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NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY 



knows at what moment a tribe which has always been friendly, 

 may receive ill treatment from thoughtless, or evil-designing men, 

 and the innocent suffer for the deeds of the guilty. 



Avgust 19th. — This morning, Captain Thing (Wyeth's part- 

 ner) arrived from the interior. Poor man ! he looks very much 

 worn by fatigue and hardships, and seven years older than 

 when I last saw him. He passed through the Snake country 

 from Fort Hall, without knowing of the hostile disposition of the 

 Bannecks, but, luckily for him, only met small parties of them, 

 who feared to attack his camp. He remarked symptoms of 

 distrust and coolness in their manner, for which he w-as, at the 

 time, unable to account. As I have yet been only an hour in 

 his company, and as a large portion of this time was consumed 

 in his business affairs, I have not been able to obtain a very par- 

 ticular account of his meeting and skirmish with the Blackfeet 

 last spring, a rumor of which we heard several weeks since. 

 From what I have been enabled to gather, amid the hurry and 

 bustle consequent upon his arrival, the circumstances appear to 

 be briefly these. He had made a camp on Salmon river, and, 

 as usual, piled up his goods in front of it, and put his horses in a 

 pen erected temporarily for the purpose, when, at about day- 

 break, one of his sentries heard a gun discharged near. He went 

 immediately to Captain T.'s tent to inform him of it, and at that 

 instant a yell sounded from an adjacent thicket, and about five 

 hundred Indians, — three hundred horse and two hundred foot, — 

 rushed out into the open space in front. The mounted savages 

 were dashing to and fro across the line of the camp, discharging 

 their pieces with frightful rapidity, while those who had not 

 horses, crawled around to take them in the rear. 



Notwithstanding the galling fire which the Indians were con- 

 stantly pouring into them. Captain T. succeeded in driving his 

 horses into the thicket behind, and securing them there, placing 

 over them a guard of three men as a check to the savages who 



