Here He Fell In With One Of The Earliest
Trapping Expeditions Sent By General Ashley Across The Mountains.
It Was Conducted By Smith, Fitzpatrick, And Sublette.
Rose
enlisted with them as guide and interpreter.
When he got them
among the Crows, he was exceedingly generous with their goods;
making presents to the braves of his adopted tribe, as became a
high-minded chief.
This, doubtless, helped to revive his popularity. In that
expedition, Smith and Fitzpatrick were robbed of their horses in
Green River valley; the place where the robbery took place still
bears the name of Horse Creek. We are not informed whether the
horses were stolen through the instigation and management of
Rose; it is not improbable, for such was the perfidy he had
intended to practice on a former occasion toward Mr. Hunt and his
party.
The last anecdote we have of Rose is from an Indian trader. When
General Atkinson made his military expedition up the Missouri, in
1825, to protect the fur trade, he held a conference with the
Crow nation, at which Rose figured as Indian dignitary and Crow
interpreter. The military were stationed at some little distance
from the scene of the "big talk"; while the general and the
chiefs were smoking pipes and making speeches, the officers,
supposing all was friendly, left the troops, and drew near the
scene of ceremonial. Some of the more knowing Crows, perceiving
this, stole quietly to the camp, and, unobserved, contrived to
stop the touch-holes of the field-pieces with dirt. Shortly
after, a misunderstanding occurred in the conference: some of the
Indians, knowing the cannon to be useless, became insolent. A
tumult arose. In the confusion, Colonel O'Fallan snapped a pistol
in the face of a brave, and knocked him down with the butt end.
The Crows were all in a fury. A chance-medley fight was on the
point of taking place, when Rose, his natural sympathies as a
white man suddenly recurring, broke the stock of his fusee over
the head of a Crow warrior, and laid so vigorously about him with
the barrel, that he soon put the whole throng to flight. Luckily,
as no lives had been lost, this sturdy rib roasting calmed the
fury of the Crows, and the tumult ended without serious
consequences.
What was the ultimate fate of this vagabond hero is not
distinctly known. Some report him to have fallen a victim to
disease, brought on by his licentious life; others assert that he
was murdered in a feud among the Crows. After all, his residence
among these savages, and the influence he acquired over them,
had, for a time, some beneficial effects. He is said, not merely
to have rendered them more formidable to the Blackfeet, but to
have opened their eyes to the policy of cultivating the
friendship of the white men.
After Rose's death, his policy continued to be cultivated, with
indifferent success, by Arapooish, the chief already mentioned,
who had been his great friend, and whose character he had
contributed to develope.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 99 of 230
Words from 50670 to 51179
of 118673
