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