Pouring into the south side of the Columbia between Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver, were the Walla Walla, Umatilla, John Day’s, the River of the Falls. In the mountains southward, were the beaver swamps. As the entire region was unknown, Ogden determined to lead his brigade West close to the Columbia, then strike up the fartherest west river—double back eastward on his own tracks at the headwaters, and so come down to the Columbia again by the Snake. The circle would include all the south of Oregon and Idaho. He writes: “Monday, November 21st, 1825—Having sent off all hands yesterday from Walla Walla, I took my departure and overtook my party awaiting my arrival. We are following the banks of the Columbia southwest. Our road is hilly, and we have great trouble with our horses, for they are all wild. We are followed by a large camp of Indians bent on stealing our horses. Although we rise at day dawn, we are never ready to start before ten o’clock, the horses are so difficult to catch. Wednesday, 30th—We have reached John Day’s River. A great many Indians have collected about us. Each night the beaver traps are set out, and in the morning some have been stolen by the Indians. Many horses missing, having been stolen. This does not prevent raising camp, as by remaining we should lose more horses than we could get back. Saturday, December 3rd—We bade farewell to the Columbia River and struck south up the River of the Falls. It is scarcely credible, though we are such a short distance from the Columbia, what a difference there is in the country. This soil is rich. The oaks are large and abundant. The grass is green, though at a distance on both sides all the hills are powdered with snow. Sunday, December 4th—It is now very cold, for we have begun ascending the mountains and camp wherever we can find a brook. The man I sent back for the lost horses, found them on the north side of the Columbia. He was obliged to give the Indians thirty balls of powder to get them back, no doubt a trick, and the thief, himself, restored them, a common practice with all the Indians. We are coming to the end of the Columbia hills. Mt. Hood, a grand and noble sight, bears west; Mt. Helen’s north; and to the south are lofty mountains the shape of sugar loaves. On all of these are pines, that add to the grandeur. After descending the divide we reached a plain and struck east, gathering some curious petrifactions of fir trees. Our horses are greatly fatigued, for the road is of cut rocks. Deer are abundant. We saw upward of one hundred to-day, but too swift to be overtaken on this dangerous ground. Many of the bare hills are of blood-red color. In this quarter are three boiling fountains of sulphur. I must find an Indian, who will guide us. If not, we must attempt to cross east without. Our horses are saddle deep in mire.”
From the time Ogden crossed the sky line of the Blue Mountains for the headwaters of the Snake, his difficulties began. Hunters to the fore for the game that was to feed the camp, the cavalcade began zigzagging up the steep mountain sides. Here, windfall of pines and giant firs, interlocked twice the height of a man, scattered the wild Cayuse ponies in the forest. There, the cut rocks, steep as a wall and sharp as knives, crowded the pack horses to the edge of bottomless precipices where one misstep meant instant death for rider and horse. And the mountain torrents tearing over the rocks swept horses away at fording places, so that once Ogden was compelled to follow the torrent down its cañon to calmer waters and there build a canoe. In this way his hunters crossed over by threes and fours, but how to get the fractious horses across? It was too swift for men to swim, and the bronchos refused to plunge in. Getting two or three of the wise old bell-mares, that are in every string of packers, at the end of a long rope, the canoemen shot across the whirl of midstream and got footing on the opposite shore. Then by dint of pulling and yelling the frantic horses were half frightened, half-tumbled into the river, and came out right side up a hundred yards farther down. At other places, the cut-rocks—a local term that explains itself—were so steep and sharp, Ogden ordered all hands dismounted and half the packs carried up on the men’s backs. It was high up the mountain, and the snow that falls almost continuously in winter above tree line made the rocks slippery as ice. For a few days, owing to the altitude and cold, no beaver had been taken, no game seen. The men were toiling on empty stomachs and short tempers. Night fell with all hands still sweating up the slippery rocks. A slave Indian lost his self control and struck Jo. Despard, one of the freemen, on the back. Throwing down his load, Despard beat the rascal soundly, but when the battle was over and all the bad temper expended, the slave Indian was dead. Poor Despard was mad with grief, for no death was ever passed unpunished by the Hudson’s Bay. Sewing the murdered man in rolls of buffalo skin, they buried him with service of prayers on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains. “It is not in my power,” writes Ogden, “to send Despard to Vancouver. Until we return to the headwaters, I will let the affair remain quiet. The poor fellow is wretched over the murder.”
Peter Skene Ogden, who led the Hudson’s Bay Company Mountain Brigades of three and four hundreds through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona.
During the march eastward across the valleys, between the Cascade range and the Rockies, one hundred and sixty traps for beaver were set out each night. In the mornings, when camp was broken, from thirty to sixty beaver were considered a good night’s work. Snake Indians were met and a guide engaged, but the Snakes were notorious horse thieves, and a guard was kept round the horses each night. Ogden makes a curious discovery about the beaver in this region. “Owing to the mildness of the climate,” he writes, “beaver here do not lay up a stock of provisions as in cold countries.” As the cold of mid-winter came, the beaver seemed simply to disappear to other haunts. In vain, the men chiselled and trenched the ice of the rivers above and below the beaver dams. The beaver houses were found empty. Tom McKay was scouring the cut-rocks for game with his band of hunters; but it is the season when game leaves the cut-rocks, and night after night the tired hunters came in hungry and empty handed. The few beavers trapped were frequently stolen at night, for there are no ten commandments to hungry men, and in spite of cold and wet the trappers began sleeping in the swamps near their traps to keep guard. “If we do not soon find game,” writes Ogden on December 22nd, “we shall surely starve. My Indian guide threatens to leave us. If we could only find the headwaters of the Snake without him, he might go to the devil. We do not see the trace of an animal. I feel very uneasy about food. Sunday, December 25th—This being Christmas, all hands remained in camp and I held prayers. The cold increases. Prospects, gloomy; not twenty pounds of food in camp. If we escape starvation, God preserve us, it will depend on Tom McKay’s hunters. On collecting our horses, we found one-third limping. Many of them could not stand and lay helpless on the plain. If this cold does not soon pass, my situation with so many men will be terrible. December 31st—One of the freemen, three days without food, killed one of our horses. This example will soon be followed by others. Only one beaver to-day. Gave the men half rations for to-morrow, which will be devoured to-night, as three-quarters in camp have been two days without food. Sunday, New Year’s, 1826—Remained in camp. Gave all hands a dram. We had more fasting than feasting. This is the first New Year’s day since I came to the fur country that my men were without food. Only four beaver to-day. Sent my men to the mountains for deer. Our horses can scarcely crawl for want of grass; but march they must, or we starve. In the evening, Tom McKay and men arrived without seeing the track of an animal, so this blasts my hope. What will become of us? So many are starving in camp that they start before daylight to steal beaver out of their neighbors’ traps. Had the laconic pleasure of seeing a raven watching us to-day! The wolves follow our camp. Two horses killed for the kettle. January 11th—Reached the source of Day’s River. Our horses are too lame to move. A horrible road we have had for ten days of rock and stone. We have taken in all two hundred and sixty-five beaver and nine otter here. Our course is due east over barren hills, a lofty range of mountains on both sides covered with Norway pines. Thank God if we can cross these mountains I trust to reach Snake River. There are six feet of snow on the mountain pass here. We must try another. For ten days we have had only one meal every two days. January 29th—A horse this day killed—his hoof was found entirely worn away, only the raw stump left.”
February 2nd, they left the streams flowing west and began following down a cañon of burnt windfall along the banks of a river that ran northeast. The divide had been crossed, and the worn bronchos were the first to realize that the trails of the mountains were passed. Suddenly pricking forward, they galloped full pace into the valley of Burnt River, a tributary of the Snake. “A more gloomy looking country,” writes Ogden, “I never saw. We have been on short allowance too long and all resemble so many skeletons. We are skin and bone. More beggarly looking fellows the world could not produce. All the gay trappings at the beginning of the march have disappeared. Still I have no complaint of my men. Day after day, they labor in quest of food and beaver without shoe or moccasin to their feet. The frozen ground is hardly comfortable for people so scantily clothed. Ten days east is the buffalo country of the plains, but in our present weak state we could not reach it in a month.” Ogden was now in the beaver country of the Snakes and to avoid starvation divided his brigade into small bands under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille. These, he scattered along the tributaries of the Snake River north and south, in what are now known as Oregon and Idaho, some to the “Rivier Malheur (Unfortunate River) so-called because this is the place where our goods were discovered and stolen by the Americans last year”; others to Sandwich Island River, and Reed’s River, and Payette’s and the Malade, given this name because beaver here lived on some root which made the flesh poisonous to the trapper.
Few Snakes were met, because this was the season when the Snakes went buffalo hunting, but “in our travels this day (26 February) we saw a Snake Indian’s hut near the road. Curiosity induced me to enter. I had often heard these wretches subsisted on ants, locusts and small fish not larger than minnies (minnows); and I wanted to find out if it were not an exaggeration, but to my surprise I found it was true. One of the dishes was filled with ants collected in the morning before the thaw commences. The locusts are gathered in summer in store for the winter. The Indians prefer the ants. On this food the poor wretches drag out existence for four months of the year and are happy. During February, we took one hundred and seventy-four beaver. Had the weather been mild, we should have had three thousand. An incredible number of deer here, but only skin and bone, nevertheless most exceptable (?) to us starving.” He mentions that it was on Sickly or Malade River that the Blackfeet killed one of his men the preceding year. “If the Americans have not been here since, we shall find beaver.” On the 13th of March, McKay came in with a dozen elk, and the half-starved hunters sat up till dawn feasting. But alas, on March 20th, near Raft River, came a camp of Indians with word “that a party of Americans are not three days’ march away. If this be true, our hunts are damned. We may prepare to go home empty handed. With my discontented men, I dread meeting the Americans. After the sufferings the men have endured with me, they will desert.” Snake camps now began to pass westward at the rate of four hundred people a day, carrying their supply of buffalo meat and also—what struck sorrow to Ogden’s heart—an American flag. A thousand Snake warriors were on the way to the Spanish settlements of the South to trade buffalo meat and steal horses. Near the American Falls, the Brigade fell in with marauding Blackfeet, friendly, no doubt, because of Ogden’s wife, who was related to the Northern tribes. “The Blackfeet informed me, they left the Saskatchewan in December and were in quest of the Snakes, but finding them so strong did not attempt it. They consisted of eighty men with the usual reserve of twenty or thirty Piegans hidden in the hills. March 31st—To-day, twenty-seven beaver, which makes our first thousand with two to begin the second thousand. I hope to reach Fort Vancouver with three thousand.”
“Sunday, April 9th, Portneuf River, headwaters of the Snake—About 10 A. M., we were surprised by the arrival of a party of Americans, and twenty-eight of our deserters of last year. If we were surprised, they were more so. They expected their threats of last year would prevent us returning to this quarter, but they find themselves mistaken. They encamped a short distance away. With the glass, we could observe the Blackfeet on the hills spying on our movements.
“Monday, April 10th—The strangers have paid me a visit. I had a busy day settling old scores with them and more to my satisfaction and the Company’s than last year’s disaster. We received from them eight thousand one hundred and seventy-two beaver in payment of their debts due the company and two notes of hand from Mr. Monton. We secured all the beaver they had. Our deserters are tired of their new masters and will soon return to us. How the Americans make profit when they pay $3.00 per pound for beaver, I cannot imagine. Within ten months the Indians have stolen one hundred and eighty traps from these Americans.”