Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet

by Frederick Marryat

“The chief hath spoken too loud,” said the Prince, “I hear the step of a Shoshone; the Crows had better run away to the mountains, or their flesh will fatten the dogs of our village.”

An expression of rage and deep hatred shot across the features of the chief, but he stood motionless, as did all his men, trying to catch the sounds, to ascertain in which direction they should fly from the danger.

“Fear has turned the Crows into stones,” resumed the Prince, “what has become of their light feet? I see the Shoshones.”

“The dog of a Pale-face will see them no more,” replied the savage, as he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the unfortunate nobleman, who was thus doomed to meet with an inglorious death in a distant land.

The other prisoners, who were bound, could of course offer no resistance. The French savant and two of his guides were butchered in an instant, but before the remainder of the party could be sacrificed, a well-directed volley was poured upon the compact body of the Crows, who rushed immediately to the woods for cover, leaving behind them twenty dead and wounded, besides their cruel chief. Then from the thickets behind appeared thirty Shoshones, who immediately gave chase, leaving only one of their men to free the three remaining trappers, and watch over the body of their murdered friend and legislator.

A sharp tiralleur fire from their respective covers were carried on between the Shoshones and Crows for half an hour, in which the Crows lost ten more scalps, and having at length reached a rugged hill full of briars and bushes, they took fairly to their heels, without even attempting to answer the volleys poured after them. The victims were carried to the settlement, and the very day they were consigned to their grave, the Shoshones started for the land of the Crows. The results of the expedition I have mentioned already.

With my father I found the three trappers; two of whom were preparing to start for California, but the third, a young Parisian, who went by the name of Gabriel, preferred remaining with us, and never left me until a long time afterwards, when we parted upon the borders of the Mississippi, when I was forcing my way towards the Atlantic Ocean. He and Roche, when I parted with them, had directed their steps back to the Shoshones; they delighted too much in a life of wild and perilous adventure to leave it so soon, and the Irishman vowed that if he ever returned within the pale of civilisation, it would be to Monterey, the only place where, in his long wanderings, he had found a people congenial to his own ideas.

When, in the meeting of a great council, I apprised the tribe of the attack made upon the boat-house by the Umbiquas, and of its results, there was a loud burst of satisfaction. I was made a War-Chief on the spot; and it was determined that a party should immediately proceed to chastise the Umbiquas. My father did not allow me to join it, as there was much to be done in settling the affairs of the Prince, and paying the debts he had contracted at Fort Hall; consequently, I led a clerk’s life for two months, writing accounts, etcetera—rather a dull occupation, for which I had not the smallest relish. During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows; and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and mocassins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buona Ventura. Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration would be too much swelled if I were to enumerate them all.

I had not forgotten the cachette at our landing-place. Every thing was transferred to the boat-house, and the hot days of summer having already begun to render the settlement unpleasant, we removed to the sea-shore, while the major part of the tribe went to hunt in the rolling prairies of the south.

The presents of the good people of Monterey proved to be a treat acquisition to my father. There were many books, which he appropriated to himself; being now too aged and infirm to bear the fatigues of Indian life, he had become fond of retirement and reading. As to Gabriel and Roche, we became inseparable, and though in some points we were not on an equality, yet the habit of being constantly together and sharing the same tent united us like brothers.