When On A War Party, However, They Go On Foot, To
Enable Them To Skulk Through The Country With Greater Secrecy; To
Keep In Thickets And Ravines, And Use More Adroit Subterfuges And
Stratagems.
Their mode of warfare is entirely by ambush,
surprise, and sudden assaults in the night time.
If they succeed
in causing a panic, they dash forward with headlong fury: if the
enemy is on the alert, and shows no signs of fear, they become
wary and deliberate in their movements.
Some of them are armed in the primitive style, with bows and
arrows; the greater part have American fusees, made after the
fashion of those of the Hudson's Bay Company. These they procure
at the trading post of the American Fur Company, on Marias River,
where they traffic their peltries for arms, ammunition, clothing,
and trinkets. They are extremely fond of spirituous liquors and
tobacco; for which nuisances they are ready to exchange not
merely their guns and horses, but even their wives and daughters.
As they are a treacherous race, and have cherished a lurking
hostility to the whites ever since one of their tribe was killed
by Mr. Lewis, the associate of General Clarke, in his exploring
expedition across the Rocky Mountains, the American Fur Company
is obliged constantly to keep at that post a garrison of sixty or
seventy men.
Under the general name of Blackfeet are comprehended several
tribes: such as the Surcies, the Peagans, the Blood Indians, and
the Gros Ventres of the Prairies: who roam about the southern
branches of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, together with
some other tribes further north.
The bands infesting the Wind River Mountains and the country
adjacent at the time of which we are treating, were Gros Ventres
of the Prairies, which are not to be confounded with Gros Ventres
of the Missouri, who keep about the lower part of that river, and
are friendly to the white men.
This hostile band keeps about the headwaters of the Missouri, and
numbers about nine hundred fighting men. Once in the course of
two or three years they abandon their usual abodes, and make a
visit to the Arapahoes of the Arkansas. Their route lies either
through the Crow country, and the Black Hills, or through the
lands of the Nez Perces, Flatheads, Bannacks, and Shoshonies. As
they enjoy their favorite state of hostility with all these
tribes, their expeditions are prone to be conducted in the most
lawless and predatory style; nor do they hesitate to extend their
maraudings to any party of white men they meet with; following
their trails; hovering about their camps; waylaying and dogging
the caravans of the free traders, and murdering the solitary
trapper. The consequences are frequent and desperate fights
between them and the "mountaineers," in the wild defiles and
fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains.
The band in question was, at this time, on their way homeward
from one of their customary visits to the Arapahoes; and in the
ensuing chapter we shall treat of some bloody encounters between
them and the trappers, which had taken place just before the
arrival of Captain Bonneville among the mountains.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 30 of 230
Words from 14938 to 15465
of 118673
