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

by Thomas Jefferson Farnham

27th. Our last night's encampment proved to have been on a branch of the Great Bear River—the principal, if not the only feeder of the Great Salt Lake.[174] We started down along its verdant little valley about seven o'clock in the morning, and reached the main river about twelve at noon. It was twenty yards wide—water two feet deep, and transparent, current four miles per hour, bottom of brown sand and gravel. After feeding our animals, we descended the river till four o'clock, and halted on its banks for the night. We had travelled thirty miles. The mountains which hemmed in the valley were generally of a conical form, primitive, and often verdant. Their height varied from five hundred to two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the stream. The bottom lands were from one to three miles wide, of a {70} loose, dry, gravelly soil, covered with withered bunch grass. By the water side grew various kinds of trees, as quaking-asp, black birch, and willows; also shrubs of various kinds, as the black alder, small willow, wild wormwood, black currant, and service berry. In the ravines of the mountains, groves of trees sometimes appeared peering up luxuriantly among the black projecting cliffs.

28th. An early rising, a hurried meal, and a rapid saddling and packing of horses, started us from camp at six o'clock. While girding our saddle animals, the last act done in breaking up camp in mountain life, Jim's eagle eye discerned in the distance down the river, "hos, hos."

Indian like, for we had become such in our habits, we put new caps on our rifles, mounted quickly, and circled out behind a barricade of brushwood, in order to ascertain the number, colour, and purpose of such unceremonious intruders upon the territories of our solitude. Jim peered through the leaves with the utmost intensity of an Indian's vision. It was the place for war-parties of the Crows, Sioux, and Blackfeet; and this early appearance of individuals approaching our camp was a circumstance that scented strongly of bows {71} and arrows. But suspense became certainty, a pleasant certainty, as Jim reined his horse from concealment, and galloped away to the stranger, now within rifle-shot of us.

A strong and warm shake of the hand, and various contortions of the face, and uncouth gestures of recognition between them, completed their interview, and the swarthy old trapper approached myself and men. He was no less a personage than the bear-killer, Meek, who figures in the St. Louis Museum, with the paws of an immense grisly bear upon his shoulders in front, the fingers and thumb of his left hand bitten off, while with his right hand he holds the hunter's knife, plunged deeply in the animal's jugular vein.[175] He accosted me with, "Good morning, how are ye?—stranger in the mountains, eh?" And before I could make a monosyllabic reply, he continued, "Have you any meat? Come, I've got the shoulder of a goat, (antelope); let us go back to your camp, and cook, and eat, and talk awhile." We were harnessed for the day's ride, and felt unwilling to lose the cool hours of the morning, and much more so to consume the generous man's last pound of meat. Thanking him, {72} therefore, for his honest kindness, we satisfied him with our refusal, by the assurance that we had meat, and had already breakfasted. On hearing that we were travelling to the Columbia river, he informed us that we might probably go down with the Nez Percés Indians, who, he stated, were encamped at the time on Salmon river, one day's journey from Fort Hall. He was on his way to Brown's Hole for his squaw and "possibles," with the design of joining their camp. These Indians would leave their hunting grounds for their homes about ten days from that date.

This was another remnant of the American Fur Company's trapping parties. He came to the mountains many years ago, and has so long associated with Indians that his manners much resemble theirs. The same wild, unsettled, watchful expression of the eye, the same unnatural gesticulation in conversation, the same unwillingness to use words when a sign, a contortion of the face or body, or movement of the hand will manifest thought; in standing, walking, riding, in all but complexion, he was an Indian. Bidding us good morning, and wheeling away to the day's ride, he said, "Keep your eye shining for the Blackfeet. {73} They are about the 'Beer Springs'; and stay, my white horse tired, one camp down the river; was obliged to 'cache' my pack and leave him; use him if you can, and take him on to the Fort; and look here, I have told you I am Meek, the bear-killer, and so I am. But I think the boys at the museum in St. Louis might have done me up as it really was. The beast only jumped on my back, and stripped off my blanket; scratched some, but didn't pull my shoulder blade off. Well, after he had robbed me of my blanket, I shoved my rifle against him, and blew out his heart. That's all—no fingers bitten off, no knifing; I merely drove a little lead into his palpitator."

So saying, he spurred his weary animal to a trot, and was soon hidden among the underbrush of the intervales. Meek was evidently very poor. He had scarcely clothing enough to cover his body; and while talking with us, the frosty winds which sucked up the valley, made him shiver like an aspen leaf. He reverted to his destitute situation, and complained of the injustice of his former employers, the little remuneration he had received for the toils and dangers he had endured on their account, &c., a complaint which I had {74} heard from every trapper whom I had met on my journey. The valley opened wider as we pursued our way along its northern side; the soil, the water, and vegetation much the same in quantity and quality as those which we had passed on the 27th. The mountains on either hand spread into rocky precipitous ridges, piled confusedly one above another in dark threatening masses. Among them hung, in beautiful wildness from the crevices of the cliffs, numerous shrub cedars.

The mountain flax was very abundant and ripe. The root resembled that of perennial plants, the fibres that of the annual blue-bowl of the States, the flower the same, the seed vessel the same; but the seeds themselves were much smaller, and of a very dark brown colour. This valley is the grain-field and root-garden of the Shoshonie Indians; for there grow in it a number of kinds of edible roots, which they dig in August, and dry for winter use. There is also here a kind of grass, bearing a seed of half the size of the common rye, and similar in form. This they also gather, and parch and store away in leather sacks, for the season of want. These Indians had been gathering in their roots, &c., a few {75} days previous to our arrival. I was informed, however, that the crop was barely sufficient to subsist them while harvesting it. But, in order to prevent their enemies from finding whatever might have escaped their own search, they had burned over large sections of the most productive part. This day's ride was estimated at thirty miles. Our camp at night was in a dense copse of black alders by the water-side. Ate our last meat for supper—no prospect of getting more until we should arrive at Fort Hall, four days' ride.

29th. Up with the sun and on march. After an hour's ride, we came upon Meek's white horse. He came to us on as fast a gallop, and with as noisy a neighing as if Zimmerman had never dipt his quill in solitude, and wrote the laws for destroying nature, for nature's good. Jim now put spur to his noble animal, with the regularity of the march of the tread-mill. And, by way of apology for his haste, pointed to the ground, and laying his head on one shoulder, and snoring, said, "u—gh, ugh," which being interpreted, meant that our next snoring place was a very, very long day's journey away. And one acquainted with Indian firmness, would have read in {76} his countenance, while making this communication, a determination to reach it before nightfall, whatever might be the consequences. And so we did. At sunset our camp kettle was bubbling over the bones of a pelican at the "Steamboat spring." The part of the valley seen to-day was generally covered with a stout coat of bunch grass. This, and other indications, led me to suppose it fertile. Yet it appeared questionable if it would yield the ordinary fruits of agriculture without being irrigated.[176]

I noticed, however, during the day's ride, a number of points at which the waters of the river might be conducted over very large tracts of excellent soil. The scarcity of fencing timber appeared an obstacle, certainly; but other than this, there seemed to me no considerable cause of doubt that the valley of the Great Bear River will, in the course of time, become one of the most prosperous abodes of cultivated life. Its situation, so remote from either ocean, only increases our expectation of such an event, when it is recollected that the most practicable waggon route between the States and Oregon Territory and the Californias, runs through it.