes scouring the plain in every direction.” All was now tumult and wild confusion. In the meantime Captain Bonneville and the residue of the party moved on to the appointed camping ground; thither the most expert runners succeeded in driving numbers of buffalo, which were killed hard by the camp, and the flesh transported thither without difficulty. In a little while the whole camp looked like one great slaughter-house; the carcasses were skilfully cut up, great fires were made, scaffolds erected for drying and jerking beef, and an ample provision was made for future subsistence. On the 15th of June, the precise day appointed for the rendezvous, Captain Bonneville and his party arrived safely at the caches.

Here he was joined by the other detachments of his main party, all in good health and spirits. The caches were again opened, supplies of various kinds taken out, and a liberal allowance of aqua vitae distributed throughout the camp, to celebrate with proper conviviality this merry meeting.

18.

Meeting with Hodgkiss--Misfortunes of the Nez Perces-- Schemes of Kosato, the renegado--His foray into the Horse Prairie--Invasion of Black feet--Blue John and his forlorn hope--Their generous enterprise--Their fate--Consternation and despair of the village--Solemn obsequies--Attempt at Indian trade--Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly--Arrangements for autumn--Breaking up of an encampment.

HAVING now a pretty strong party, well armed and equipped, Captain Bonneville no longer felt the necessity of fortifying himself in the secret places and fastnesses of the mountains; but sallied forth boldly into the Snake River plain, in search of his clerk, Hodgkiss, who had remained with the Nez Perces. He found him on the 24th of June, and learned from him another chapter of misfortunes which had recently befallen that ill-fated race.

After the departure of Captain Bonneville in March, Kosato, the renegade Blackfoot, had recovered from the wound received in battle; and with his strength revived all his deadly hostility to his native tribe. He now resumed his efforts to stir up the Nez Perces to reprisals upon their old enemies; reminding them incessantly of all the outrages and robberies they had recently experienced, and assuring them that such would continue to be their lot until they proved themselves men by some signal retaliation.

The impassioned eloquence of the desperado at length produced an effect; and a band of braves enlisted under his guidance, to penetrate into the Blackfoot country, harass their Villages, carry off their horses, and commit all kinds of depredations.

Kosato pushed forward on his foray as far as the Horse Prairie, where he came upon a strong party of Blackfeet. Without waiting to estimate their force, he attacked them with characteristic fury, and was bravely seconded by his followers. The contest, for a time, was hot and bloody; at length, as is customary with these two tribes, they paused, and held a long parley, or rather a war of words.

“What need,” said the Blackfoot chief, tauntingly, “have the Nez Perces to leave their homes, and sally forth on war parties, when they have danger enough at their own doors? If you want fighting, return to your villages; you will have plenty of it there. The Blackfeet warriors have hitherto made war upon you as children. They are now coming as men. A great force is at hand; they are on their way to your towns, and are determined to rub out the very name of the Nez Perces from the mountains. Return, I say, to your towns, and fight there, if you wish to live any longer as a people.”

Kosato took him at his word; for he knew the character of his native tribe. Hastening back with his band to the Nez Perces village, he told all that he had seen and heard, and urged the most prompt and strenuous measures for defence. The Nez Perces, however, heard him with their accustomed phlegm; the threat of the Blackfeet had been often made, and as often had proved a mere bravado; such they pronounced it to be at present, and, of course, took no precautions.

They were soon convinced that it was no empty menace. In a few days a band of three hundred Blackfeet warriors appeared upon the hills. All now was consternation in the village. The force of the Nez Perces was too small to cope with the enemy in open fight; many of the young men having gone to their relatives on the Columbia to procure horses. The sages met in hurried council. What was to be done to ward off a blow which threatened annihilation? In this moment of imminent peril, a Pierced-nose chief, named Blue John by the whites, offered to approach secretly with a small, but chosen band, through a defile which led to the encampment of the enemy, and, by a sudden onset, to drive off the horses. Should this blow be successful, the spirit and strength of the invaders would be broken, and the Nez Perces, having horses, would be more than a match for them. Should it fail, the village would not be worse off than at present, when destruction appeared inevitable.

Twenty-nine of the choicest warriors instantly volunteered to follow Blue John in this hazardous enterprise. They prepared for it with the solemnity and devotion peculiar to the tribe. Blue John consulted his medicine, or talismanic charm, such as every chief keeps in his lodge as a supernatural protection. The oracle assured him that his enterprise would be completely successful, provided no rain should fall before he had passed through the defile; but should it rain, his band would be utterly cut off.

The day was clear and bright; and Blue John anticipated that the skies would be propitious. He departed in high spirits with his forlorn hope; and never did band of braves make a more gallant display-horsemen and horses being decorated and equipped in the fiercest and most glaring style-glittering with arms and ornaments, and fluttering with feathers.