And Here A Word Or Two Concerning The Crows May Be Of Service To
The Reader, As They Will Figure Occasionally In The Succeeding
Narration.
The tribe consists of four bands, which have their nestling-
places in fertile, well-wooded valleys, lying among the
Rocky
Mountains, and watered by the Big Horse River and its tributary
streams; but, though these are properly their homes, where they
shelter their old people, their wives, and their children, the
men of the tribe are almost continually on the foray and the
scamper. They are, in fact, notorious marauders and horse-
stealers; crossing and re-crossing the mountains, robbing on the
one side, and conveying their spoils to the other. Hence, we are
told, is derived their name, given to them on account of their
unsettled and predatory habits; winging their flight, like the
crows, from one side of the mountains to the other, and making
free booty of everything that lies in their way. Horses, however,
are the especial objects of their depredations, and their skill
and audacity in stealing them are said to be astonishing. This is
their glory and delight; an accomplished horse-stealer fills up
their idea of a hero. Many horses are obtained by them, also, in
barter from tribes in and beyond the mountains. They have an
absolute passion for this noble animal; besides which he is with
them an important object of traffic. Once a year they make a
visit to the Mandans, Minatarees, and other tribes of the
Missouri, taking with them droves of horses which they exchange
for guns, ammunition, trinkets, vermilion, cloths of bright
colors, and various other articles of European manufacture. With
these they supply their own wants and caprices, and carry on the
internal trade for horses already mentioned.
The plot of Rose to rob and abandon his countrymen when in the
heart of the wilderness, and to throw himself into the hands of
savages, may appear strange and improbable to those unacquainted
with the singular and anomalous characters that are to be found
about the borders. This fellow, it appears, was one of those
desperadoes of the frontiers, outlawed by their crimes, who
combine the vices of civilized and savage life, and are ten times
more barbarous than the Indians with whom they consort. Rose had
formerly belonged to one of the gangs of pirates who infested the
islands of the Mississippi, plundering boats as they went up and
down the river, and who sometimes shifted the scene of their
robberies to the shore, waylaying travellers as they returned by
land from New Orleans with the proceeds of their downward voyage,
plundering them of their money and effects, and often
perpetrating the most atrocious murders.
These hordes of villains being broken up and dispersed, Rose had
betaken himself to the wilderness, and associated himself with
the Crows, whose predatory habits were congenial with his own,
had married a woman of the tribe, and, in short, had identified
himself with those vagrant savages.
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