This tribe is fierce, warlike, and athletic, inhabiting the banks of that part of Saptin, or Snake River, which lies between the mouth of Boisais, or Reed's River, and the Blue Mountains.[201] They make war upon the Blackfeet and Crows; and for that purpose often cross the mountains, through a gap between the track of Lewis and Clarke and the 'Great Gap.'[202] By these wars, their number has been much reduced. They are said to speak a language peculiar to themselves; {112} and are regarded by the whites as a treacherous and dangerous race. We had approached so near their camp, that whatever might be their disposition toward us, it was impossible to retreat. Darkness concealed the surrounding country, and hid the river and the trails. We could not escape without their permission and aid.
Our young Swiss trapper was the very man to grapple the dilemma. He bribed their good will and their safe conduct to the Fort. Five or six of them quickly seized horses, and, mounting without saddle or bridle, led the way. While these things were being done, horrid wails came from their huts among the bushes; and those who were with us responded to them. The only word uttered was one, which sounded like 'yap.' This they spoke at first in a low, plaintive key, and slowly; and then, on a higher note and rapidly, as if under stronger emotions of grief; and then fell away again to the low plaint of desponding sorrow. I noticed, as we rode along, that the tails of many of their horses were shorn of the hair in the most uncouth manner. The manes also were miserably haggled. The men who rode them wept, and at intervals wailed.
I was afterwards informed that their tribe {113} was mourning the death of some of their number who had lately died; and that it is a custom with them and other western tribes, on the death of friends, in war or by disease, for all the surviving relatives to shear the manes and tails of their horses to the skin—kill all the animals of the deceased—pile all his personal property around his burial-place, and mourn, in the manner I have described, for several days. Their camp was eight miles south of Fort Boisais.
We rode the distance in three quarters of an hour. Other Bonak horsemen joined us along the way. Each one, as he overtook us, uttered the wail; and then one and another took it up and bore it along the scattered line of the cavalcade. It was not very dark—but it was night, and all its air was filled with these expressions of savage grief. Tears flowed, and sobs arrested oftentimes the wail half spoken. The sympathy of the poor creatures for each other appeared very sincere, and afforded strong inducement to doubt the correctness of the usually received opinion that the American Indians possess little of the social affections. They certainly manifested enough on this occasion to render the hour I passed with them more oppressively painful than I hope ever again to experience.
{114} Mr. Payette, the person in charge at Boisais, received us with every mark of kindness; gave our horses to the care of his servants, and introduced us immediately to the chairs, table and edibles of his apartments. He is a French Canadian; has been in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company more than twenty years, and holds the rank of clerk; is a merry, fat old gentleman of fifty, who, although in the wilderness all the best years of his life, has retained that manner of benevolence in trifles, in his mode of address, of seating you and serving you at table, of directing your attention continually to some little matter of interest, of making you speak the French language 'parfaitement' whether you are able to do so or not, so strikingly agreeable in that mercurial people. The 14th and 15th were spent very pleasantly with this gentleman. During that time he feasted us with excellent bread, and butter made from an American cow, obtained from some of the missionaries; with baked, boiled, fried and broiled salmon—and, at my request, with some of his adventures in the wilderness.
Fort Boisais was established in 1832, as the post whence to oppose Wyeth's operations at Fort Hall.[203] From it, the Hudson's Bay Company sent their trading parties over {115} the country south, in advance and rear and around every movement of Wyeth. And by using liberally the fund laid by annually for that purpose, they undersold the American till he was forced from the country.
On the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, I see nothing strange or unmanly in this conduct, if looked at as a business transaction. People having equal rights in trade, assume necessarily the relative positions which their skill and capital can command. This is the position of Americans and Britons in Oregon. By a pusillanimous policy on the part of the American Government, we have given British subjects an equal right with our own citizens to trade in all that part of the Public Domain lying west of the Rocky Mountains. In the exercise of the rights thus granted, the Hudson's Bay Company employ their incomparable ingenuity and immense wealth in driving every American trader from the coasts of the North Pacific. And who is to be blamed for this? The Government of the United States, that has, through want of wisdom or firmness or justice, permitted these important rights of its citizens to be monopolized by foreign capitalists for the last thirty years.
This fort stands on the eastern bank of {116} the Saptin, eight miles north of the mouth of Boisais or Reed's river. It consists of a parallelogram about one hundred feet square, surrounded by a stockade of poles about fifteen feet in height. It was entered on the west side. Across the area north and south runs the principal building. It is constructed of logs, and contains a large dining room, a sleeping apartment and kitchen. On the north side of the area, in front of this, is the store; on the south side the dwellings of the servants; back of the main building, an outdoor oven; and in the north-east corner of the stockade is the bastion. This was Fort Boisais in 1839. Mons. Payette was erecting a neat adobie wall around it. He expected soon to be able to tear away the old stockade, and before this has doubtless done so.[204]
Among the curiosities of this establishment were the fore wheels, axletree and thills of a one-horse waggon, said to have been run by the American missionaries from the State of Connecticut through the mountains thus far toward the mouth of the Columbia. It was left here under the belief that it could not be taken through the Blue Mountains. But fortunately for the next that shall attempt to cross the continent, {117} a safe and easy passage has lately been discovered by which vehicles of the kind may be drawn through to Wallawalla.[205]