Among the leaders of white fur-hunters in beaver-trapping days in the west, there was Trapper-Captain Jedediah S. Smith—the Knight in Buckskin. This Captain Jedediah Smith was fearless and upright. Hunting beaver, he traveled far and wide, from the Missouri River to California, and from New Mexico to the Columbia, protected only by his rifle and his Bible.
Wherever he carried his rifle, he carried his Bible; used them both, and no man but that respected him. The Comanches of the Southwest finally killed him, in 1831, when fighting alone against great odds he died a real hero's death.
He had spent the winter of 1824-1825 in the Pierced Noses' country. Of course he told them much about the white man's religion. They saw him frequently reading in his little, black-leather book, which, they said, must be the White Man's Book of Heaven. He would not sell them the book, for any amount of horses or beaver skins. When he had left, they took counsel together and decided that they should get such a book.
Twice they sent into the East for it; and no word came back. But the Pierced Noses did not give up. They were still without the wonderful Book of Heaven which, had said Captain Jedediah Smith the trapper, guided the white men on the straight trail to the Great Spirit above.
In the early part of 1832 they called a council of the nation, and chose four men, to set out, again, for the big, unknown village where dwelt the Red Head Chief, and where, they hoped, a copy of the Book of Heaven might be found.
The snows had scarcely melted when the four men started. Two of them were old and wise; their names are not written. Two of them were young and strong; their names were Rabbit-skin Leggins and No-horns-on-his-head.
A long, long, dangerous road lay before them: three thousand miles, across the mountains into the Blackfeet country, and across the plains guarded by the Blackfeet and the Sioux and other hungry people as bad.
But they got through all right, for they were clever and in earnest. They arrived at St. Louis in the summer.
St. Louis was then nothing like the St. Louis of today; but to the four strangers from the Columbia River basin it was amazingly large. Never had they dreamed of seeing so many white people. No one spoke their tongue; still there were trappers and Missouri River boatmen who understood signs, and by the sign language they inquired for the Red Head Chief.
The kind-hearted Governor William Clark was glad to greet them. Their fathers, almost thirty years before, had helped him and Captain Lewis the Long Knife; he remembered the two old men when they were young. The Indians of the West might always depend upon their friend the Red Head.