cantonment, to procure a supply of provisions.  When the men were about to depart, he proposed to the Nez Perces that they, or some of them, should join the hunting-party.  To his surprise, they promptly declined.  He inquired the reason for their refusal, seeing that they were in nearly as starving a situation as his own people.  They replied that it was a sacred day with them, and the Great Spirit would be angry should they devote it to hunting.  They offered, however, to accompany the party if it would delay its departure until the following day; but this the pinching demands of hunger would not permit, and the detachment proceeded.

A few days afterward, four of them signified to Captain Bonneville that they were about to hunt.  “What!” exclaimed he, “without guns or arrows; and with only one old spear?  What do you expect to kill?” They smiled among themselves, but made no answer.  Preparatory to the chase, they performed some religious rites, and offered up to the Great Spirit a few short prayers for safety and success; then, having received the blessings of their wives, they leaped upon their horses and departed, leaving the whole party of Christian spectators amazed and rebuked by this lesson of faith and dependence on a supreme and benevolent Being.  “Accustomed,” adds Captain Bonneville, “as I had heretofore been, to find the wretched Indian revelling in blood, and stained by every vice which can degrade human nature, I could scarcely realize the scene which I had witnessed.  Wonder at such unaffected tenderness and piety, where it was least to have been sought, contended in all our bosoms with shame and confusion, at receiving such pure and wholesome instructions from creatures so far below us in the arts and comforts of life.”  The simple prayers of the poor Indians were not unheard.  In the course of four or five days they returned, laden with meat.  Captain Bonneville was curious to know how they had attained such success with such scanty means.  They gave him to understand that they had chased the buffalo at full speed, until they tired them down, when they easily dispatched them with the spear, and made use of the same weapon to flay the carcasses.  To carry through their lessons to their Christian friends, the poor savages were as charitable as they had been pious, and generously shared with them the spoils of their hunting, giving them food enough to last for several days.

A further and more intimate intercourse with this tribe gave Captain Bonneville still greater cause to admire their strong devotional feeling.  “Simply to call these people religious,” says he, “would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades their whole conduct.  Their honesty is immaculate, and their purity of purpose, and their observance of the rites of their religion, are most uniform and remarkable.  They are, certainly, more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.”