Mr. Pillet, with some men and a supply of goods, was sent to the Cootanais to oppose Mr. Mantour on the part of the North-West.[[72]] Mr. Pillet travelled a great deal, and turned his time to good account. Both were zealous traders, and they could fight a duel as well as buy a skin, for they carried pistols as well as goods along with them. They therefore fought and traded alternately, but always spared the thread of life, and in the spring parted good friends.
Mr. Farnham was fitted out for the Selish, or Flathead tribe[[73]]—crossed with them the Rocky Mountains—visited the head waters of the Missouri—saw much of the country, and made a good trade. Farnham was a bustling, active, and enterprizing fellow.
Both the Cootanais[[74]] and Selish tribes live and range along the foot of the mountains, often crossing them, and have frequent encounters with the Blackfeet, by whom they have suffered greatly of late years; the Blackfeet being too numerous for them.[[75]]
{214} Mr. M‘Lennan was stationed at the Pointed Hearts, or Sketch-hugh Lake.[[76]] In going to his destination, he was rather unlucky, for his canoe upset in crossing the lake, and swamped his goods; but he swam like a fish, got the two men he had with him into the canoe again, then kept diving like a seal, although the weather was cold and the water deep, till he recovered the most of his property: his exertions on this occasion astonished every one who knew the difficulties of the task. M‘Lennan was hardy as steel, and bold as a lion: he made a very good and a very cheap trade, and was altogether a favourite among the Indians.
Spring now drawing nigh, Mr. Clarke got in all his outposts and scouts, and left Spokane, with thirty-two horses loaded with furs, on the 25th of May: a confidential man, named Pion, a newly-promoted clerk, with three men, was left in charge of the post. The party performed the journey across land to the Pavilion in six days, and found the canoes, which had been left there in charge of the Catatouch chief, all safe.
The most trivial incidents sometimes prove instructive, and may in their consequences afford an important lesson. As soon as Mr. Clarke arrived at the Pavilion, and found his canoes safe, pleased at the conduct of the chief, he made him a present of some ammunition and tobacco; this done, they set about packing up the different articles in order to embark, and among others two silver goblets {215} belonging to Mr. Clarke himself, who took this opportunity of showing them to the chief, and expatiated on their high value; then pouring a little wine into one of them made the chief drink out of it, telling him when done that he was a greater man now than ever he was before. The chief was delighted, and turning the goblet over and over in his hands, and looking at it with intense interest, handed it over to the next great man, and he to another, and so on till, like the pipe of peace, it had gone round the whole circle. The precious curiosity was then laid by, and the Indians retired.
Next morning, however, the pearl of great price was gone! everything in and about the camp was turned topsy-turvy in search of the silver goblet, but to no purpose: all business was now suspended—the goblet must be found. At last it was conjectured the Indians must have stolen it; and Mr. Clarke, with fury in his countenance, assembled the whole Catatouch camp, and made known his loss—the loss of his silver goblet! he coaxed, he flattered, he threatened to bring down vengeance upon the whole tribe for the loss of his goblet, and, in his wrath and vexation, denounced death upon the offender should he be discovered. The poor Indians stood gazing in amazement; they sympathized with him, pitied him, and deplored his loss, and promised to do their utmost to find the goblet: with this solemn declaration they went off, the whole tribe was called together, the council sat, and soon afterwards they {216} returned in a body, like messengers of peace, bringing the glad tidings to Mr. Clarke that the silver goblet was found; at the same time the chief, stepping forward and spreading out his robe, laid the precious vessel before him. “Where is the thief?” vociferated Mr. Clarke. The chief then pointed to a fellow sitting in the ring as the criminal. “I swore,” said Mr. Clarke, “that the thief should die, and white men never break their word.” The fellow was told of his fate; but he kept smiling, thinking himself, according to Indian custom, perfectly safe; for the moment the stolen article is returned to the rightful owner, according to the maxims of Indian law, the culprit is exonerated. Mr. Clarke, however, thought otherwise, and, like Herod of old, for the sake of his oath considered himself bound to put his threat into execution, and therefore instantly commanded the poor, unsuspecting wretch to be hung up—and hung he was accordingly; and the unhallowed deed was aggravated by the circumstance of their taking the poles of his own lodge to make the gallows.
The Indians all the time could not believe that the whites were in earnest, till they beheld the lifeless body. The deed was, however, no sooner committed than Mr. Clarke grew alarmed. The chief, throwing down his robe on the ground, a sign of displeasure, harangued his people, who immediately after mounted their fleetest horses, and scampered off in all directions to circulate the news and assemble the surrounding {217} tribes, to take vengeance on the whites. In the mean time, leaving the enraged Indians to follow their inclination, the canoes were thrown into the water, loaded, and down the current Mr. Clarke and his men pushed their way day and night till they reached the Walla Walla, where they arrived safe on the 4th of June; and here we shall leave them for the present, while we detail M‘Kenzie’s winter adventures. Fortunately for the whites, the defunct Indian was a person of very low degree, even in the estimation of the Indians themselves, being an outcast without friends or relatives, which made them less bent on revenge, but not the less disposed to annoy, as we shall have occasion to notice hereafter.
Mr. M‘Kenzie and party before mentioned accompanied Mr. Clarke up the South-branch as far as the Pavilion: here Clarke and his party forked off for Spokane in August, leaving M‘Kenzie to prosecute his voyage up the same river till he reached the very centre of the Great Shahaptain, or Nez Percé nation, where he established himself for the winter.[[77]] By way of clearing up some points not very intelligible to many, we may here mention that the Great Snake River, Louis River, South-branch, Shahaptain River, and Nez Percé River, are all one and the same stream, with different denominations.
As soon as M‘Kenzie had got his goods safe under cover, he sent off Mr. Reed, at the head of a small party, to bring the caches of goods left by Mr. Hunt to his own post. On his way, he picked up seven of {218} the Canadians belonging to the trapping parties fitted out by Mr. Hunt on his land expedition: these were, Dubreuil, Carson, the gunsmith, Delaunay, St. Michel, Turcotte, Landrie, and La Chapelle, the blacksmith. Some of these fellows, despairing of ever reaching the Columbia, and no doubt thinking the caches would be lost, went, accompanied by a band of the Snakes, and rifled several of them; and what they did not take was destroyed by the rains, the wolves, and other animals: some, however, had not been touched, and these Mr. Reed and his party carried off with them to M‘Kenzie’s post, which place they reached at the end of thirty-five days.