Indeed, It Would Have Been Impossible To Provide For The Whole
Party In This Neighborhood.
It was at the extreme western limit
of the buffalo range, and these animals had recently been
completely hunted
Out of the neighborhood by the Nez Perces, so
that, although the hunters of the garrison were continually on
the alert, ranging the country round, they brought in scarce game
sufficient to keep famine from the door. Now and then there was a
scanty meal of fish or wild-fowl, occasionally an antelope; but
frequently the cravings of hunger had to be appeased with roots,
or the flesh of wolves and muskrats. Rarely could the inmates of
the cantonment boast of having made a full meal, and never of
having wherewithal for the morrow. In this way they starved along
until the 8th of October, when they were joined by a party of
five families of Nez Perces, who in some measure reconciled them
to the hardships of their situation by exhibiting a lot still
more destitute. A more forlorn set they had never encountered:
they had not a morsel of meat or fish; nor anything to subsist
on, excepting roots, wild rosebuds, the barks of certain plants,
and other vegetable production; neither had they any weapon for
hunting or defence, excepting an old spear: yet the poor fellows
made no murmur nor complaint; but seemed accustomed to their hard
fare. If they could not teach the white men their practical
stoicism, they at least made them acquainted with the edible
properties of roots and wild rosebuds, and furnished them a
supply from their own store.
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