ous enemy at their doors. The
air was rent by the shrieks and lamentations of the women, who, casting
off their ornaments and tearing their hair, wandered about, frantically
bewailing the dead and predicting destruction to the living. The
remaining warriors armed themselves for obstinate defence; but showed
by their gloomy looks and sullen silence that they considered defence
hopeless. To their surprise the Blackfeet refrained from pursuing
their advantage; perhaps satisfied with the blood already shed, or
disheartened by the loss they had themselves sustained. At any rate,
they disappeared from the hills, and it was soon ascertained that they
had returned to the Horse Prairie.

The unfortunate Nez Perces now began once more to breathe. A few of
their warriors, taking pack-horses, repaired to the defile to bring away
the bodies of their slaughtered brethren. They found them mere headless
trunks; and the wounds with which they were covered showed how bravely
they had fought. Their hearts, too, had been torn out and carried off;
a proof of their signal valor; for in devouring the heart of a foe
renowned for bravery, or who has distinguished himself in battle, the
Indian victor thinks he appropriates to himself the courage of the
deceased.

Gathering the mangled bodies of the slain, and strapping them across
their pack-horses, the warriors returned, in dismal procession, to the
village. The tribe came forth to meet them; the women with piercing
cries and wailings; the men with downcast countenances, in which gloom
and sorrow seemed fixed as if in marble. The mutilated and almost
undistinguishable bodies were placed in rows upon the ground, in the
midst of the assemblage; and the scene of heart-rending anguish and
lamentation that ensued would have confounded those who insist on Indian
stoicism.

Such was the disastrous event that had overwhelmed the Nez Perces tribe
during the absence of Captain Bonneville; and he was informed that
Kosato, the renegade, who, being stationed in the village, had been
prevented from going on the forlorn hope, was again striving to rouse
the vindictive feelings of his adopted brethren, and to prompt them to
revenge the slaughter of their devoted braves.

During his sojourn on the Snake River plain, Captain Bonneville made one
of his first essays at the strategy of the fur trade. There was at
this time an assemblage of Nez Perces, Flatheads, and Cottonois Indians
encamped together upon the