“A party of trappers came to the village, and one of them took me for his wife.  This is he.  I am very happy; he treats me with kindness, and I have taught him the language of my people.  As we were travelling this way, some of the Blackfeet warriors beset us, and carried off the horses of the party.  We followed, and my husband held a parley with them.  The guns were laid down, and the pipe was lighted; but some of the white men attempted to seize the horses by force, and then a battle began.  The snow was deep, the white men sank into it at every step; but the red men, with their snow-shoes, passed over the surface like birds, and drove off many of the horses in sight of their owners.  With those that remained we resumed our journey.  At length words took place between the leader of the party and my husband.  He took away our horses, which had escaped in the battle, and turned us from his camp.  My husband had one good friend among the trappers.  That is he (pointing to the man who had asked assistance for them).  He is a good man.  His heart is big.  When he came in from hunting, and found that we had been driven away, he gave up all his wages, and followed us, that he might speak good words for us to the white captain.”

49.

Rendezvous at Wind River—­Campaign of Montero and his brigade in the Crow country—­Wars between the Crows and Blackfeet—­Death—­of Arapooish—­Blackfeet lurkers—­Sagacity of the horse—­Dependence of the hunter on his horse—­Return to the settlements.

On the 22d of June Captain Bonneville raised his camp, and moved to the forks of Wind River; the appointed place of rendezvous.  In a few days he was joined there by the brigade of Montero, which had been sent, in the preceding year, to beat up the Crow country, and afterward proceed to the Arkansas.  Montero had followed the early part of his instructions; after trapping upon some of the upper streams, he proceeded to Powder River.  Here he fell in with the Crow villages or bands, who treated him with unusual kindness, and prevailed upon him to take up his winter quarters among them.

The Crows at that time were struggling almost for existence with their old enemies, the Blackfeet; who, in the past year, had picked off the flower of their warriors in various engagements, and among the rest, Arapooish, the friend of the white men.  That sagacious and magnanimous chief had beheld, with grief, the ravages which war was making in his tribe, and that it was declining in force, and must eventually be destroyed unless some signal blow could be struck to retrieve its fortunes.  In a pitched battle of the two tribes, he made a speech to his warriors, urging them to set everything at hazard in one furious charge; which done, he led the way into the thickest of the foe.  He was soon separated from his men, and fell covered with wounds, but his self-devotion was not in vain.  The Blackfeet were defeated; and from that time the Crows plucked up fresh heart, and were frequently successful.