“Yes,” said Joe, “that is true. The Piegans like the open prairie, where there is always plenty of light and where you can see a long way. The only people here that go much into the mountains are the Kootenays and the Stonies. Sometimes the Bloods go in a little way to hunt or trap beaver, but not far. Plenty of men in my tribe would stop right here; they would not go any further. Up above here, on this lake, I see that the mountains come close together, and there is only just room enough for the water to get through. We don’t know what there is beyond there and we do not want to go to meet the dangers that may be there.”
“Why,” said Jack, “you don’t feel that way, do you, Joe? You’ve been pretty nearly raised among white people. You are not afraid of the mountains, are you?”
“No,” replied Joe, “I’m not much afraid of them. I’m a little afraid, but I don’t know what there is up behind these rocks that we see ahead of us. Only to-day we saw this awful big bear that you killed. Maybe up in the mountains there are more bears and bigger ones and worse. I would like to see what there is up there, but then I know that it may be very dangerous to go there.”
“Well,” said Hugh, with a smile, “we haven’t talked much about it, but I thought we’d just go up here along the lake and get to the head of it and then follow up the river that comes into it and keep on climbing until we got to the head of that river. Somewhere, not very far away, it must begin, and must come falling down from these high peaks, because not very far beyond here there are other rivers running the other way, so that we are here somewhere near the backbone of this country.
“Well,” said Joe, “I’d like to see it. In old times you know the Piegans were not afraid of the mountains as they are now. In old times they used to cross over these mountains and go beyond, into the country of the Snakes and the Kootenays and the River people,[A] and used to take horses from them and drive them back through the mountains; also, they used to go through the mountains and make long journeys to war to the southwest, and if they found little parties of white men who were trapping or trading, they would try and take their horses and a scalp or two, if they could. I have heard old people tell about how their fathers used to go on these war journeys and used to fight everyone that they met, white people or Indians.”
[A] The Kalespelms, more commonly called Flathead Indians, who dwell on and near Lake Pend d’Oreille.
“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s so. In the early days before my time the Blackfeet were thought to be a terrible people.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Jack, “I’ve read some of the old books about the early trappers and they are always talking about the danger from the Blackfeet, and how they would lie in wait for the trappers, as they went along the streams gathering their fur in the morning, and kill them, or how they would try to run off their horses. Sometimes they would have big battles with them. The trappers, I think, were mostly at peace with the Snakes and perhaps with other tribes, and often camped with them, and when the Blackfeet were troublesome, if the trappers had Indian allies, they often used to follow up the Blackfeet, and punish them pretty severely for the raids they had made on them.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “as I was saying, we haven’t talked much about this and none of us here know much about the country ahead of us. I came up once, trapping, as far as the head of the lake. I got a few beaver, and once I killed an elk just above the head of the lake, but beyond there I have not been. Still, I guess we’ll be able to find our way. The valley is narrow and the mountains high on either side, and we cannot very well get out of that trough, but, on the other hand, it may be pretty bad going there. The whole valley may be a swamp or a succession of little lakes and it’s possible that we can’t find a way to the head of it at all. The only way to learn about it is to try. Anyhow, it’s new country. I never heard of anybody going up on the river above the lake, except one man, old man Ellis. He told me once about going up there and said that he got across to the other side of the range, but he said it was pretty hard traveling for the animals, and that in one place they had to lower their horses by ropes over some bad places.”
“Do you mean to say, Hugh, that no white men have been up here, except that one?”