“War,” said the chiefs, “is a bloody business, and full of evil; but it keeps the eyes of the chiefs always open, and makes the limbs of the young men strong and supple.  In war, every one is on the alert.  If we see a trail we know it must be an enemy; if the Blackfeet come to us, we know it is for war, and we are ready.  Peace, on the other hand, sounds no alarm; the eyes of the chiefs are closed in sleep, and the young men are sleek and lazy.  The horses stray into the mountains; the women and their little babes go about alone.  But the heart of a Blackfoot is a lie, and his tongue is a trap.  If he says peace it is to deceive; he comes to us as a brother; he smokes his pipe with us; but when he sees us weak, and off our guard, he will slay and steal.  We will have no such peace; let there be war!”

With this reasoning Captain Bonneville was fain to acquiesce; but, since the sagacious Flatheads and their allies were content to remain in a state of warfare, he wished them at least to exercise the boasted vigilance which war was to produce, and to keep their eyes open.  He represented to them the impossibility that two such considerable clans could move about the country without leaving trails by which they might be traced.  Besides, among the Blackfeet braves were several Nez Perces, who had been taken prisoners in early youth, adopted by their captors, and trained up and imbued with warlike and predatory notions; these had lost all sympathies with their native tribe, and would be prone to lead the enemy to their secret haunts.  He exhorted them, therefore, to keep upon the alert, and never to remit their vigilance while within the range of so crafty and cruel a foe.  All these counsels were lost upon his easy and simple-minded hearers.  A careless indifference reigned throughout their encampments, and their horses were permitted to range the hills at night in perfect freedom.  Captain Bonneville had his own horses brought in at night, and properly picketed and guarded.  The evil he apprehended soon took place.  In a single night a swoop was made through the neighboring pastures by the Blackfeet, and eighty-six of the finest horses carried off.  A whip and a rope were left in a conspicuous situation by the robbers, as a taunt to the simpletons they had unhorsed.

Long before sunrise the news of this calamity spread like wildfire through the different encampments.  Captain Bonneville, whose own horses remained safe at their pickets, watched in momentary expectation of an outbreak of warriors, Pierced-nose and Flathead, in furious pursuit of the marauders; but no such thing—­they contented themselves with searching diligently over hill and dale, to glean up such horses as had escaped the hands of the marauders, and then resigned themselves to their loss with the most exemplary quiescence.

Some, it is true, who were entirely unhorsed, set out on a begging visit to their cousins, as they called them, the Lower Nez Perces, who inhabit the lower country about the Columbia, and possess horses in abundance.  To these they repair when in difficulty, and seldom fail, by dint of begging and bartering, to get themselves once more mounted on horseback.