The Disastrous Surprisal Of This Hunting Party Is Cited By
Captain Bonneville To Show The Importance Of Vigilant Watching
And Judicious Encampments In The Indian Country.
Most of this
kind of disasters to traders and trappers arise from some
careless inattention to the state of their arms and ammunition,
the placing of their horses at night, the position of their
camping ground, and the posting of their night watches.
The
Indian is a vigilant and crafty foe, by no means given to
hair-brained assaults; he seldom attacks when he finds his foe
well prepared and on the alert. Caution is at least as
efficacious a protection against him as courage.
The Indians who made this attack were at first supposed to be
Blackfeet; until Captain Bonneville found subsequently, in the
camp of the Bannecks, a horse, saddle, and bridle, which he
recognized as having belonged to one of the hunters. The
Bannecks, however, stoutly denied having taken these spoils in
fight, and persisted in affirming that the outrage had been
perpetrated by a Blackfoot band.
Captain Bonneville remained on Snake River nearly three weeks
after the arrival of Matthieu and his party. At length his horses
having recovered strength sufficient for a journey, he prepared
to return to the Nez Perces, or rather to visit his caches on
Salmon River; that he might take thence goods and equipments for
the opening season. Accordingly, leaving sixteen men at Snake
River, he set out on the 19th of February with sixteen others on
his journey to the caches.
Fording the river, he proceeded to the borders of the deep snow,
when he encamped under the lee of immense piles of burned rock.
On the 21st he was again floundering through the snow, on the
great Snake River plain, where it lay to the depth of thirty
inches. It was sufficiently incrusted to bear a pedestrian, but
the poor horses broke through the crust, and plunged and strained
at every step. So lacerated were they by the ice that it was
necessary to change the front every hundred yards, and put a
different one in advance to break the way. The open prairies were
swept by a piercing and biting wind froIn the northwest. At
night, they had to task their ingenuity to provide shelter and
keep from freezing. In the first place, they dug deep holes in
the snow, piling it up in ramparts to windward as a protection
against the blast. Beneath these they spread buffalo skins, upon
which they stretched themselves in full dress, with caps, cloaks,
and moccasins, and covered themselves with numerous blankets;
notwithstanding all which they were often severely pinched with
the cold.
On the 28th of February they arrived on the banks of Godin River.
This stream emerges from the mountains opposite an eastern branch
of the Malade River, running southeast, forms a deep and swift
current about twenty yards wide, passing rapidly through a defile
to which it gives its name, and then enters the great plain
where, after meandering about forty miles, it is finally lost in
the region of the Burned Rocks.
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