Louisiana and Aaron Burr 363 



men of the party and suffered much from the wound. 

 Near the mouth of. the Yellowstone Clark joined 

 him, and the reunited company floated down the Mis- 

 souri. Before they reached the Mandan villages 

 they encountered two white men, the first strangers 

 of their own color the party had seen for a year and 

 a half. These were two American hunters named 

 Dickson and Hancock, who were going up to trap 

 the headwaters of the Missouri on their own account. 

 They had come from the Illinois country a year be- 

 fore, to hunt and trap ; they had been plundered, and 

 one of them wounded in an encounter with the fierce 



* 



Sioux, but were undauntedly pushing forward into 

 the unknown wilderness toward the mountains. 



These two hardy and daring adventurers formed 

 the little vanguard of the bands of hunters and trap- 

 pers, the famous Rocky Mountain men, who were 

 to roam hither and thither across the great West 

 in lawless freedom for the next three-quarters of a 

 century. They accompanied the party back to the 

 Mandan village; there one of the soldiers joined 

 them, a man named Colter, so fascinated by the life 

 of the wilderness that he was not willing to leave it, 

 even for a moment's glimpse of the civilization from 

 which he had been so long exiled. 5 The three 

 turned their canoe up-stream, while Lewis and Clark 

 and the rest of the party drifted down past the 

 Sioux. 



The further voyage of the explorers was un- 



5 For Colter, and the first explorers of this region, see "The 

 Yellowstone National Park," by Captain H. M. Chittenden. 



