[High-resolution Map]

..... COLTER’S PROBABLE ROUTE, 1807-08 - - - DOANE’S EXPEDITION

The weakened party again laid over on the following day. They hunted carefully but to no avail, since the horses were too weak to carry the riders far afield from the camp, and the game was well up in the hills to the east. Warren, that “most indefatigable fisherman,” caught 16 magnificent trout, all of which were eaten for supper. Warren’s horse was shot for food, since it was the weakest and poorest of the lot.

He had not a particle of fat on his carcass, and we had no salt or other seasoning. Drew the powder from a package of cartridges and used it. We had been using the same old coffee and tea grounds for two weeks and the decoctions derived therefrom had no power in them, no momentum. For tobacco we had smoked larb, red willow, and rosebush bark. All these gave a mockery and a delusion to our ceaseless cravings. We chewed pine gum continually, which helped a little. We boned a quarter of the old horse, and boiled the meat nearly all night, cracking the bones as well, and endeavoring to extract a show of grease therefrom out of which to upholster a delicious and winsome gravy. The meat cooked to a watery, spongy, texture, but the gravy sauce was a dead failure. Horse meat may be very fine eating when smothered with French sauces, but the worn out U. S. Cavalry plug was never intended for food. The flesh tastes exactly as the perspiration of the animal smells. It is in addition tough and coarse grained. We ate it ravenously, stopping to rest occasionally our weary jaws. It went down and stayed, but did not taste good. Weather turned colder toward morning. River running ice in cakes which screamed and crashed continually through the night.

For the next several days the party continued without serious mishap, other than damage to the boat on two occasions when she crashed into submerged boulders. Warren continued to take trout successfully, the fish and horsemeat making up the sketchy bill of fare. On December 7, moving through the open country of the southern part of Jackson Hole, Sergeant Server and Davis, while hunting, found the cabin of a trapper, John Pierce. The old man was greatly surprised to see anyone with animals in the upper Snake River Basin at that time of the year, gave the men a substantial meal and some salt,

... which improved our regal fare by somewhat smothering the sour perspiration taste of the old horse. He also sent word to me about the settlement below “Mad River Canyon.” River too shallow for fishing, but we had salt on our horse for supper.

December 8th. The old trapper came to our camp before we started, bringing on his shoulder a quarter of fat elk, also a little flour. He was a gigantic, rawboned, and grisled old volunteer soldier. We gave him in return some clothing of which he was in need and a belt full of cartridges, as he had a big rifle with the same sized chamber as mine. While talking with him, Starr and Davis were busy and soon we had a meal. The elk meat all went, the balance of the flour was reserved for gravies.

The old trapper gave me explicit and correct information about the settlements below. He was trapping for fine furs only, mink, martin, fisher, and otter. Said it would not pay to go after beaver unless one had pack animals and these could not winter in the valley.

He told me that he had not believed the Sergeant’s story about the boat at first, and throughout his visit was evidently completely puzzled as to what motives could have induced us to attempt such a trip in such a way and at such a season. I sent him home on horseback with Sergeant Server, who told me after returning that he had been given another “Holy meal.” Meantime we worked on down the river with renewed strength among rocks and tortuous channels. Worked until after dark and camped at the head of “Mad River Canyon.” 15 miles.

The voyage down the Grand Canyon of the Snake, “Mad River Canyon,” was a series of nightmares. Steadily deepening and narrowing, the canyon walls closing in with oppressive gloom, the river became almost completely unnavigable. It was necessary to handline the boat down boiling rapids, drag her over the ice of frozen pools, portage the equipment, in this manner advancing 6 to 7 miles a day. Doane writes that it was

...very cold in the shaded chasm. Otter, fat and sleek, played around us on the ice and snarled at us from holes in the wall, all day long, safe from molestation in their fishy unpalatableness. We had no time to shoot for sport, nor transportation for pelts, and no desire for any game not edible. All day and as late at night as we could see to labor, we toiled to make six miles.

The upper end of the Grand Canyon of the Snake, Doane’s “Mad River Canyon.” The wicked white water of the Snake brought disaster to the Expedition on December 12, 1876, near the lower end of the gorge, when “all of a sudden the boat touched the icy margin, turned under it, and the next instant was dancing end over end in the swift, bold current.”