HISTORICAL AND OTHERWISE 85 



His return adventures included an encounter 

 with the Blackfeet Indians in which he was strip- 

 ped, made to run a race with their fleetest warriors, 

 escaped and made his way, naked and unarmed, 

 for three hundred miles, to the post at Three 

 Forks. 



Bradbury, the English traveler, saw him at 

 St. Louis in 1810, and published an account of his 

 wanderings. 



At that time there were three great tribes of 

 Indians who surrounded the Park and held all 

 the ways, north and south, east and west: the 

 Blackfeet of the Algonquins, the Crows of the 

 Sioux, and the Bannocks and Eastern Sho- 

 shones of the Shoshone family. None of these 

 lived in the Park or seemed to have visited it, 

 except along the northern portion through which 

 ran a faint trail evidently seldom traveled. 



The only Indians who occupied the Park were 

 the Sheep Eaters, a branch of the Shoshones^ 

 without horses or weapons, who lived, precariously, 

 in huts of brush, by snaring animals. These In- 

 dians were feeble, poor and degenerate. Among 



