Trails of the Pathfinders

by George Bird Grinnell

They were now about seven thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level and travelling along prairies from which the waters drained into the Arkansas, Platte, and Kansas rivers. Pike’s Peak was in sight, and farther to the south the Spanish Peaks.

The next day they came upon the wagon-road to the settlements on the Arkansas River, and in the afternoon camped on the Fontaine qui bouit, which they followed down, passing the camp of a hunter named Maurice, who had been catching buffalo calves, a number of which were seen among the cattle near his lodge. Here, too, were a party of mountaineers, among whom were several Connecticut men belonging to Wyeth’s party. On the afternoon of July 14 they camped near a pueblo, or town, where were settled a number of mountaineers who had married Spanish women, and had formed a farming settlement here. Fremont hoped that he might have obtained some provisions from these people, but as trade with the Spanish settlements was forbidden he got nothing except milk, of which they had an abundance. Fremont learned here that the Spanish Utes were on the war-path and that there had been a popular tumult among the civilized Indians near Taos, and so felt some natural anxiety about the safety of Maxwell. By great good luck, however, he met here Carson, whom he engaged once more, and sent him off to Charles Bent, down the Arkansas River, to buy mules at Bent’s fort—Fort William. Usually there was a large stock of animals here, for the Indians, returning from their raids into Mexico, often traded a part of their plunder for goods.

The party now returned to St. Vrain’s fort, which they reached on the 23d. Here Fitzpatrick and his party were found safe and well, and also Carson, who had brought with him ten good mules with the necessary pack animals. The provisions which Fitzpatrick had brought and over which he had watched with great care, were very welcome to the hungry explorers. At this post the Delaware Indians determined to return to their home. Fremont made up his mind that he would try the pass through which the Câche-à-la-Poudre flowed, and he again divided the party, sending Fitzpatrick across the plains to the mouth of the Laramie River, to follow the usual emigrant trail and to meet him at Fort Hall. Fremont with thirteen men was to take the longer road about. He started up the Câche-à-la-Poudre, marched westward through the Medicine Bow Mountains to the North Platte River, which he crossed. The way was not exceptionally difficult except for the fact that it ran through large and tough bushes of sage brush, which made the hauling hard. Buffalo were abundant and food was plenty. Indeed, so many were killed that they spent a day or two in camp drying meat as provision for the future. While they were occupied at this, they were charged by about seventy mounted Indians, but these were seen by the horse guard, the horses driven into camp and the party took up a defensive position in a grove of timber, so that the Indians, just before the howitzer was fired at them, halted and explained that they had taken the camp for one of hostile Indians. This war-party was one of Arapahoes and Cheyennes, returning unsuccessful from a journey against their enemies, the Shoshoni. They had lost several men and were not in a very pleasant frame of mind.

From here, turning south, the party struck across to the Sweetwater River and at length reached the trail to the Oregon, being thus on the same ground that they had traversed the previous year. Green River, then called Prairie-Hen River, was reached August 16, and something is said of the impressions among the residents in the country about the lower course of the Colorado. Says Fremont: “From many descriptions of trappers it is probable that in its foaming course among its lofty precipices it presents many scenes of wild grandeur; and though offering many temptations, and often discussed, no trappers have been found bold enough to undertake a voyage which has so certain a prospect of a fatal termination. The Indians have strange stories of beautiful valleys abounding with beaver shut up among inaccessible walls of rock in the lower course of the river, and to which the neighboring Indians, in their occasional wars with the Spaniards and among themselves, drive their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, leaving them to pasture in perfect security.” Fremont was ignorant that nearly eighteen years before Ashley had descended the Green River in a boat, and had inscribed his name and a date on the rock which was seen there by Major J. W. Powell more than forty years later. But Ashley’s expedition did not get much farther than the mouth of Ashley River, where it was wrecked and the trip abandoned.

Not long after crossing Green River they passed quite near Bridger’s fort, and then sent Carson on to Fort Hall to secure provisions, while Fremont with his party went on to Bear River. Following down this stream they met a party of emigrants, saw more or less game in the way of antelope and elk, and, on approaching the Shoshoni village, were charged by the Indians, who supposed the white men a party of Sioux, because they carried a flag regarded by these people as an emblem of hostility, being usually carried by the Sioux, and the neighboring mountain Indians when they came against the Shoshoni to war. The true character of Fremont’s party was recognized by the Indians before they got near them and they were kindly received in the village and obtained provisions there. Further down the stream the celebrated Beer Springs, “which, on account of the effervescing gas and acid taste, have received their name from the voyageurs and trappers of the country, who, in the midst of their rude and hard lives, are fond of finding some fancied resemblance to the luxuries they rarely have the fortune to enjoy.” The water of some of these springs is hot, and has a pungent and disagreeable metallic taste leaving a burning effect on the tongue. The Beer, or Soda Springs, are of the same character as the boiling springs at the foot of Pike’s Peak, but those are not hot.

It was in the neighborhood of Bear River that Fremont and his party first came in contact with the Indians which he calls Root Diggers, and which in those old times were spoken of as Digger Indians. They are various tribes and bands of Pah-utes, occupying the desert country of the Rocky Mountains, whose subsistence is derived chiefly from roots and seeds, and from such small animals as they capture.

The country which Fremont was crossing had formerly abounded in game, but the buffalo had all disappeared. Even as early as this (1843), attention had been called to the disappearance of the buffalo, and Fremont says: “The extraordinary rapidity with which the buffalo is disappearing from our territories will not appear surprising when we remember the great scale on which their destruction is yearly carried on. With inconsiderable exceptions, the business of the American trading-posts is carried on in their skins; every year the Indian villages make new lodges for which the skin of the buffalo furnishes the material; and in that portion of the country where they are still found, the Indians derive their entire support from them and slaughter them with a thoughtless and abominable extravagance. Like the Indians themselves, they have been a characteristic of the Great West; and as, like them, they are visibly diminishing, it will be interesting to throw a glance backward through the last twenty years and give some account of their former distribution through the country and the limit of their western range.

“The information is derived principally from Mr. Fitzpatrick, supported by my own personal knowledge and acquaintance with the country. Our knowledge does not go farther back than the spring of 1824, at which time the buffalo were spread in immense numbers over the Green River and Bear River valleys, and through all the country lying between the Colorado, or Green River, of the Gulf of California, and Lewis’ fork of the Columbia River; the meridian of Fort Hall then forming the western limit of their range. The buffalo then remained for many years in that country and frequently moved down the valley of the Columbia on both sides of the river as far as the Fishing Falls. Below this point they never descended in any numbers. About the year 1834 or 1835 they began to diminish very rapidly and continued to decrease until 1838 or 1840, when, with the country we have just described, they entirely abandoned all the waters of the Pacific north of Lewis’ fork of the Columbia. At that time the Flathead Indians were in the habit of finding their buffalo on the heads of Salmon River, and other streams of the Columbia; but now they never meet with them farther west than the three forks of the Missouri or the plains of the Yellowstone River.

“In the course of our journey it will be remembered that the buffalo have not so entirely abandoned the waters of the Pacific, in the Rocky Mountain region South of the Sweetwater, as in the country North of the Great Pass. This partial distribution can only be accounted for in the great pastoral beauty of that country, which bears marks of having long been one of their favorite haunts, and by the fact that the white hunters have more frequented the Northern than the Southern region—it being North of the South Pass that the hunters, trappers and traders have had their rendezvous for many years past; and from that section also the greater portion of the beaver and rich furs were taken, although always the most dangerous as well as the most profitable hunting ground.

“In that region lying between the Green or Colorado River and the head waters of the Rio del Norte, over the Yampah, Kooyah, White, and Grand rivers—all of which are the waters of the Colorado—the buffalo never extended so far to the westward as they did on the waters of the Columbia; and only in one or two instances have they been known to descend as far west as the mouth of the White River. In travelling through the country west of the Rocky Mountains, observations readily led me to the impression that the buffalo had, for the first time, crossed that range to the waters of the Pacific only a few years prior to the period we are considering and in this opinion I am sustained by Mr. Fitzpatrick and the older trappers in that country. In the region West of the Rocky Mountains we never meet with any of the ancient vestiges which throughout all the country lying upon their Eastern waters are found in the great highways, continuous for hundreds of miles, always several inches and sometimes several feet in depth which the buffalo have made in crossing from one river to another or in traversing the mountain ranges. The Snake Indians, more particularly those low down upon Lewis’ fork, have always been very grateful to the American trappers for the great kindness (as they frequently expressed it) which they did to them in driving the buffalo so low down the Columbia River.