As They Find It Difficult, With Their Blunt Shafts, To
Kill The Wild Game Of The Mountains, They Occasionally Supply
Themselves With Food, By Entrapping The Spanish Horses.
Driving
them stealthily into fastnesses and ravines, they slaughter them
without difficulty, and dry their flesh for provisions.
Some they
carry off to trade with distant tribes; and in this way, the
Spanish horses pass from hand to hand among the Indians, until
they even find their way across the Rocky Mountains.
The Mexicans are continually on the alert, to intercept these
marauders; but the Indians are apt to outwit them, and force them
to make long and wild expeditions in pursuit of their stolen
horses.
Two of the Mexican party just mentioned joined the band of
trappers, and proved themselves worthy companions. In the course
of their journey through the country frequented by the poor Root
Diggers, there seems to have been an emulation between them,
which could inflict the greatest outrages upon the natives. The
trappers still considered them in the light of dangerous foes;
and the Mexicans, very probably, charged them with the sin of
horse-stealing; we have no other mode of accounting for the
infamous barbarities of which, according to their own story, they
were guilty; hunting the poor Indians like wild beasts, and
killing them without mercy. The Mexicans excelled at this savage
sport; chasing their unfortunate victims at full speed; noosing
them round the neck with their lasos, and then dragging them to
death!
Such are the scanty details of this most disgraceful expedition;
at least, such are all that Captain Bonneville had the patience
to collect; for he was so deeply grieved by the failure of his
plans, and so indignant at the atrocities related to him, that he
turned, with disgust and horror, from the narrators.
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