They Continued On Their Journey For Several Days, Without Any
Incident Worthy Of Notice, And On The 19th Of November, Came Upon
Traces Of The Party Of Which They Were In Search; Such As Burned
Patches Of Prairie, And Deserted Camping Grounds.
All these were
carefully examined, to discover by their freshness or antiquity
the probable time that the trappers had
Left them; at length,
after much wandering and investigating, they came upon the
regular trail of the hunting party, which led into the mountains,
and following it up briskly, came about two o'clock in the
afternoon of the 20th, upon the encampment of Hodgkiss and his
band of free trappers, in the bosom of a mountain valley.
It will be recollected that these free trappers, who were masters
of themselves and their movements, had refused to accompany
Captain Bonneville back to Green River in the preceding month of
July, preferring to trap about the upper waters of the Salmon
River, where they expected to find plenty of beaver, and a less
dangerous neighborhood. Their hunt had not been very successful.
They had penetrated the great range of mountains among which some
of the upper branches of Salmon River take their rise, but had
become so entangled among immense and almost impassable
barricades of fallen pines, and so impeded by tremendous
precipices, that a great part of their season had been wasted
among these mountains. At one time, they had made their way
through them, and reached the Boisee River; but meeting with a
band of Bannack Indians, from whom they apprehended hostilities,
they had again taken shelter among the mountains, where they were
found by Captain Bonneville. In the neighborhood of their
encampment, the captain had the good fortune to meet with a
family of those wanderers of the mountains, emphatically called
"les dignes de pitie," or Poordevil Indians. These, however,
appear to have forfeited the title, for they had with them a fine
lot of skins of beaver, elk, deer, and mountain sheep. These,
Captain Bonneville purchased from them at a fair valuation, and
sent them off astonished at their own wealth, and no doubt
objects of envy to all their pitiful tribe.
Being now reinforced by Hodgkiss and his band of free trappers,
Captain Bonneville put himself at the head of the united parties,
and set out to rejoin those he had recently left at the Beer
Spring, that they might all go into winter quarters on Snake
River. On his route, he encountered many heavy falls of snow,
which melted almost immediately, so as not to impede his march,
and on the 4th of December, he found his other party, encamped at
the very place where he had partaken in the buffalo hunt with the
Bannacks.
That braggart horde was encamped but about three miles off, and
were just then in high glee and festivity, and more swaggering
than ever, celebrating a prodigious victory. It appeared that a
party of their braves being out on a hunting excursion,
discovered a band of Blackfeet moving, as they thought, to
surprise their hunting camp.
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