But For Many
Years Prior To The Beginning Of The Operations Of The "Wolf
Organization" The Hudson's Bay Company Had Established Forts And
Trading Stations Over All The Country, Wherever Fur-Gathering Indians
Could Be Found, And Vast Numbers Of These Animals Were Killed.
Their
destruction has since gone on at an accelerated rate from year to year
as the settlements have been extended, so that in some cases it is
difficult to obtain specimens enough for the use of naturalists.
But
even before any of these settlements were made, and before the coming
of the Hudson's Bay Company, there was very little danger to be met in
passing through this wilderness as far as animals were concerned, and
but little of any kind as compared with the dangers encountered in
crowded houses and streets.
When Lewis and Clark made their famous trip across the continent in
1804-05, when all the Rocky Mountain region was wild, as well as the
Pacific Slope, they did not lose a single man by wild animals, nor,
though frequently attacked, especially by the grizzlies of the Rocky
Mountains, were any of them wounded seriously. Captain Clark was
bitten on the hand by a wolf as he lay asleep; that was one bite among
more than a hundred men while traveling through eight to nine thousand
miles of savage wilderness. They could hardly have been so fortunate
had they stayed at home. They wintered on the edge of the Clatsop
plains, on the south side of the Columbia River near its mouth. In
the woods on that side they found game abundant, especially elk, and
with the aid of the friendly Indians who furnished salmon and
"wapatoo" (the tubers of Sagittaria variabilis), they were in no
danger of starving.
But on the return trip in the spring they reached the base of the
Rocky Mountains when the range was yet too heavily snow-laden to be
crossed with horses. Therefore they had to wait some weeks. This was
at the head of one of the northern branches of the Snake River, and,
their scanty stock of provisions being nearly exhausted, the whole
party was compelled to live mostly on bears and dogs; deer, antelope,
and elk, usually abundant, were now scarce because the region had been
closely hunted over by the Indians before their arrival.
Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of
the more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size,
color of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification.
Wishing to get the opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one of whose
villages they were encamped, concerning the various species, the
explorers unpacked their bundles and spread out for examination all
the skins they had taken. The Indian hunters immediately classed the
white, the deep and the pale grizzly red, the grizzly dark-brown - in
short, all those with the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty
color without regard to the color of the ground or foil - under the
name of hoh-host.
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