"Being Now Very Anxious To Meet With The Shoshonees Or Snake Indians,
For The Purpose Of Obtaining The Necessary Information
Of our route,
as well as to procure horses, it was thought best for one of us
to go forward
With a small party and endeavor to discover them,
before the daily discharge of our guns, which is necessary
for our subsistence, should give them notice of our approach.
If by an accident they hear us, they will most probably retreat
to the mountains, mistaking us for their enemies, who usually
attack them on this side." . . . . . . . . .
Captain Clark was now in the lead with a small party,
and he came upon the remains of several Indian camps formed
of willow-brush, Traces of Indians became more plentiful.
The journal adds: -
"At the same time Captain Clark observed that the pine trees
had been stripped of their bark about the same season,
which our Indian woman says her countrymen do in order to obtain
the sap and the soft parts of the wood and bark for food.
About eleven o'clock he met a herd of elk and killed two of them;
but such was the want of wood in the neighborhood that he was unable
to procure enough to make a fire, and was therefore obliged to substitute
the dung of the buffalo, with which he cooked his breakfast.
They then resumed their course along an old Indian road.
In the afternoon they reached a handsome valley, watered by a large creek,
both of which extended a considerable distance into the mountain.
This they crossed, and during the evening travelled over a mountainous
country covered with sharp fragments of flint rock; these bruised
and cut their feet very much, but were scarcely less troublesome
than the prickly-pear of the open plains, which have now become
so abundant that it is impossible to avoid them, and the thorns
are so strong that they pierce a double sole of dressed deer-skin;
the best resource against them is a sole of buffalo-hide in
parchment [that is, hard dried]. At night they reached the river
much fatigued, having passed two mountains in the course of the day,
and travelled thirty miles.
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