THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS 501 



of our precious time; so I look upon this day's travel as 

 a very poor one. The river was in several places inex- 

 pressibly wide and shallow. We saw a Deer of the com- 

 mon kind swimming across the stream; but few birds 

 were killed, although we stopped (unfortunately) three 

 times for wood. I forgot to say yesterday two things 

 which I should have related, one of which is of a dismal 

 and very disagreeable nature, being no less than the ac- 

 count given us of the clerks of the Company having killed 

 one of the chiefs of the Blackfeet tribe of Indians, at the 

 upper settlement of the Company, at the foot of the great 

 falls of the Missouri, and therefore at the base of the 

 Rocky Mountains, and Mr. Laidlaw assured us that it 

 would be extremely dangerous for us to go that far towards 

 these Indians. The other thing is that Mr. Laidlaw 

 brought down a daughter of his, a half-breed of course, 

 whom he is taking to St. Louis to be educated. We saw 

 another Deer crossing the river, and have shot only a few 

 birds, of no consequence. 



]\Iay 20, Saturday. We have not made much progress 

 this day, for the wind rose early, and rather ahead. We 

 have passed to-day Jacques River, ^ or, as I should call it, 

 La Riviere a Jacques, named after a man who some twenty 

 or more years ago settled upon its banks, and made some 

 money by collecting Beavers, etc., but who is dead and 

 gone. Three White Wolves were seen this morning, and 

 after a while we saw a fourth, of the brindled kind, which 

 was trotting leisurely on, about 150 yards distant from 

 the bank, where he had probably been feeding on some 

 carrion or other. A shot from a rifle was quite enough 



1 This is the largest river which enters the Missouri thus far above Big 

 Sioux River, coming from the north through South Dakota. The origin 

 of the name, as given by Audubon, is known to few persons. Jacques is 

 French for " James," and the stream has oftener been known as James River. 

 Another of its names was Yankton River, derived from that of a tribe of 

 the Sioux. But it is now usually called Dakota River, and will be found 

 by this name on most modem maps. — E. C. 



