NARRATIVE OF 1855. 219 
continued on the trail, making fifty miles a day, sleeping several times on the prairie, until he 
struck the Bow tributary of the Saskatchawan, two hundred and thirty odd miles from Fort 
Benton, entering the large Blackfeet camp two hours only after the four stolen horses. He 
immediately called the chiefs, demanded the horses, received three of them, and placed them 
in the hands of the Little Dog, who, after returning from his fruitless search for the trail, 
had started off, without resting, to join his old friend Doty. One of the scamps, however, 
got off with the fourth horse, and Mr. Doty started off immediately in pursuit, moved over 
seventy miles in a day to the Elk tributary of the Saskatchawan, and there received from the 
chiefs the fourth horse; and on the sixteenth day after these horses were stolen from my camp 
they were returned to the four Pend д Oreille boys at Fort Benton. This was the last, as it 
was the first, stealing of horses by the Indians. A full account of this trip of Mr. Doty is 
given in the proceedings of the Blackfoot council, of which the following summary is given: 
Starting from Fort Benton on the evening of August 30, he crossed the Marias river on 
September 1, about thirty miles from its mouth. The river was seventy yards wide, and two 
and a half feet deep at the ford, with a three mile current. The valley was from one-half a 
mile іо two miles wide, well timbered with cottonwood, and naving a soil of reddish or ash 
colored loam, which in many places appeared well adapted for agricultural purposes. 
He then crossed the plain northwestwardly to the base of the most westerly of the Three 
Buttes, where there was a fine grove and several springs of excellent water. Thence, con- 
tinuing northwardly, he reached a coulée tributary to Milk River valley, which had perpen- 
dicular walls of red sandstone a hundred and fifty feet high, wooded along the stream with 
the narrow leaved cottonwood, a tree common from the eastern base of the mountains to the 
Pacific coast. 
Crossing Milk river, he passed to a high, level plain, of different character from that on the 
south side. The soil is a sandy loam; the grass, though, short, forms a heavy turf, and the 
prickly pear had disappeared. Twenty miles due north he reached Lake Pah-ka-kee, or 
Unlucky Water, which has a strong odor of sulphuretted hydrogen, perceptible at a distance of 
amile. The Indians and horses drank of it without any bad effects, although it had been 
supposed to be the cause of death to a number of horses lost here by the Indians some years 
before. The report of its being salt, before generally credited, was thus disproved. Its shores 
are gravelly, and its water clear. It lies at some distance north of latitude 49°. Forty-seven 
miles further north he struck the Mo-ka-un, or Belly river, fifteen miles above its junction with 
Bow river. The stream is here 150 yards wide, and is deep, with a current of four miles per 
hour; the water clear and cold, and the shores gravelly and sloping. It is subject to a sions 
of forty feet, as shown by the pine driftwood scattered in its valley. No кенп grows on its 
banks near the point then reached. Going up this river about twenty miles, he left it end 
followed a branch destitute of wood towards the northwest, and proceeded across the plain 
beyond for thirty miles, to a marshy lake, and twenty miles further ардык Bow river. He 
. then followed this up for thirty miles, and crossed it at a ford 300 yards wide and so deep as to 
run over his saddle. This being the last encampment of the Indians who hunt and trade on 
American soil, he started on his return September 8. There was a heavy storm of rain and hail 
that night and the next two days. He arrived at Fort Benton on the 15th, having travelled 
583 miles, and connected the reconnoissance of Mr. Stanley and Mr. Tinkham with his own 
exploration along the eastern base of the mountains, and examined the country far northward 
of the boundary line. 
