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CHAPTER 12
A winter camp in the wilderness Medley of trappers, hunters, and
Indians Scarcity of game New arrangements in the camp Detachments
sent to a distance Carelessness of the Indians when
encamped Sickness among the Indians Excellent character of the
Nez Perces The Captain's effort as a pacificator A Nez Perce's
argument in favor of war Robberies, by the Black feet Long
suffering of the Nez Perces A hunter's Elysium among the
mountains More robberies The Captain preaches up a crusade The
effect upon his hearers.
FOR the greater part of the month of November Captain Bonneville
remained in his temporary post on Salmon River. He was now in the
full enjoyment of his wishes; leading a hunter's life in the
heart of the wilderness, with all its wild populace around him.
Beside his own people, motley in character and costume--creole,
Kentuckian, Indian, half-breed, hired trapper, and free
trapper--he was surrounded by encampments of Nez Perces and
Flatheads, with their droves of horses covering the hills and
plains. It was, he declares, a wild and bustling scene. The
hunting parties of white men and red men, continually sallying
forth and returning; the groups at the various encampments, some
cooking, some working, some amusing themselves at different
games; the neighing of horses, the braying of asses, the
resounding strokes of the axe, the sharp report of the rifle, the
whoop, the halloo, and the frequent burst of laughter, all in the
midst of a region suddenly roused from perfect silence and
loneliness by this transient hunters' sojourn, realized, he says,
the idea of a "populous solitude."
The kind and genial character of the captain had, evidently, its
influence on the opposite races thus fortuitously congregated
together. The most perfect harmony prevailed between them. The
Indians, he says, were friendly in their dispositions, and honest
to the most scrupulous degree in their intercourse with the white
men. It is true they were somewhat importunate in their
curiosity, and apt to be continually in the way, examining
everything with keen and prying eye, and watching every movement
of the white men. All this, however, was borne with great
good-humor by the captain, and through his example by his men.
Indeed, throughout all his transactions he shows himself the
friend of the poor Indians, and his conduct toward them is above
all praise.
The Nez Perces, the Flatheads, and the Hanging-ears pride
themselves upon the number of their horses, of which they possess
more in proportion than any 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 its nutritious
properties instead of losing them like other grasses in the
autumn.
When the Nez Perces, Flatheads, and Pends Oreilles are encamped
in a dangerous neighborhood, says Captain Bonneville, the
greatest care is taken of their horses, those prime articles of
Indian wealth, and objects of Indian depredation. Each warrior
has his horse tied by one foot at night to a stake planted before
his lodge. Here they remain until broad daylight; by that time
the young men of the camp are already ranging over the
surrounding hills. Each family then drives its horses to some
eligible spot, where they are left to graze unattended. A young
Indian repairs occasionally to the pasture to give them water,
and to see that all is well. So accustomed are the horses to this
management, that they keep together in the pasture where they
have been left. As the sun sinks behind the hills, they may be
seen moving from all points toward the camp, where they surrender
themselves to be tied up for the night. Even in situations of
danger, the Indians rarely set guards over their camp at night,
intrusting that office entirely to their vigilant and
well-trained dogs.
In an encampment, however, of such fancied security as that in
which Captain Bonneville found his Indian friends, much of these
precautions with respect to their horses are omitted. They merely
drive them, at nightfall, to some sequestered little dell, and
leave them there, at perfect liberty, until the morning.
One object of Captain Bonneville in wintering among these Indians
was to procure a supply of horses against the spring. They were,
however, extremely unwilling to part with any, and it was with
great difficulty that he purchased, at the rate of twenty dollars
each, a few for the use of some of his free trappers who were on
foot and dependent on him for their equipment.
In this encampment Captain Bonneville remained from the 21st of
November to the 9th of December. During this period the
thermometer ranged from thirteen to forty-two degrees. There were
occasional falls of snow; but it generally melted away almost
immediately, and the tender blades of new grass began to shoot up
among the old. On the 7th of December, however, the thermometer
fell to seven degrees.
The reader will recollect that, on distributing his forces when
in Green River Valley, Captain Bonneville had detached a party,
headed by a leader of the name of Matthieu, with all the weak and
disabled horses, to sojourn about Bear River, meet the Shoshonie
bands, and afterward to rejoin him at his winter camp on Salmon
River.
More than sufficient time had elapsed, yet Matthieu failed to
make his appearance, and uneasiness began to be felt on his
account. Captain Bonneville sent out four men, to range the
country through which he would have to pass, and endeavor to get
some information concerning him; for his route lay across the
great Snake River plain, which spreads itself out like an Arabian
desert, and on which a cavalcade could be descried at a great
distance. The scouts soon returned, having proceeded no further
than the edge of the plain, pretending that their horses were
lame; but it was evident they had feared to venture, with so
small a force, into these exposed and dangerous regions.
A disease, which Captain Bonneville supposed to be pneumonia, now
appeared among the Indians, carrying off numbers of them after an
illness of three or four days. The worthy captain acted as
physician, prescribing profuse sweatings and copious bleedings,
and uniformly with success, if the patient were subsequently
treated with proper care. In extraordinary cases, the poor
savages called in the aid of their own doctors or conjurors, who
officiated with great noise and mummery, but with little benefit.
Those who died during this epidemic were buried in graves, after
the manner of the whites, but without any regard to the direction
of the head. It is a fact worthy of notice that, while this
malady made such ravages among the natives, not a single white
man had the slightest symptom of it.
A familiar intercourse of some standing with the Pierced-nose and
Flathead Indians had now convinced Captain Bonneville of their
amicable and inoffensive character; he began to take a strong
interest in them, and conceived the idea of becoming a
pacificator, and healing the deadly feud between them and the
Blackfeet, in which they were so deplorably the sufferers. He
proposed the matter to some of the leaders, and urged that they
should meet the Blackfeet chiefs in a grand pacific conference,
offering to send two of his men to the enemy's camp with pipe,
tobacco and flag of truce, to negotiate the proposed meeting.
The Nez Perces and Flathead sages upon this held a council of war
of two days' duration, in which there was abundance of hard
smoking and long talking, and both eloquence and tobacco were
nearly exhausted. At length they came to a decision to reject the
worthy captain's proposition, and upon pretty substantial
grounds, as the reader may judge.
"War," said the chiefs, "is a bloody business, and full of evil;
but it keeps the eyes of the chiefs always open, and makes the
limbs of the young men strong and supple. In war, every one is on
the alert. If we see a trail we know it must be an enemy; if the
Blackfeet come to us, we know it is for war, and we are ready.
Peace, on the other hand, sounds no alarm; the eyes of the chiefs
are closed in sleep, and the young men are sleek and lazy. The
horses stray into the mountains; the women and their little babes
go about alone. But the heart of a Blackfoot is a lie, and his
tongue is a trap. If he says peace it is to deceive; he comes to
us as a brother; he smokes his pipe with us; but when he sees us
weak, and off our guard, he will slay and steal. We will have no
such peace; let there be war!"
With this reasoning Captain Bonneville was fain to acquiesce;
but, since the sagacious Flatheads and their allies were content
to remain in a state of warfare, he wished them at least to
exercise the boasted vigilance which war was to produce, and to
keep their eyes open. He represented to them the impossibility
that two such considerable clans could move about the country
without leaving trails by which they might be traced. Besides,
among the Blackfeet braves were several Nez Perces, who had been
taken prisoners in early youth, adopted by their captors, and
trained up and imbued with warlike and predatory notions; these
had lost all sympathies with their native tribe, and would be
prone to lead the enemy to their secret haunts. He exhorted them,
therefore, to keep upon the alert, and never to remit their
vigilance while within the range of so crafty and cruel a foe.
All these counsels were lost upon his easy and simple-minded
hearers. A careless indifference reigned throughout their
encampments, and their horses were permitted to range the hills
at night in perfect freedom. Captain Bonneville had his own
horses brought in at night, and properly picketed and guarded.
The evil he apprehended soon took place. In a single night a
swoop was made through the neighboring pastures by the Blackfeet,
and eighty-six of the finest horses carried off. A whip and a
rope were left in a conspicuous situation by the robbers, as a
taunt to the simpletons they had unhorsed.
Long before sunrise the news of this calamity spread like
wildfire through the different encampments. Captain Bonneville,
whose own horses remained safe at their pickets, watched in
momentary expectation of an outbreak of warriors, Pierced-nose
and Flathead, in furious pursuit of the marauders; but no such
thing -- they contented themselves with searching diligently over
hill and dale, to glean up such horses as had escaped the hands
of the marauders, and then resigned themselves to their loss with
the most exemplary quiescence.
Some, it is true, who were entirely unhorsed, set out on a
begging visit to their cousins, as they called them, the Lower
Nez Perces, who inhabit the lower country about the Columbia, and
possess horses in abundance. To these they repair when in
difficulty, and seldom fail, by dint of begging and bartering, to
get themselves once more mounted on horseback.
Game had now become scarce in the neighborhood of the camp, and
it was necessary, according to Indian custom, to move off to a
less beaten ground. Captain Bonneville proposed the Horse
Prairie; but his Indian friends objected that many of the Nez
Perces had gone to visit their cousins, and that the whites were
few in number, so that their united force was not sufficient to
Venture upon the buffalo grounds, which were infested by bands of
Blackfeet.
They now spoke of a place at no great distance, which they
represented as a perfect hunter's elysium. It was on the right
branch, or head stream of the river, locked up among cliffs and
precipices where there was no danger from roving bands, and where
the Blackfeet dare not enter. Here, they said, the elk abounded,
and the mountain sheep were to be seen trooping upon the rocks
and hills. A little distance beyond it, also, herds of buffalo
were to be met with, Out of range of danger. Thither they
proposed to move their camp.
The proposition pleased the captain, who was desirous, through
the Indians, of becoming acquainted with all the secret places of
the land. Accordingly, on the 9th of December, they struck their
tents, and moved forward by short stages, as many of the Indians
were yet feeble from the late malady.
Following up the right fork of the river they came to where it
entered a deep gorge of the mountains, up which lay the secluded
region so much valued by the Indians. Captain Bonneville halted
and encamped for three days before entering the gorge. In the
meantime he detached five of his free trappers to scour the
hills, and kill as many elk as possible, before the main body
should enter, as they would then be soon frightened away by the
various Indian hunting parties.
While thus encamped, they were still liable to the marauds of the
Blackfeet, and Captain Bonneville admonished his Indian friends
to be upon their guard. The Nez Perces, however, notwithstanding
their recent loss, were still careless of their horses; merely
driving them to some secluded spot, and leaving them there for
the night, without setting any guard upon them. The consequence
was a second swoop, in which forty-one were carried off. This was
borne with equal philosophy with the first, and no effort was
made either to recover the horses, or to take vengeance on the
thieves.
The Nez Perces, however, grew more cautious with respect to their
remaining horses, driving them regularly to the camp every
evening, and fastening them to pickets. Captain Bonneville,
however, told them that this was not enough. It was evident they
were dogged by a daring and persevering enemy, who was encouraged
by past impunity; they should, therefore, take more than usual
precautions, and post a guard at night over their cavalry. They
could not, however, be persuaded to depart from their usual
custom. The horse once picketed, the care of the owner was over
for the night, and he slept profoundly. None waked in the camp
but the gamblers, who, absorbed in their play, were more
difficult to be roused to external circumstances than even the
sleepers.
The Blackfeet are bold enemies, and fond of hazardous exploits.
The band that were hovering about the neighborhood, finding that
they had such pacific people to deal with, redoubled their
daring. The horses being now picketed before the lodges, a number
of Blackfeet scouts penetrated in the early part of the night
into the very centre of the camp. Here they went about among the
lodges as calmly and deliberately as if at home, quietly cutting
loose the horses that stood picketed by the lodges of their
sleeping owners. One of these prowlers, more adventurous than the
rest, approached a fire round which a group of Nez Perces were
gambling with the most intense eagerness. Here he stood for some
time, muffled up in his robe, peering over the shoulders of the
players, watching the changes of their countenances and the
fluctuations of the game. So completely engrossed were they, that
the presence of this muffled eaves-dropper was unnoticed and,
having executed his bravado, he retired undiscovered.
Having cut loose as many horses as they could conveniently carry
off, the Blackfeet scouts rejoined their comrades, and all
remained patiently round the camp. By degrees the horses, finding
themselves at liberty, took their route toward their customary
grazing ground. As they emerged from the camp they were silently
taken possession of, until, having secured about thirty, the
Blackfeet sprang on their backs and scampered off. The clatter of
hoofs startled the gamblers from their game. They gave the alarm,
which soon roused the sleepers from every lodge. Still all was
quiescent; no marshalling of forces, no saddling of steeds and
dashing off in pursuit, no talk of retribution for their repeated
outrages. The patience of Captain Bonneville was at length
exhausted. He had played the part of a pacificator without
success; he now altered his tone, and resolved, if possible, to
rouse their war spirit.
Accordingly, convoking their chiefs, he inveighed against their
craven policy, and urged the necessity of vigorous and
retributive measures that would check the confidence and
presumption of their enemies, if not inspire them with awe. For
this purpose, he advised that a war party should be immediately
sent off on the trail of the marauders, to follow them, if
necessary, into the very heart of the Blackfoot country, and not
to leave them until they had taken signal vengeance. Beside this,
he recommended the organization of minor war parties, to make
reprisals to the extent of the losses sustained. "Unless you
rouse yourselves from your apathy," said he, "and strike some
bold and decisive blow, you will cease to be considered men, or
objects of manly warfare. The very squaws and children of the
Blackfeet will be set against you, while their warriors reserve
themselves for nobler antagonists."
This harangue had evidently a momentary effect upon the pride of
the hearers. After a short pause, however, one of the orators
arose. It was bad, he said, to go to war for mere revenge. The
Great Spirit had given them a heart for peace, not for war. They
had lost horses, it was true, but they could easily get others
from their cousins, the Lower Nez Perces, without incurring any
risk; whereas, in war they should lose men, who were not so
readily replaced. As to their late losses, an increased
watchfulness would prevent any more misfortunes of the kind. He
disapproved, therefore, of all hostile measures; and all the
other chiefs concurred in his opinion.
Captain Bonneville again took up the point. "It is true," said
he, "the Great Spirit has given you a heart to love your friends;
but he has also given you an arm to strike your enemies. Unless
you do something speedily to put an end to this continual
plundering, I must say farewell. As yet I have sustained no loss;
thanks to the precautions which you have slighted; but my
property is too unsafe here; my turn will come next; I and my
people will share the contempt you are bringing upon yourselves,
and will be thought, like you, poor-spirited beings, who may at
any time be plundered with impunity."
The conference broke up with some signs of excitement on the part
of the Indians. Early the next morning, a party of thirty men set
off in pursuit of the foe, and Captain Bonneville hoped to hear a
good account of the Blackfeet marauders. To his disappointment,
the war party came lagging back on the following day, leading a
few old, sorry, broken-down horses, which the free-booters had
not been able to urge to sufficient speed. This effort exhausted
the martial spirit, and satisfied the wounded pride of the Nez
Perces, and they relapsed into their usual state of passive
indifference.
Content of CHAPTER 12 [Washington Irving's book: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville]
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