THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 547 



a very popular work, which is being read with great avidity, from the pen of a gentle- 

 man whose name gives currency to any book, and whose fine taste pleasure to all 

 who read. The work I refer to, "The Rocky Mountains, or Adventures in the Far 

 West, by W. Irving," is a very interesting one, and its incidents, no doubt, are given 

 with great candor, by the excellent officer, Captain Bonneville, who spent five years 

 in the region of the Rocky Mountains on a furlough, endeavouring, in comxietitiou 

 with others, to add to his fortune by pushing the fur trade to some of the wildest 

 tribes in those remote regions. 



"The worthy captain [says the author] started into the conntrj- with one hundred 

 and ten men, whose very appearance and equipment exhibited a iiiebald mixture — 

 half-civilized and half-savage," &c. Aud ho also preludes his work by saying that 

 it was revised by hiuiself from Captain Bonneville's own notes, which can, no doubt, 

 bo relied on. 



This medley group, it seems, traversed the country to the Rockj' Mountains, where 

 amongst the Nez Percys and Flathcads, he says, "They were friendly iu their dispo- 

 sitions, and honest to the most scrupulous degree in their intercourse with the white 

 men." And of the same people the cax^tain continues: " Simply to call these people 

 religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of jjiety and devotion which 

 pervades the whole of their conduct. Their honesty is immaculate, and their ijurity 

 of purpose and their obsurvance of the rites of their religion are most uniform and 

 remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages." 



Afterwards, of the Root-Diggers in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake, who are a 

 band of the Suake tribe (and of whom he speaks thus: "In fact, they are a simple, 

 timid, inoffensive race, and scarce provided with any weapons, except for the chase"), 

 he says that, "'one morning oue of his trappers of a violent aud savage character, 

 discovering that his traps had been carried off in the night, took a horrid oath that 

 he would kill the first Indian he should meet, innocent or guilty. As he was return- 

 ing with his comrades to camp, he beheld two unfortunate Root-Diggers seated on 

 the river bank fishing : advancing upon them, he leveled his rifle, shot one upon the 

 spot, and flung his bleeding body into the stream." 



A short time afterward, when his party of trappers " were about to cross Ogden's 

 River, a great number of Shoshokies, or Root-Diggers, were posted on the opposite 

 bank, when they imagined they were there with hostile intent; they advanced upon 

 them, leveled their rifles, aud killed twenty-five of them on the spot. The rest fled 

 to a short distance, then halted and turned about, howling and whining like wolves, 

 and uttering the most i)iteous wailings. The trappers chased them iu every direc- 

 tion; the poor wretches made no defense, but fled with terror. Neither does it ap- 

 pear from the accounts of tbe boasted victors that a weapon had been wielded or a 

 weapon launched by the Indians throughout the affair." 



After this aftair this jiiebald band of trappers wandered off to Monterey, on the 

 coast of California, and on their return on horseback through an immense tract of 

 the Root-Digger's country, he gives the further following accounts of their transac- 

 tions: 



" In the course of their journey through the country of the poor Root Diggers there 

 seems to have been an emulation between them which could inflict the greatest out- 

 rages upon the natives. The trappers still considered them in the light of dangerous 

 foes, and the Mexicans, very probably, charged them with the sin of horse-stealing; 

 we have no other mode of accounting for the infamous barbarities of which, accord- 

 ing to their own story, they were guilty; hunting the poor Indians like wild beasts, 

 aud killing them without mercy; chasing their unfortuuato victims at full speed, 

 noosing them around the neck with their lassos, and then dragging them to death." 



It is duo to Captain Bonnevillo that the world should know that these cruel (not 

 savage) atrocities were committed by his men, when they were on a tour to explore 

 the shoreg of the Great Salt Lake, and many hundreds of miles from him and beyond 



