522 FROM BITTER ROOT VALLEY TO FLATIIEA1) LAKE AND KOOTENAY RIVER. 



April 24. Resuming our march this morning at 8 a. m., our trail continued the whole dny 

 through one immense dense forest. In many places we found no trail visible, and with the ex 

 ceedingly thick undergrowth, large and numerous fallen logs, and the many sloughs and mud- 

 holes, rendered our travelling anything but enviable. Our trail lay on the left bank of the Maple 

 river, which, about fifteen miles from our camp of last night, we found to make three large and 

 beautiful lakes the water in two being exceedingly blue and deep ; the third we found frozen 

 over. We passed over small banks of snow to-day, but not in sufficient quantities to impede our 

 progress ; the greatest difficulty that we found was to travel without bruising or breaking every 

 limb, from the standing and fallen timber. Truly, I considered this one of the worst roads, if 

 not (he worst, ever travelled by whites or Indians, and still it is the main trail of travel for the 

 Kootenays from their countt to fHat of the Pend d Oreilles. Four lodges of these Indians we 

 met in the dense forest to day. They were both glad and astonished to see us, and were anx 

 ious to know our point of destination in this lonely and deserted region. We observed, as soon 

 as we met these poor and miserable creatures, that they had been visited by the Jesuit priests, 

 for on shaking hands wilh them each one made the sign of the cross. These families were trav 

 elling to the country of the Pend d Oreilles. 



The lower Kootenay Indians are represented and from what I have seen I can corroborate the 

 same as being an exceedingly poor, improvident, and miserable tribe of Indians. They are poor 

 in horses, have few or no skin lodges, make but little meat for their sustenance, and, in a word, 

 live a miserable existence. We found them poorly and thinly clad, travelling with few horses, 

 each horse carrying two and sometimes three persons ; their lodges were made of mats formed of 

 a tall rush found growing in the marshes. Their chief article of food when travelling is roots, 

 and fish w r hen at home. Their language is similar to that of the Blackfeet Indians east of the 

 mountains. 



Travelling a few miles farther, we met two lodges who had been camped in the woods two 

 days. We saw only the women and children; the men were searching for lost horses. So very 

 scarce is the grass on this route, and so difficult the road, that often the Indians are compelled 

 to camp without a blade of grass for their animals ; we, however, were very fortunate, at night 

 finding a low, marshy bottom, which afforded our animals a sufficient, but at the same time a 

 scanty fare. 



April 25. Our course for the greater portion of this day lay again through an immense, dense 

 pine forest, over fallen timber, through thick underbrush, and innumerable bogs, mud-holes, 

 and sloughs. The soil, since leaving the large prairie at the north end of the Flathead lake, we 

 ibund very poor and barren, as the country is covered with an immense pine forest, from which 

 the light of day is nearly ever excluded ; and the soil being formed of pine burrs, dead timber, 

 and in many places fragments of rocks, it precludes the possibility of anything growing, even a 

 scanty fare of grass for the animals that travel over its uninviting surface. 



At 12 rn. we gained the summit of the divide separating the waters of the Clark s fork from 

 those of the Kootenay river; at this point the Maple river takes its rise. On the summit we met 

 ;i Kootenay chief with two lodges of his tribe, on their way to the country of the Pend d Oreilles, 

 and having with us a horse much wearied we turned it over to him, to be delivered to Mr. Ogden 

 &amp;lt; luring the summer, knowing full well that he would take good care of it, and no other alterna 

 tive was remaining but to abandon it on the road. The timber is not so dense on the north as 



in the south side of the divide; it being much larger, was more scattered, and with much less 

 undergrowth. A short distance from the summit we crossed a small but rapid stream whose 

 waters flow into the Kootenay river. 



We crossed during the afternoon three tributaries of this branch, upon the last of which we 



ncamped. We were now seven miles from the Kootenay river, having entered a different and 

 l&amp;gt;y far better region than we had been travelling through for some days. The country had now 

 become a high-rolling prairie opening, which extended along the tributary of the Kootenay river 



