NARRATIVE OF 1855. 209 
be the very best judgment exercised, so as to make the best use of all the circumstances of the 
ground; but, on the most careful examination of all the localities, I am satisfied that the grades 
will be moderate, the excavations and embankments will be small, the bridge crossings will be 
light structures, and that a most feasible railroad line can be taken down the Bitter Root to 
the mouth of the St. Regis de Borgia. 
Saturday, July 7.--Веіоге we left camp this morning the special agent of the Flatheads, Mr. 
Adams, joined us, looking in fine health and spirits, showing the good effects of a long sojourn 
in the wilderness to develop the physical strength of the species. He informed me very 
thoroughly about all the arrangements he had made for the council with the Flathead nation. 
We then moved camp, and in three miles met the chiefs and braves of the Koutenay, Pend 
d’ Oreille, and Flathead tribes, who received us in the most cordial manner, and with salutes 
of musketry accompanied us to their own camp on a little tributary of the Bitter Root, where, 
after having stayed some hours and made a careful examination of their condition, meeting all 
our old friends, and establishing the most cordial entente between them and our people, we 
made our own camp on the Bitter Root, some seven miles from our camp of last night. I will 
defer to a subsequent occasion any remarks about a continuation of the railroad line. 
This is not the place to go into the details of the Flathead treaty, although my duties as an 
observer of the country were strictly incidental to those as commissioner of the government in 
making treaties with the Indian tribes. To this latter duty my attention was devotedly given 
for the eleven following days, though I did not neglect every possible test which my opportu- 
nities enabled me to apply to the physical geography and the development of our knowledge of 
the country. Thus I had all our barometers brought down from Fort Owen. I had daily 
observations made of the barometer and thermometer, with a view of ascertaining the altitude 
of our camp above the waters of the ocean, and of making such comparisons between our 
various instruments that I could rely upon our field observations hereafter. І had lost all the 
observations of 1853. They had been confided’ to the charge of Lieutenant Donelson, who, 
making the best disposition that he could to insure their safely getting on to New York, lost 
them on the Isthmus. This tended to throw doubt upon my whole work as regarded the 
altitude of the country, and I desired to vindicate my work of 1853 by my observations in 
1855. I trust the time will come when my treaty operations of 1855—the most extensive 
operations ever undertaken and carried out in these latter days of our history—I repeat, I 
trust the time will come when I shall be able to vindicate them, and show that they were wise 
and proper, and that they accomplished a great end. They have been very much criticised 
and very much abused; but I have always felt that history will do those operations justice. I 
have not been impatient as to time, but have been willing that my vindication should come at 
the end of a term of years. Let short-minded men denounce and criticise ignorantly and inju- 
riously, and let time show that the government made no mistake in the man whom it placed in 
the great field of duty as its commissioner to make treaties with the Indian tribes. So, leaving 
all these things to the proper occasion, and turning our minds simply to the physical geography 
of this country, we will now part with our Flathead friends, with whom we had made a treaty 
of peace and cession—every man pleased and every man satisfied; and this satisfaction has 
continued until this present hour. We left them on Wednesday, July 18, to move forward to 
Fort Benton. 
27 8 
