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.
