May id, 1902.} 
the .Western United Slates. The sovereignty over St, 
Louis, changing almost more frequently than that of any 
city in America, became permanent March 9, 1804, when 
by the Louisiana purchase it was transferred to the 
United States. In the year 1800 its population was only 
g2S, while ten years later it had 1,400, and in 1820, 2.000 
inhabitants. It was not long before this time that the 
first steamboat arrived at St, Louis, an important event, 
which was the beginning of the steamboat navigation 
of the great river, which made St. Louis a trade center 
for the whole West, and of all her trade the fur trade 
was then the most important. 
For many years after its founding, and indeed for 
.tome time after the cession to the United States, St. 
Louis remained a simple village of less than a thousand 
inhabitants, where, to be sure, there was more trade than 
in the neighboring small settlements, but even so, very 
little. Nevertheless, so little was agriculture practiced by 
the more energetic . inhabitants of St. Louis that her 
neighbors called her contemptuously, pain court (short 
of bread), while, on v the other hand, the dwellers of the 
neighboring settlements were called by their more pre- 
tentious neighbors, Vide Poche (empty pocket) and 
Miser e (wretchedness). 
The fur trade of St. Louis began with the year r8o6, 
and practically the first of its expeditions was under 
Manuel Lisa, who was backed by the merchant, William 
Morrison, of Kaskaskia, 111., and by Pierre Menard. This 
Manuel Lisa was one of the best known of the early ex- 
plorers of the Western country. He was born of Spanish 
parents in New Orleans in 1772, though Hunter in his 
captivity speaks of him as half Spanish and half Indian. 
He it was who in the year 1807 built the first trading post 
on the Yellowstone, above the mouth of the Big Horn. 
He was appointed sub-agent for all the" Missouri River 
tribes above the Kansas, and resided on the Missouri 
River, at a post above the present site of Omaha, Neb., 
until 1815. He was an important man in the Missouri 
Fur Company, and died in 1820 at St. Louis. He was a 
man of the very greatest influence among the Indians, for 
he thoroughly understood their character, and how to 
:handle them. Many interesting tales are told of his varied 
career. 
One of the earliest expeditions to the head of the Mis- 
souri was made by Pierre Menard ar>d Andrew Henry 
in the year 1819, their object being to open a trade with 
the Blackfeet. It was not successful, for the party were 
twice attacked by Blackfeet, and lost men, some of whom 
were important. Menard returned to St. Louis, while 
Henry remained at the Three Forks. The Indians, how- 
ever, were so troublesome that Henry finally left the 
place, crossed the Continental Divide, and established him- 
self on that branch of the Snake River which has since 
been known as Henry's Fork. 
It is impossible to follow all the different expeditions 
which during the next few years went out from St. Louis 
to trade on the upper river. The records of those days in 
that country are a continuous story of trapping and 
trading, with almost equally continuous accounts of fight- 
ing, chiefly with the Blackfeet, but also with the Gros 
Ventres of the Prairie and with the Arikaras. 
Floating on the Missouri* — XL 
We were awakened by a grinding and rasping along the 
shore, and looking out saw that the river was covered 
with great cakes of congealed mush ice — more ice than 
there was open water. There was half an inch of snow 
on the ground; the wind was still in" the north, but the fog 
had disappeared and the dark gray clouds were scudding 
along high above the rim of the valley, h was an ideal 
day for still-hunting, but there was no thought of that 
now. Here we were, seventy-five miles or more south of 
the Great Northern Railway, on the south side of the 
river, and we knew not how many miles from a ranch and 
a team to take us north to the railroad. We had a hurried 
breakfast, loaded the boat, and pushed out into the 
stream. Here and there among the great floating cakes of 
ice there was an open lane of water on which I could 
make good time, and then for a long time we would be 
inclosed and surrounded, and there was nothing to do but 
drift until another piece of water opened a way. Geese 
were unusually numerous; likely they thought it too cold 
to continue their flight to the south, and they looked 
rather forlorn as they sat huddled up on the bars. Never- 
theless they always flew before we came within range of 
them, generally lighting a short distance down stream, 
only to rise and fly on again at our approach, and 
ere long there were hundreds of them keeping ahead of 
lis, our vanguard as it were. Our friends the sharp- 
tail grouse were also in evidence, perched by dozens in the 
brush and scattering trees along the shores, their necks 
drawn in, their feathers distended. A couple of miles 
below our island camp we passed over McGonnigal's Bar, a 
bit of river full of sandbars and sand islands ; the channel 
was easily followed, however, as the more rapidly moving 
ice in it pointed out the way, and we went through without 
once touching bottom. The bar was named after R. L. 
McGonnigal, an old friend of ours, who had a woodyard 
here in the early '70's, and whose remains now lie in the 
cemetery at Fort Benton. He was born. I believe, in 
Gir.rgia. lived in Alabama for a time, was an ofrtevr in 
the Confederate army and came to Montana at the clcsc u 
FOHEST AND STREAM ^ 
the war. A kind, genial, whole-souled fellow was Mac. 
Peace to his shades. 
At the foot of the bar we came in sight of the Round 
Butte, one of the well-known and peculiar landmarks 
along the river. It stands on a sloping ridge, about a mile 
south of the stream, and is perfectly cone shaped, its sharp 
summit surmounted by a few stunted pines. The Black- 
feet have two names for it — Heart Butte, the Black Butte. 
In other days it was a favorite resort of war parties, for 
from its summit a fine view of the valley may be seen— 
for many miles, both above and below it. And now we 
began to see the end of the long and all but treeless canon 
we had been passing through. Below the butte the valley 
widens out, and there are large groves of Cottonwood on 
every bottom. We slipped along past the butte. sometimes 
rowing, but more often drifting with the ice. By this time 
Sah-n6-to was getting thoroughly chilled, although she 
had on numerous heavy wraps, and I began looking for a 
camp ground. We passed a long stretch of timber on the 
north side, but there was a shallow bar in front of it, and 
found a place at last on the south side, four miles below 
the butte. It was 2 o'clock, and we had come only twelve 
or thirteen miles since early morning, but I was about 
worn out with my struggle to row faster than the ice was 
running. All along Sah-ne-to had been "making medicine," 
addressing most earnest supplications to a certain ancient 
coyote who was supposed to have great influence over 
Ai-sto-yi-stam, the cold-maker, and other gods of the 
storms and winds. Shortly after we had set up the tent, 
lo, the clouds broke away, the sun shone warmly and a 
still warmer Chinook wind began to blow from the west. 
In half an hour the snow had all disappeared. "See, now, 
you unbeliever," said Sah-ne-to, "the result of my prayer.s ; 
the gods took pity on us and have brought the warm wind 
to our aid." 
I was up before daylight the next morning. There was 
still some mush ice in the river, but I had no difficulty in 
rowing across to the other side. Here was a broad sand- 
bar under a very high cut bank, all cut up by the foot- 
prints of deer. Above was the long grove of cottonwoods 
we had passed the day before, and half a mile below a 
still larger, wider grove. I berit my steps toward the 
latter, in hopes of finding something worth shooting at. 
I traversed the foot of the cut bank a quarter of a mile 
or more, and then at the mouth of a coulee found a place 
where I could climb it, up a path several feet in depth, 
worn by the sharp hoofs of the deer. The moon was 
shining, and although the sky was beginning to redden 
in the east, there was not yet sufficient light to enable me 
to see a deer, so I sat down on the edge of the cut bank 
and waited fifteen or twenty minutes. Down stream a 
ways the river bore in sharply against the bank, and as I 
sat there a large cottonwood which had been undermined 
toppled in with a reverberating splash, another warning 
to keep away from the treacherous banks. I arose and 
moved on toward the grove a few steps at a time, follow- 
ing the trail which was as plain and hard beaten as any 
game path I ever saw. Arrived at a clump of trees stand- 
ing several hundred yards out from the main growth, I 
stood with my back to one, and as it got lighter I saw 
seven deer feeding among the sagebrush out at the edge 
of the bottom. Just beyond them there was a long steep 
bank, then a bench several hundred yards wide, and then 
began the steep slope of the hills. By making a detour 
down through the timber to where it bordered the steep 
bank, and then circling up along the flat, I thought I might 
get within range of them, But I had not gone more than 
two hundred yards when the willows and rosebrush bor- 
dering the wood seemed to be alive with fleeing deer, their 
white waving tails showing plainly in every direction for a 
second or two as they leaped into the shelter of the grove. 
There were bucks and does and fawns, twenty-five or 
thirty of them, and one old buck must needs lope along an 
opening, running toward the river. A bullet from my .30-30 
caught him in the stern, he stopped, wabbled and fell, and 
a moment later I had the knife into him. He was a very 
large, fat old fellow, the primest kind of meat. I looked to 
see what had become of the seven I had first discovered, 
and saw them alternately _ trotting and walking up the 
long slope into the hills, evidently not very much alarmed. 
Of course I hurried back to camp and we had some 
fried liver and brains for breakfast. After the dishes 
were washed and everything put in shape about the camp, 
I determined to pass the day exploring around a bit. The 
sun was shining brightly, the Chinook wind continued, 
and there was no more sign of approaching winter save 
the still passing but lessening flow of ice. Sah-ne-to said 
she felt like having a good long tramp, too, so we crossed 
the river and set forth. All along the edge of the timber 
below where my buck lay, the rose and buck brush was 
criss-crossed by numberless game trails. A fresh mound 
of leaves, brush, fallen branches and loose earth attracted 
our attention, and we found that the uneaten part of a 
freshly killed deer had been carried up by a grizzly. There 
were its tracks, made during the night, and they were as 
large as any footprints of bear I ever saw. At first I 
feared that the old fellow had been alarmed by my shot in 
the early morning, but we found his trail going up toward 
the breaks, and made sure that he had walked along 
in the game path in the usual slow and deliberate manner 
of his kind. As we approached the hills, trail after trail 
branched off from the main one, and that too soon came to 
an end. and before us was the hard, grassy slope where 
not even the sharp hoofs of a deer could leave a mark, 
and there we lost the tracks of the bear. We kept on, 
ascending after a little a long, narrow ridge between two 
deep coulees, and there the grass and other vegetation 
ended. The top of the backbone was bare, black baked 
bad land. Again we found numberless tracks of deer, and 
the trails of several bears, old and recent, but not the trail 
of the deer killer. The coulee down to our right was 
broad and grassy, and from it lesser ones' branched oft' 
up into the ridge. In each one of these, and especially 
on the northeast slopes were small groves of pine, thickets 
of plum trees. An ideal place for mule deer, I thought, 
and I was not a little surprised to see a couple of white- 
tail bucks bound out of the first one we approached. They 
were within easy range, and likely I could have killed one or 
both of them, but we had already plenty of meat, and I 
forebore to shoot, although I longed to do so. 
I don't know how long that coulee is; we kept on the 
ridge above it, even ascending, for four or five miles, but 
never came to the end of it. At last the divide began to 
rise in benches, with cliffs of hard sandstone, beneath 
368 
■" ' ■ 1 in - I 
0 
them belts of fir. Sah-ne-to was getting tired, so we eon- 
eluded to go no further. 
It seemed to be a day of big tracks, for at the foot ol 
one of the cliffs we saw the largest bighorn footprints I 
ever ran across. At first I thought they must have been 
made by an elk, but after following them a ways I was 
convinced that they really were those of a ram. I would 
have given much to have seen that animal. A pair of 
nineteen-inch horns were once found in this country, and 
I doubt not this particular old ram had a monstrously 
large pair. On our way up we' had seen five bucks, all 
white-tail, but no mule deer, nor was there much sign of 
the latter. Now, the white- tail deer are generally sup- 
posed to live almost entirely in the thick timber and wil- 
lows of the river bottoms, and so do the does and fawns, 
but my own experience is that the bucks generally take 
to the hills and pine groves at daylight, returning to the • 
vicinity of the river at dusk, or a little later. At least this 
is the case along the Missouri. Of course the bucks do 
remain in the timber of the bottoms to some extent during 
the daytime, but the majority take to the hills. If' by so 
doing they imagine they are safer, then their instinct is 
wrong. The country is so broken that the hunter can 
generally surprise them in their beds, and obtain a fair 
•riming shot at them before they can get over the nearest 
knoll. And he who cannot take the fall out of one at a 
hundred yards or so, deserves to live on bacon straight. 
We went down into the wide coulee, crossed it, and 
gradually gaining the top of the next point followed it 
toward the river. Again on the east side of the ridge we 
found scattering pine groves, and started two more bucks 
out of them, but still there was no further sign of the old 
grizzly. A smaller pne had recently crossed the ridge, and 
there were the deep indentations of another one, made 
when there had been a heavy rain, f imagine it would 
be severe work for a bear to wade through this clayey 
soil in the wet season, sinking into the mud six or eight 
inches at every step, and carrying sticky masses of it 09 
his paws. 
Keeping on top of the ridge, we followed it to the 
end, then down into the bottom, striking the lower end of 
the timber in which I had killed the buck. " It was useless 
to hunt for the bear in there, as the fallen leaves were 
very noisy underfoot. The deer trails through- the border- 
ing rose and buck brush afforded a good and silent path, 
and we followed them slowly, scanning' every bit of the 
woodland we could see. Poking along this, we saw some- 
thing looming up in the brush ahead of -us and- found that 
it was a Red River cart, one of those massive, high, two- 
wheeled affairs used by the Cree half-breeds. It had evi- 
dently been in good order when left by its owners, but 
was now checked and warped by the weather. The wrap- 
pings, or rather tires of the wheels, were of buffalo raw- 
hide, to which the hair still clung, faded to a brownish 
white color, but still curly and kinky. ' Near the cart 
there were the charred ends of some sticks, an old brass 
kettle such as the Hudson's Bay Company used to handle, 
and some buffalo bones. Why .the cart should have been 
abandoned here was a conundrum, for the breeds valued 
the creaking affairs as highly as a rancher does his wagon. 
Perhaps its owners were here beset by a war party of 
Blackfeet, or other Indians, and killed or driven away, and 
if such was the case, we give the Indians credit for having 
done one good deed. Riel himself rode in one of these 
carts. "Do you know," he said to me one day, "Do you 
know that I compare myself to the David of the Bible? 
Yes, like him, I am the leader of a persecuted people. 
Riding in my cart over the plains I am in the habit of 
composing verses, something like the Psalms. Let me 
repeat a few of them to you. I would like to get your 
opinion of the metre." 
"Excuse me," I replied, "I am very busy just now* mix- 
ing some alcohol for your people," and for many a day I 
avoided him. 
We sat down by the cart and eat our lunch. The sight 
of it brought up many memories of old times and of those 
queer people, the Cree half-breeds, or more properly, 
French half-breeds. I can see them yet trailing over the 
prairie after the buffalo, a string of horses and carts a 
mile or two long, each one driven by a black-dressed 
woman or girl, who invariably wore a black silk handker- 
chief tied over her head. We sold great numbers of them 
at the rate of a head and tail robe per handkerchief. That 
was the one article of adornment affected by the women. 
The men wore gaudy sashes. How they hated us Amer- 
icans and the English, calling us heretical dogs, and worse, 
when they thought we did not understand their bastard 
French. I was on several buffalo runs with the men. Al- 
ways, when a herd was sighted, they dismounted, knelt 
on the plain, and prayed for a successful and safe run, 
crossing themselves and bowing repeatedly. And the 
next moment they were up and away, cursing horribly as 
they urged their horses on. And after they had strewn 
the plain with the dark brown carcasses of the buffalo, 
they tried to steal the animals from each other, and there 
was more cursing, and even fights. And yet, withal, they 
were arrant cowards, not nearly so brave and determined 
as the full-blooded Indians. 
It was past 3 o'clock when we came to our buck, having 
seen nothing of the bear. I cut the deer in two, hung up 
the forequarters, and' Gamed the balance to the boat, and 
then to camp. I wanted that bear. After dinner I crossed 
the river again, and taking a position near its cache, sat 
and watched and hoped for a sight of the old fellow. As 
dusk came on some, deer appeared here and there along the 
edge ofH:he timber, some of them gradually feeding out 
toward the hills, but bruin came not. I waited until it 
was too dark to see the sights of the rifle plainly, and then 
sneaked back to the boat and rowed across to camp. 
"Have you noticed." Sah-ne-to asked, "the broad gashes 
on the trees here and over where we were to-day ?" 
Indeed I had. Forty feet above the summer level of the 
river the cottonwoods had been scarred by ice during a 
jam. owing to the sudden breaking up of the river. The 
months of December and January in the winter of 1879- 
'80 were bitterly cold, and the river froze to the depth of 
three feet. The snow was also deep, especially up at the 
foot of the Rockies. It was, I believe, the 18th of February 
that an exceedingly warm and furious Chinook wind set 
in, and soon every coulee on the plains and in the foot- 
hills was a running river. A day or two later a great 
volume of water swelled the Missouri and tore up the ice, 
ripping its way along with a tremendous crashing and 
grinding. Every little way the ice would jam and pile 
