The next day, they were meditating the slaughter of one of their horses, when a party of Snake Indians fortunately came in sight. They had been out on the war trail, and returning, had little food, but Carson managed to purchase a fat horse, which they killed at once, and thus managed to live luxuriously till they reached the fort, able now to walk and give the horses the advantage of their diet.
Epicureans of civilization, when the squeamishness of an appetite, perverted by too delicate fare, is invited to such a repast, may rest assured that they know not the satisfaction such fare afforded to Kit Carson and his party. Horse beef was sweeter food to these starving men, than epicures had ever tasted.
After recruiting for a few days at the fort, and learning that there were large herds of the game, which they gloried most in hunting, the buffalo, near by, Carson and his party started for the stream on which they could be found, and were not long in discovering a large herd of fine fat buffalo. Stretching lines on which to hang the strips, they killed, and dressed, and cut; and soon had dried all the meat their animals could carry, when they returned to the fort.
Three days before reaching the fort, a party of Blackfeet Indians were again upon their trail, and watching for their return.
On the third morning after their arrival, just as day dawned, two of the Indians came past their camp to the corral of the fort in which their animals were confined, let down the bars and drove them all away; the sentinel thinking the Indians were men of his party who had come to relieve his watch, had gone into camp and was soundly sleeping before the animals were missed. By this time the Indians had driven them many miles away, and as a similar ruse had been played upon the people at the fort a few days before, by which all their animals were run off, there was no possibility of giving chase.
Of course there was now no alternative but to wait the return of Capt. McCoy from Walla Walla, which he did in about four weeks, bringing animals enough to supply Carson and his party, besides, the men at the fort, which had been obtained of the Kiowas, or Kaious Indians, in Oregon. These Indians range between the Cascade and the Rocky Mountains, in what is now the eastern portion of Washington and Oregon Territories, living by the chase, and owning immense herds of horses, of which the chief of this tribe owned ten thousand. In this same locality the Indian bands reported by the parties of trappers in the American Fur Company, had abundance of horses, with which they hunted deer, "ringing or surrounding them, and running them down in a circle." But while antelope, and elk, and deer, as well as beaver, were abundant, their locality was not frequented by the buffalo, its ranges being further toward the south and west.
Many suppose that buffalo never existed west of the Rocky Mountains; but to attempt a correction of this impression with our readers, is no longer necessary, as we have seen Carson killing them on the Salmon River, on the Green River, and lastly, in the valley of a stream that flows into the Salmon.
From Baird's General Repository, published in 1857, we quote,
"It will perhaps excite surprise that I include the buffalo in the fauna of the Pacific States, as it is common to imagine that the buffalo has always been confined to the Atlantic slopes, because it does not now extend beyond the Rocky mountains. This is not true. They once abounded on the Pacific."
This animal has not been found in California nor in Oregon, west of the Cascade mountains, within the present generation of men, and the limit of its ranges, narrowing every year, is now far this side of the Rocky Mountains. Really a wild animal, incapable of being domesticated, as the country is more and more traversed, he retires—is killed by thousands by the hunter—and seems destined, as really as the Indian race, to become extinct. Could either be induced to adopt the modes of life which residence among the races of civilized men requires, their existence might be prolonged perhaps for centuries, but there seems to be no care, on the part of anybody who has the power, to preserve either the Indian or the buffalo as a distinct race of man, and quadruped.