The governor now fitted out a hunting party under Hugh Robie, with a pack-train, and sent them with a party of Gros Ventre Indians to the Judith River, some eighty miles south of the fort, after buffalo. These noble game animals were found there in great numbers and very fat. The hunters, white and red, killed hundreds of them, stripping off the hides and flesh, which they brought into camp, where the squaws jerked the meat by cutting it into thin slices and strips and drying it on scaffolds in the sun, and dressed the skins for lodges. In three weeks Robie and his party returned with his pack-mules and riding animals loaded down with fat, juicy buffalo meat,—a two months’ supply for the whole party. Metsic, an Indian hunter, was kept busy hunting in the vicinity of the fort, and brought in many deer and antelope, and small parties were from time to time sent to the Citadel Rock, a noted landmark twenty miles down the river, after bighorn, which were so abundant there that the hunters would load their animals in a day’s hunt. The governor was desirous that his son should see and experience all the aspects of the trip, and believed in throwing a boy on his own resources, without too close supervision, as the proper way of developing his judgment and capacity; so Hazard, who was now well hardened to riding and the fatigues of the field, and sufficiently adventurous, accompanied the buffalo and big-horn hunting parties. There was no danger of starving, but the governor remarks:—
“As we had very little bread, sugar, or coffee, the bighorn of Citadel Rock were exceedingly delightful as an article of food, and are generally preferred by the mountain men to any other game except buffalo; so between buffalo, bighorn, and the smaller game we fared very well. The parties who extended our information of the country in conveying messages to the Indians, etc., invariably lived either on the dried meat they took with them, or on the game which they killed from day to day. They had no flour, no sugar, no coffee, and yet there was not a word of complaint from one of them; but we made it the subject of a good deal of merriment when we were able to reach the boats and have a sufficiency of those articles which in civilized life are deemed indispensable to comfort.”
Meanwhile the Indians were all well in hand, ready and anxious for the council, which nothing delayed but the unfortunate backwardness of the boats. The Blackfeet were mostly north of the Missouri, the western Indians south of it, and the governor by his expresses kept himself informed of and guided their movements. The reports from the agents with the latter were especially encouraging. The Nez Perces, 108 lodges; Flatheads and Pend Oreilles, 68 lodges; and 40 lodges of the Snakes, numbering all told 216 lodges, or over 2000 souls,—were in one camp on the Muscle Shell River, awaiting the call to the council. The whole camp of the Gros Ventres, and Low Horn’s band of the Piegans of 54 lodges, were in the vicinity. The hereditary enemies were visiting and hunting together on most friendly terms, their minds all attuned to peace and friendship, and all anxious for the council.
An incident now occurred well calculated to test the good faith of the Blackfeet. When making arrangements in the Bitter Root valley for the western Indians to attend the council, and they had objected that the Blackfeet would steal their horses, Governor Stevens assured them of his belief that the Blackfeet would receive them with kindness and hospitality, using this expression: “I guarantee that when you pull in your lariat in the morning, you will find a horse at the end of it.” Relying on his assurance, four young Pend Oreille braves visited the governor at Fort Benton, and on his invitation turned their horses into his band, which grazed two miles above the fort. Next morning they were gone. Two young warriors of the northern Blackfeet had picked them out from over a hundred animals, and made off with them. The governor immediately put Little Dog, a prominent chief of the Bloods, to search for the trail of the raiders, and at the same time dispatched Doty with one attendant and a guide to the northern camps, judging that the thieves would seek refuge in that quarter. Little Dog returned unsuccessful, not finding a hoof-print of the missing horses in one hundred miles and thirty hours’ hard riding, and was sent north to follow Doty. The latter pushed on fifty miles a day for two hundred and thirty miles to Bow River in British territory, a tributary of the Saskatchewan, where he struck a large Blackfoot camp only two hours after the arrival there of the stolen horses. He immediately called together the chiefs, and demanded the surrender of the animals. The head chief, Lame Bull, returned three of them, but stated that one of the scamps had gotten off with the fourth. He expressed great regret at the theft, and offered two of his own horses in place of the one not recovered. Doty placed the rescued animals in charge of Little Dog, who had overtaken him, and resuming the pursuit of the remaining one, rode seventy miles to Elk River, another branch of the Saskatchewan, where he found another large camp of Blackfeet, and where the chief, Bull’s Head, delivered to him the last horse with expressions of regret at the misconduct of his young men, and the offer of another horse by way of amends. On the sixteenth day after the horses were taken they were returned to the Pend Oreille braves at the fort. This was the first and last instance of horse-stealing by the Blackfeet pending the council, and afforded most gratifying proof of their good faith. Thus a depredation which might have led to disastrous results was made the means of demonstrating the sincerity and strengthening the friendship of the Indians.
All these Indians professed great willingness to make friends with the western tribes and the Crows, and agreed to meet them at the council and conclude a treaty. They arranged with Mr. Doty to so direct their movements as to bring them within reach of Fort Benton at the proper time. He also secured James Bird as interpreter, an intelligent half-breed, said to be the best interpreter in the country, who was then visiting Low Horn’s band.
On August 27 Pearson arrived with letters from Olympia, and reported that everything was quiet and favorable west of the mountains, and that many miners and settlers were going into the upper country, gold having recently been discovered on the Columbia, near Colville.
“Pearson rode seventeen hundred and fifty miles by the route he took from the Bitter Root valley to Olympia, and back to Benton, in twenty-eight days, during some of which he did not travel. He was less than three days going from Fort Owen to Fort Benton, a distance, by the route he pursued, of some two hundred and sixty miles, which he traveled without a change of animals, having no food but the berries of the country, except a little fish, which he killed on Travelers’ Rest Creek of Lewis and Clark on the morning of starting from Fort Owen, which served him for a single meal,” as the governor says in his final report.
On his trips Pearson usually drove two extra horses ahead of him, and, when the one he was riding became tired, changed his saddle to a fresh one. He could “ride anything that wore hair,” and was equally expert with the lariat which he carried at the horn of his saddle. He always contrived, too, to procure fresh horses at certain points on his long trips, as at Walla Walla, Lapwai, and the Bitter Root valley, sometimes having previously left them, and sometimes by trading with the Indians. Imagine this little man of steel, insensible to cold, hunger, and fatigue, galloping like a centaur, day after day, across the vast, lonely plains, driving before him his two loose horses!
The messenger dispatched to the boats returned with the report that they would probably reach the mouth of the Judith in twenty days, and Fort Benton in thirty or thirty-five, or on the 5th to the 10th of October. The governor proposed that one of the boats be loaded with the most necessary goods and forced up faster by an extra crew, in order to hasten the opening of the council, leaving the others to follow; but Commissioner Cumming refused to consent to this expedient. He was a large, portly man, pompous, and full of his own importance, and having been named first as commissioner, and charged with bringing up the goods and the disbursements for the council, now attempted to arrogate to himself practically sole and exclusive authority. He even attempted to dismiss Doty as secretary, and claimed the right to appoint all the officers for the council; and this was the more unreasonable because he had not brought with him a single efficient man, and the whole work of holding and collecting the Indians, furnishing interpreters, and in short carrying the council through successfully, had to be done, and was done, by Governor Stevens and the trained force he had provided for the purpose. But the governor firmly insisted that nothing could be done except by the act of the commission; sternly informed his colleague that he would not permit him to repudiate his own action in organizing it, appointing the secretary, etc.; submitted a series of rules regulating its proceedings, and required all official communications between them to be in writing and made a matter of record. Under this firm and decided treatment Cumming was forced to abate his pretensions and subside into his proper place; but he opposed most of the governor’s suggestions, disagreed with him on all points, and exhibited a degree of arrogance, ignorance, and childish petulance hard to be believed, were they not so plainly shown by the official record.
In framing the treaty the governor proposed that farms be opened for the Blackfeet on the upper waters of the Sun River, and that $50,000 a year be allowed the Indians for twenty years, the greater part to be expended in carrying on the farms, instructing the Indians, etc. This amount was authorized by their instructions, and did not seem very extravagant for teaching twelve thousand Indians the ways of civilization, and leading them to abandon their life-long hostilities and predatory raids, being only about four dollars per capita. But Cumming flatly refused to agree to more than $35,000, and objected to the farms as “affording opportunities for speculating under the guise of philanthropy.” As the Blackfeet were within his superintendency, this was really a reflection upon himself and his agents not intended by the self-sufficient official. The commissioners were instructed to report generally on the Indians and the country. Cumming stigmatized the Blackfeet as utter savages, bloodthirsty and depraved, and declared that they would use goods that might be furnished them as the means of buying rum at the British trading-posts, and, therefore, that annuities of goods, etc., would only aid in demoralizing them. As to the country, he adopted, con amore, the Jefferson Davis theory, asserting that “it is a vast and sterile region, which could not sustain the animals required for even a limited emigration, and altogether unfitted for cultivation. Every part of this barren region must forever be closed against all modern improvements in the way of transportation, with the exception of the Missouri River.” He was as unable to appreciate the philanthropic views of Governor Stevens, and his earnest desire to improve the Indians, as he was ignorant of them and of the country.