The Two Parties Came Together Two Or Three Days Afterwards, On
The 4th Of August, After Having Passed Through The Gap Of The
Littlehorn Mountain.
In company with Campbell's convoy was a
trapping party of the Rocky Mountain Company, headed by
Fitzpatrick; who, after Campbell's embarkation on the Bighorn,
was to take charge of all the horses, and proceed on a trapping
campaign.
There were, moreover, two chance companions in the
rival camp. One was Captain Stewart, of the British army, a
gentleman of noble connections, who was amusing himself by a
wandering tour in the Far West; in the course of which, he had
lived in hunter's style; accompanying various bands of traders,
trappers, and Indians; and manifesting that relish for the
wilderness that belongs to men of game spirit.
The other casual inmate of Mr. Campbell's camp was Mr. Nathaniel
Wyeth; the self-same leader of the band of New England salmon
fishers, with whom we parted company in the valley of Pierre's
Hole, after the battle with the Blackfeet. A few days after that
affair, he again set out from the rendezvous in company with
Milton Sublette and his brigade of trappers. On his march, he
visited the battle ground, and penetrated to the deserted fort of
the Blackfeet in the midst of the wood. It was a dismal scene.
The fort was strewed with the mouldering bodies of the slain;
while vultures soared aloft, or sat brooding on the trees around;
and Indian dogs howled about the place, as if bewailing the death
of their masters. Wyeth travelled for a considerable distance to
the southwest, in company with Milton Sublette, when they
separated; and the former, with eleven men, the remnant of his
band, pushed on for Snake River; kept down the course of that
eventful stream; traversed the Blue Mountains, trapping beaver
occasionally by the way, and finally, after hardships of all
kinds, arrived, on the 29th of October, at Vancouver, on the
Columbia, the main factory of the Hudson's Bay Company.
He experienced hospitable treatment at the hands of the agents of
that company; but his men, heartily tired of wandering in the
wilderness, or tempted by other prospects, refused, for the most
part, to continue any longer in his service. Some set off for the
Sandwich Islands; some entered into other employ. Wyeth found,
too, that a great part of the goods he had brought with him were
unfitted for the Indian trade; in a word, his expedition,
undertaken entirely on his own resources, proved a failure. He
lost everything invested in it, but his hopes. These were as
strong as ever. He took note of every thing, therefore, that
could be of service to him in the further prosecution of his
project; collected all the information within his reach, and then
set off, accompanied by merely two men, on his return journey
across the continent. He had got thus far "by hook and by crook,"
a mode in which a New England man can make his way all over the
world, and through all kinds of difficulties, and was now bound
for Boston; in full confidence of being able to form a company
for the salmon fishery and fur trade of the Columbia.
The party of Mr. Campbell had met with a disaster in the course
of their route from the Sweet Water. Three or four of the men,
who were reconnoitering the country in advance of the main body,
were visited one night in their camp, by fifteen or twenty
Shoshonies. Considering this tribe as perfectly friendly, they
received them in the most cordial and confiding manner. In the
course of the night, the man on guard near the horses fell sound
asleep; upon which a Shoshonie shot him in the head, and nearly
killed him. The savages then made off with the horses, leaving
the rest of the party to find their way to the main body on foot.
The rival companies of Captain Bonneville and Mr. Campbell, thus
fortuitously brought together, now prosecuted their journey in
great good fellowship; forming a joint camp of about a hundred
men. The captain, however, began to entertain doubts that
Fitzpatrick and his trappers, who kept profound silence as to
their future movements, intended to hunt the same grounds which
he had selected for his autumnal campaign; which lay to the west
of the Horn River, on its tributary streams. In the course of his
march, therefore, he secretly detached a small party of trappers,
to make their way to those hunting grounds, while he continued on
with the main body; appointing a rendezvous, at the next full
moon, about the 28th of August, at a place called the Medicine
Lodge.
On reaching the second chain, called the Bighorn Mountains, where
the river forced its impetuous way through a precipitous defile,
with cascades and rapids, the travellers were obliged to leave
its banks, and traverse the mountains by a rugged and frightful
route, emphatically called the "Bad Pass." Descending the
opposite side, they again made for the river banks; and about the
middle of August, reached the point below the rapids where the
river becomes navigable for boats. Here Captain Bonneville
detached a second party of trappers, consisting of ten men, to
seek and join those whom he had detached while on the route;
appointing for them the same rendezvous, (at the Medicine Lodge,)
on the 28th of August.
All hands now set to work to construct "bull boats," as they are
technically called; a light, fragile kind of bark, characteristic
of the expedients and inventions of the wilderness; being formed
of buffalo skins, stretched on frames. They are sometimes, also,
called skin boats. Wyeth was the first ready; and, with his usual
promptness and hardihood, launched his frail bark, singly, on
this wild and hazardous voyage, down an almost interminable
succession of rivers, winding through countries teeming with
savage hordes. Milton Sublette, his former fellow traveller, and
his companion in the battle scenes of Pierre's Hole, took passage
in his boat.
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