FROM BITTER ROOT VALLEY TO FORT HALL. 
329 
Both branches of the Jefferson fork are lined with willow bushes, growing from five to six feet 
high. On our road of this day we met two Banax Indians, who had just crossed the mountains 
from Salmon river. They had nothing to eat, and no arms to procure any kind of game. They 
asked me for a few matches, and seemed perfectly contented. They were two days’ march 
from their village, and had crossed the mountains with a prospect of meeting some of their friends 
returning from the hunt. Having with them a stray horse, they proposed an exchange with one 
of mine ; but not agreeing in a bargain, we each took our respective routes. These are very fine, 
intelligent looking Indians; their language is euphonious, and is different from that of any other 
tribe west of the mountains. Their band at present numbers but a few lodges, having been more 
than decimated by the ravages of the smallpox and inroads of the Blackfeet. The must of them 
now inhabit the country near the Salmon river, where, in their solitude and security, they live 
perfectly contented in spearing the salmon, and living on roots and berries. The night of this 
day was clear and cool, the thermometer being 27° Fah. at sunset. 
December 8, 1853.—Commences clear and pleasant, the thermometer at sunrise being at 23°. 
The frost last night was very heavy. Our journey of this day lay up the valley of the southeast 
branch of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri, which valley, as referred to yesterday, is called the 
“ Red Butte Valley,” from the fact that there is a range of red buttes bordering the stream on the 
east, and about twenty miles above the junction of the forks. I crossed the river to examine these 
buttes, and found them to be composed of red baked clay, mingled with rounded gravel-stones, 
and the whole so compact as to form quite a hard rock. The formation gave undoubted evidence 
of the action of fire. The portion of the valley bordering these buttes is formed of a reddish clay, 
a soil resulting from the washings of these buttes, upon which grows nothing but the artemisia, 
or wild sage. These buttes, forming a range of about two miles in length and five hundred feet 
high, constitute a prominent land-mark in the valley ; hence the name of the “Red Butte Valley.” 
As we ascended this valley, we found it to increase in width till we arrived tit the base of the 
mountains bounding it on the south, where the width of the valley was about eight miles. It is 
bounded on each side by ridges of mountains, from twelve to fifteen hundred feet high, and per¬ 
fectly barren of timber, save on the south, which are wooded with the pine and cedar, growing 
very small. We found the soil of this valley principally of a yellowish or grayish yellow colored 
clay, upon which, throughout its whole length, the wild sage grows in the greatest abundance. 
On the lower and the upper portion of this valley we found the grass to be exceedingly rich, but 
near the middle nothing growing save the wild sage bushes. About fifteen miles from our camp 
of last night we found the river for a distance of several miles lined with the cotton-wood, grow¬ 
ing to a height of seventy feet. The remaining portion of the river and its several small tribu¬ 
taries are unwooded save by willow bushes. After journeying up this valley for a distance of 
twenty-two miles, our trail to the south, and at a distance of four miles the river, bending to the 
southeast, was lost to view, as it wound through the prairie valley in the distance. Our road of 
this day was exceedingly beautiful and level, but a strong southwest wind blowing in our faces, 
made the travelling very uncomfortable. When we entered the mountains, we saw a few 
mountain sheep. 
Our course, after travelling up the valley for a distance of twenty-two miles, turned to the 
south-southwest, and for a distance of six miles we travelled through a canon of the mountains, 
in which we found the bed of a stream, now dry and untimbered save with the willow. Our 
guide, though, told us that our camp would be at the foot of the mountain range separating the 
waters of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri from those of the Snake river, where we would find a 
spring and an abundance of wood. After winding through this canon for six miles, we reach the 
stream flowing from this spring, which sinks into the ground about two miles north of the divide, 
which has the direction of nearly east and west. Here the soil is principally clay, mingled with 
much gravel. On entering this gorge, the mountains on each side were formed of a stratified, 
friable, light-colored rock, the Strata dipping to the southwest at an angle of 75°, the strata being 
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