JOHN COLTER FREE TRAPPER 179 



This is an Indian ruse to arrest the pursuit of a 

 wild beast. By force of habit it stopped the Indian too, 

 and disconcerted him so that instead of launching his 

 spear, he fell flat on his face, breaking the shaft in his 

 hand. With a leap, Colter had snatched up the broken 

 point and pinned the savage through the body to the 

 earth. 



That intercepted the foremost of the other warriors, 

 who stopped to rescue their brave and gave Colter time 

 to reach the river. 



In he plunged, fainting and dazed, swimming for an 

 island in mid-current where driftwood had formed a 

 sheltered raft. Under this he dived, corning up with 

 his head among branches of trees. 



All that day the Blackfeet searched the island for 

 Colter, running from log to log of the drift; but the 

 close-grown brushwood hid the white man. At night 

 he swam down-stream like any other hunted animal 

 that wants to throw pursuers off the trail, went ashore 

 and struck across country, seven days journey for the 

 Missouri Company s fort on the Bighorn Eiver. 



Naked and unarmed, he succeeded in reaching the 

 distant fur post, having subsisted entirely on roots and 

 berries. 



Chittenden says that poor Colter s adventure only 

 won for him in St. Louis the reputation of a colossal 

 liar. But traditions of his escape were current among 

 all hunters and Indian tribes on the Missouri, so that 

 when Bradbury, the English scientist, went west with 

 the Astorians in 1811, he sifted the matter, accepted it 

 as truth, and preserved the episode for history in a 



