[7] This was not Kit Carson. The great frontiersman did not make his advent in the mountains until years afterward.
[8] An Indian vapour-bath, or sweating-house, is a square six or eight feet deep, usually built against a river bank, by damming up the other three sides with mud, and covering the top completely, excepting an opening about two feet wide. The bather gets into the hole, taking with him a number of stones that have been heated, and a vessel filled with water. After seating himself he begins to pour the water on the hot stones, until the steam generated is sufficient to answer his purpose. When he has perspired freely, he goes out and plunges in the stream, the colder the water the better.
[9] Rose lived with the Crows many years, became a great man among them, could speak their language fluently. He was a giant, and fearless to recklessness, and by his deeds of daring became one of the first braves of the tribe. At one time, in a desperate fight with the Blackfeet, he shot down the first savage who opposed him, and with the war-club of his victim killed four others. His name among the Crows was “Che-ku-kaats,” or the man who killed five. His knowledge of the country was marvellous, and some years after his adoption by the tribe, he was the principle guide and interpreter for Fitzpatrick and Sublette, who conducted a trapping expedition sent across the continent by General Ashley. How he died is unknown; one rumour says from his licentious habits, another that he was killed by some of his adopted brethren. He was a heroic vagabond, but the redeeming feature of his life was that he taught the Crows to cultivate the friendship of the whites, a policy which that tribe observed for years.
[10] See Washington Irving's Astoria.
[11] He was the son of an Iroquois hunter, who had been cruelly murdered by the Blackfeet on a small stream below the mountains which still bears his name.
[12] In 1820 Major Stephen H. Long, of the United States army, commanded an expedition through the Platte Valley and beyond, under the direction of the War Department. As its object was purely scientific, and its details uninteresting to the general reader, it is omitted here.
[13] Captain Bonneville attained the rank of colonel, was retired in 1861, and died on the 12th of June, 1878.
[14] The Black Fork of Green River is in the southwest corner of the state of Wyoming.
[15] The name “Long-Knife” was applied by the Indians to the command of Lewis and Clarke when they crossed the continent in 1804-5, and it has remained as a name for the whites ever since.
[16] A keg.