Among the motley Visitors to the winter quarters of Captain Bonneville was a party of Pends Oreilles (or Hanging-ears) and their chief.  These Indians have a strong resemblance, in character and customs, to the Nez Perces.  They amount to about three hundred lodges, are well armed, and possess great numbers of horses.  During the spring, summer, and autumn, they hunt the buffalo about the head-waters of the Missouri, Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, and the northern branches of Salmon River.  Their winter quarters are upon the Racine Amere, where they subsist upon roots and dried buffalo meat.  Upon this river the Hudson’s Bay Company have established a trading post, where the Pends Oreilles and the Flatheads bring their peltries to exchange for arms, clothing and trinkets.

This tribe, like the Nez Perces, evince strong and peculiar feelings of natural piety.  Their religion is not a mere superstitious fear, like that of most savages; they evince abstract notions of morality; a deep reverence for an overruling spirit, and a respect for the rights of their fellow men.  In one respect their religion partakes of the pacific doctrines of the Quakers.  They hold that the Great Spirit is displeased with all nations who wantonly engage in war; they abstain, therefore, from all aggressive hostilities.  But though thus unoffending in their policy, they are called upon continually to wage defensive warfare; especially with the Blackfeet; with whom, in the course of their hunting expeditions, they come in frequent collision and have desperate battles.  Their conduct as warriors is without fear or reproach, and they can never be driven to abandon their hunting grounds.

Like most savages they are firm believers in dreams, and in the power and efficacy of charms and amulets, or medicines as they term them.  Some of their braves, also, who have had numerous hairbreadth ’scapes, like the old Nez Perce chief in the battle of Pierre’s Hole, are believed to wear a charmed life, and to be bullet-proof.  Of these gifted beings marvelous anecdotes are related, which are most potently believed by their fellow savages, and sometimes almost credited by the white hunters.

11.

Rival trapping parties—­Manoeuvring—­A desperate game—­ Vanderburgh and the Blackfeet—­Deserted camp fire—­A dark defile—­An Indian ambush—­A fierce melee—­Fatal consequences—­Fitzpatrick and Bridger—­Trappers precautions —­Meeting with the Blackfeet—­More fighting—­Anecdote of a young—­Mexican and an Indian girl.

While Captain Bonneville and his men are sojourning among the Nez Perces, on Salmon River, we will inquire after the fortunes of those doughty rivals of the Rocky Mountains and American Fur Companies, who started off for the trapping grounds to the north-northwest.