They Were Completely Thrown
Out In Their Conjecture, However, By An Offer Of The White Men To
Exchange The Calf For A Horse; Their Estimation Of The Great
Medicine Sank In An Instant, And They Declined The Bargain.
At the request of the Crow chieftain the two parties encamped
together, and passed the residue of the day in company.
The
captain was well pleased with every opportunity to gain a
knowledge of the "unsophisticated sons of nature," who had so
long been objects of his poetic speculations; and indeed this
wild, horse-stealing tribe is one of the most notorious of the
mountains. The chief, of course, had his scalps to show and his
battles to recount. The Blackfoot is the hereditary enemy of the
Crow, toward whom hostility is like a cherished principle of
religion; for every tribe, besides its casual antagonists, has
some enduring foe with whom there can be no permanent
reconciliation. The Crows and Blackfeet, upon the whole, are
enemies worthy of each other, being rogues and ruffians of the
first water. As their predatory excursions extend over the same
regions, they often come in contact with each other, and these
casual conflicts serve to keep their wits awake and their
passions alive.
The present party of Crows, however, evinced nothing of the
invidious character for which they are renowned. During the day
and night that they were encamped in company with the travellers,
their conduct was friendly in the extreme. They were, in fact,
quite irksome in their attentions, and had a caressing manner at
times quite importunate. It was not until after separation on the
following morning that the captain and his men ascertained the
secret of all this loving-kindness. In the course of their
fraternal caresses, the Crows had contrived to empty the pockets
of their white brothers; to abstract the very buttons from their
coats, and, above all, to make free with their hunting knives.
By equal altitudes of the sun, taken at this last encampment,
Captain Bonneville ascertained his latitude to be 41 47' north.
The thermometer, at six o'clock in the morning, stood at
fifty-nine degrees; at two o'clock, P. M., at ninety-two degrees;
and at six o'clock in the evening, at seventy degrees.
The Black Hills, or Mountains, now began to be seen at a
distance, printing the horizon with their rugged and broken
outlines; and threatening to oppose a difficult barrier in the
way of the travellers.
On the 26th of May, the travellers encamped at Laramie's Fork, a
clear and beautiful stream, rising in the west-southwest,
maintaining an average width of twenty yards, and winding through
broad meadows abounding in currants and gooseberries, and adorned
with groves and clumps of trees.
By an observation of Jupiter's satellites, with a Dolland
reflecting telescope, Captain Bonneville ascertained the
longitude to be 102 57' west of Greenwich.
We will here step ahead of our narrative to observe that about
three years after the time of which we are treating, Mr. Robert
Campbell, formerly of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, descended
the Platte from this fork, in skin canoes, thus proving, what had
always been discredited, that the river was navigable. About the
same time, he built a fort or trading post at Laramie's Fork,
which he named Fort William, after his friend and partner, Mr.
William Sublette. Since that time, the Platte has become a
highway for the fur traders.
For some days past, Captain Bonneville had been made sensible of
the great elevation of country into which he was gradually
ascending by the effect of the dryness and rarefaction of the
atmosphere upon his wagons. The wood-work shrunk; the paint boxes
of the wheels were continually working out, and it was necessary
to support the spokes by stout props to prevent their falling
asunder. The travellers were now entering one of those great
steppes of the Far West, where the prevalent aridity of the
atmosphere renders the country unfit for cultivation. In these
regions there is a fresh sweet growth of grass in the spring, but
it is scanty and short, and parches up in the course of the
summer, so that there is none for the hunters to set fire to in
the autumn. It is a common observation that "above the forks of
the Platte the grass does not burn." All attempts at agriculture
and gardening in the neighborhood of Fort William have been
attended with very little success. The grain and vegetables
raised there have been scanty in quantity and poor in quality.
The great elevation of these plains, and the dryness of the
atmosphere, will tend to retain these immense regions in a state
of pristine wildness.
In the course of a day or two more, the travellers entered that
wild and broken tract of the Crow country called the Black Hills,
and here their journey became toilsome in the extreme. Rugged
steeps and deep ravines incessantly obstructed their progress, so
that a great part of the day was spent in the painful toil of
digging through banks, filling up ravines, forcing the wagons up
the most forbidding ascents, or swinging them with ropes down the
face of dangerous precipices. The shoes of their horses were worn
out, and their feet injured by the rugged and stony roads. The
travellers were annoyed also by frequent but brief storms, which
would come hurrying over the hills, or through the mountain
defiles, rage with great fury for a short time, and then pass
off, leaving everything calm and serene again.
For several nights the camp had been infested by vagabond Indian
dogs, prowling about in quest of food. They were about the size
of a large pointer; with ears short and erect, and a long bushy
tail - altogether, they bore a striking resemblance to a wolf.
These skulking visitors would keep about the purlieus of the camp
until daylight; when, on the first stir of life among the
sleepers, they would scamper off until they reached some rising
ground, where they would take their seats, and keep a sharp and
hungry watch upon every movement.
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