Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., part 1, May 21-October 16, 1839

by Thomas Jefferson Farnham

The trials of a journey in the western wilderness can never be detailed in words. To be understood, they must be endured. Their effects upon the physical and mental system are equally prostrating. The desolation of one kind and another which meets the eye every where; the sense of vastness associated with dearth and barrenness, and of sublimity connected with eternal, killing frost;—of loneliness coupled with a thousand natural causes of one's destruction; perpetual journeyings over endless declivities, among tempests, through freezing torrents; one half the time on foot, with nothing but moccasins to protect the feet from the flinty gravel and the thorns of the prickly pear along the unbeaten way; and the starvings and thirstings wilt the muscles, send preternatural activity into the nervous system, and through the whole {27} animal and mental economy a feebleness, an irritability altogether indescribable.

At Fort David Crockett there were rest, and food, and safety; and old Father Time, as he mowed away the passing moments and gathered them into the great garner of the Past, cast upon the Future a few blossoms of hope, and sweetened the hours, now and then, with a bit of information about this portion of his ancient dominion. I heard from various persons, more or less acquainted with the Colorado of the West, a confirmation of the account of that river given in the journals of previous days; and also that there resides at the lower end of its great kenyon, a band of the Club Indians—very many of whom are seven feet high, and well proportioned; that these Indians raise large quantities of black beans upon the sandy intervales on the stream; that the oval-leaf prickly-pear grows there from fifteen to twenty feet in height; that these Indians make molasses from its fruit; that their principal weapon of warfare is the club, which they wield with amazing dexterity and force; that they inhabit a wide extent of country north-west, and south-east of this lower part of the river; that they have never been subdued by the {28} Spaniards, and are inimical to all white people.[157] Subsequent inquiry in California satisfied me that this river is navigable only thirty or forty miles from its mouth, and that the Indians who live upon its barren banks near the Gulf, are such as I have described.

The Snakes, or Shoshonies, are a wandering tribe of Indians who inhabit that part of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, the habitable shores of the Great Salt Lake, a considerable portion of country on Snake River above and below Fort Hall, and a tract extending two or three hundred miles to the west of that post. Those who reside in the place last named, are said to subsist principally on roots; they, however, kill a few deer, and clothe themselves with their skins. The band living on Snake River subsist on the fish of the stream, buffalo, deer, and other game. Those residing on the branches of the Colorado, live on roots, buffalo, elk, deer, the mountain-sheep, and antelope. The Snakes own many horses. These, with their thousands of dogs, constitute all the domestic animals among them. They have {29} conical skin-lodges, a few camp-kettles, butcher-knives and guns. Many of them, however, still use the bow and arrow. In dress, they follow the universal Indian costume—moccasins, leggings, and the hunting-shirt. Nothing but the hair covers the head; and this, indeed, would seem sufficient, if certain statements made in relation to it be true; as that it frequently grows four and five feet in length, and in one case eleven feet. In these instances, it is braided and wound round the head in the form of a Turkish turban. If only two or three feet in length, it is braided on the female head in two queues, which hang down the back: on the male, it is only combed behind the ears, and lies dishevelled around the shoulders. The female dress differs from that of the male in no other respect than this: the shirt or chemise of the former extends down to the feet. Beaver, otter, bear and buffalo skins, and horses are exchanged by them with the Arrapahoes, and the Americans, and British traders, for some few articles of wearing apparel; such as woollen blankets and hats. But as their stock of skins is always very limited, they find it necessary to husband it with much care, to obtain therewith a supply of tobacco, arms and ammunition.

{30} From the first acquaintance of the whites with them, these people have been remarkable for their aversion to war, and those cruelties generally practised by their race. If permitted to live in peace among their mountains, and allowed to hunt the buffalo—that wandering patrimony of all the tribes—when necessity requires, they make war upon none, and turn none hungry away from their humble abodes. But these peaceable dispositions in the wilderness, where men are left to the protection of their impulses and physical energies, have yielded them little protection. The Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux and Eutaws have alternately fought them for the better right to the Old Park, and portions of their Territory, with varied success; and, at the present time, do those tribes yearly send predatory parties into their borders to rob them of their horses. But as the passes through which they enter the Snake country are becoming more and more destitute of game on which to subsist, their visits are less frequent, and their number less formidable. For several years, they have been in a great measure relieved from these annoyances.

From the time they met Lewis and Clark on the head-waters of the Missouri[158] to the {31} present day, the Snakes have opened their lodges to whites, with the most friendly feelings. And many are the citizens of the States, and the subjects of Britain, who have sought their villages, and by their hospitality have been saved from death among those awful solitudes. A guest among them is a sacred deposit of the Great Spirit. His property, when once arrived within their camp, is under the protection of their honour and religious principle; and should want, cupidity, or any other motive, tempt any individual to disregard these laws of hospitality, the property which may have been stolen, or its equivalent, is returned, and the offender punished. The Snakes are a very intelligent race. This appears in the comforts of their homes, their well-constructed lodges, the elegance and useful form of their wardrobes, their horse-gear, &c.

But more especially does it exhibit itself in their views of sensual excesses and other immoralities. These are inhibited by immemorial usages of the tribe. Nor does their code of customs operate upon those wrong doings only which originate among a savage people. Whatever indecency is offered them by their intercourse with the {32} whites, they avoid. Civilized vice is quite as offensive as that which grows up in their own untrained natures. The non-use of intoxicating liquor is an example of this kind. They abjured it from the commencement of its introduction among them. And they give the best of reasons for this custom:—"It unmans us for the hunt, and for defending ourselves against our enemies; it causes unnatural dissensions among ourselves; it makes the Chief less than his Indian; and by its use, imbecility and ruin would come upon the Shoshonie tribe."

Whatever difference of opinion may exist among civilized men on this matter, these Indians certainly reason well for themselves, and, I am inclined to think, for all others. A voice from the depth of the mountains—from the lips of a savage—sends to our ears the startling rebuke—"Make not, vend not, give not to us the strong water. It prostrates your superior knowledge, your enlarged capacities for happiness, your cultivated understandings. It breaks your strong laws; it rots down your strong houses; it buries you in the filthiest ditch of sin. Send it not to us; we would rather die by the arrows of the Blackfeet."

The Crows[159] are a wandering tribe, and {33} usually found in the upper plains around the head-waters of the north fork of Great Platte, Snake, and Yellowstone rivers. Their number is estimated to be about five thousand. They are represented as the most arrant rascals among the mountains. The traders say of them that "they have never been known to keep a promise or do an honourable act." No white man or Indian trusts them. Murder and robbery are their principal employments. Much of their country is well watered, timbered, and capable of yielding an abundant reward to the husbandman.

The Blackfeet Indians reside on the Marias and other branches of the Missouri above the Great Falls. In 1828 they numbered about two thousand five hundred lodges or families. During that year they stole a blanket from the American Fur Company's steamboat on the Yellowstone, which had belonged to a man who had died of the small-pox on the passage up the Missouri. The infected article being carried to their encampment upon the "left hand fork of the Missouri," spread the dreadful infection among the whole tribe. They were amazed at the appearance of the disease. The red blotch, the bile, congestion of the lungs, {34} liver, and brain, were all new to their medicine-men; and the rotten corpse falling in pieces while they buried it, struck horror into every heart. In their frenzy and ignorance they increased the number of their sweat ovens upon the banks of the stream, and whether the burning fever or the want of nervous action prevailed; whether frantic with pain, or tottering in death, they were placed in them, sweated profusely and plunged into the snowy waters of the river. The mortality which followed this treatment was a parallel of the Plague in London. They endeavoured for a time to bury the dead, but these were soon more numerous than the living. The evil-minded medicine-men of all ages had come in a body from the world of spirits, had entered into them, and were working the annihilation of the Blackfeet race.