170 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 1, 1908. 
the situation at once and prepared to act. In 
the meantime the Indians, noticing the action 
of the horses, rushed forward and opened fire 
on McCartney and companion, who by this time 
were in full run to a willow thicket about two 
hundred and fifty yards up the valley. They 
were not hit and in a short time were under 
cover, firing back at the Indians. The latter 
had not time to waste, but cutting the lash rope 
of their pack animal took only the horse. 
It so happened that Col. Sturgis of the Seventh 
Cavalry, who was then near the lower outlet 
of Clark’s Fork Canon, watching for the Nez 
Perces, had sent two scouts with dispatches for 
General Howard, who was following up the Nez 
Perces. In moving around to avoid the latter 
outfit they had missed General Howard and were 
on the way to Fort Ellis, traveling the same trail 
that this Indian scouting party was traveling on 
the back trail. They met each other on Black 
Tail Deer Creek. With the two scouts, Goff 
and Leonard, was an Indian boy of about fifteen 
years, a protege of Goff. The Indians discovered 
the approach of the white men and had time to 
prepare an ambush for them. Some of them 
hid in the willow brush within ten feet of the 
trail; the others took position on a hill out of 
sight. The whites came along unsuspicious of 
danger, until the party in ambush fired. The 
Indian boy fell from his horse wounded, draw¬ 
ing his revolver as he fell. Leonard had his 
horse killed. He immediately cut the lash rope 
of the pack horse, mounted him, and he and 
Goff took the back track under the rapid fire 
of the whole outfit, Goff receiving a painful 
flesh wound in the neck. As soon as possible 
they plunged down a gorge leading to the Yel¬ 
lowstone, and were not followed further. 
On the river they met a white scout who 
brought them into the camp of the soldiers. The 
body of the Indian boy was never found, nor 
could any information as to his fate be obtained 
afterward. In my spring wagon I took Goff to 
Fort Ellis and from him these particulars were 
obtained. Afterward while carrying a dispatch 
from Fort Ellis to General Howard, Leonard 
was ambushed and killed by these same 
Indians. 
The foregoing digression has been made as 
to the movements of the Nez Perces Indians in 
order to render more intelligible what follows. 
[to be concluded.] 
was six hundred and sixty-seven miles west of 
Independence, Missouri, the starting point for all 
emigrants of the early days. Westport and In¬ 
dependence were, of course, the early names of 
a part of what is now Kansas City. 
In the year 1846, when Francis Parkman was 
taking his first glimpse of the then unknown 
West, he made Laramie his headquarters for a 
time, and it is interesting to see what he has to 
say about it, its inhabitants and its savage visitors. 
After his return, writing of his arrival at the 
post, then newly built, he says: 
“Looking back after the expiration of a year 
upon Fort Laramie and its inmates they seem 
less like a reality than like some fanciful picture 
of the early time; so different was the scene 
from any which this tamer side of the world can 
present. Tall Indians, enveloped in their white 
buffalo robes, were striding across the area or 
reclining at full length on the low roofs of the 
buildings which inclosed it. Numerous squaws, 
gaily bedizened, sat crowded in front of the 
apartments they occupied; their mongrel off¬ 
spring restless and vociferous rambled in every, 
direction of the fort, and the trappers, .traders 
and engages of the establishment were busy at 
their labor or their amusement.” 
After some difficulty they persuaded the bour¬ 
geois Bordeaux that they were not traders, and 
induced him to receive them into the post. He 
gave them a large room in which they deposited 
AiAcient Landmarks 
I N the early days of travel in the West the 
explorers and early traders who were push¬ 
ing toward the Rocky Mountains naturally 
followed up the water courses. The streams 
running chiefly from west to east offered obvious 
highways for purposes of transportation. It was 
natural then that early fur trading posts should 
be located on considerable rivers so that goods 
for trade could be carried into the interior by 
boats, and furs received in exchange for these 
goods could be easily and swiftly transported 
down the streams in the same way. Thus the 
earliest trading posts were located on such 
streams as the Mississippi, the Red River of the 
North, the Missouri, the Yellowstone and the 
Platte. One of the most famous of the early 
posts was Fort Laramie, which stood at the 
junction of the North Platte and the Laramie 
rivers. This stream was named for a trapper 
named La Ramee or La Ramie. He was an 
early, perhaps one of the earliest of the Canadian 
French voyageurs who trapped and hunted and 
died in the further West, and he gave his name 
to the stream which subsequently gave its name 
to the fort. 
Larpenteur, in 1833, speaks of Laramie Fork, 
or to be more exact, fourche la Ramie, and again 
J. K. Townsend speaks of Laramie Fork in 1834. 
In that same year William Sublette and his 
partner, Robert Campbell, built a fort at Laramie 
Fork which was called Fort William after Sub¬ 
lette. Their small party consisted of about a 
dozen men, and this Fort William was a small 
post. In the following year Sublette sold Fort 
William to Fitzpatrick, Sublette & Bridger, and 
the post was thus turned over to the American 
Fur Company. About that time its name was 
changed to Fort John, named after Mr. John B. 
Sarpy, a noted character of the early West, who 
gave his name to at least one river and perhaps 
to other geographical features in the West. In 
1836 the American Fur Company built about it 
an adobe wall to take the place of the original 
stockade and some time after this the old name, 
Fort John, came to be less and less used, though 
it persisted until 1844, as shown by the sketch 
here printed. 
Later, another trading post was built a short 
distance further up the stream and was called 
Fort Laramie. In 1849 it was sold to the United 
States Government and became a military fort 
at which at least two companies of mounted 
rifles were stationed. Being as it was on the 
trail to California it was the stopping place for 
all westbound emigrants, and it is said that in 
the year 1850 wagon trains and other parties rep¬ 
resenting forty thousand animals crossed the 
Laramie River below the fort. For many years 
it was the great trading place for the Sioux and 
Cheyennes and about it, especially in 1850, oc¬ 
curred much Indian fighting. It was from Fort 
Laramie in 1854 that Lieut. Grattan was sent out 
to make prisoner the Indian who killed an emi¬ 
grant’s abandoned cow, and it was Grattan’s in¬ 
discretion which brought on the war with the 
Sioux and Cheyennes which began in that year. 
Another thing which made Laramie an im¬ 
portant point on the westward journey was that 
it was here that the emigrant trail entered the 
mountain country, and that from this point on 
to Fort Bridger, nearly four hundred miles 
further, there was no store where supplies could 
be obtained or shops where repairs could be 
made to wagons. It was necessary then that 
the westbound emigrants should stop at Laramie 
to overhaul their gear and to rearrange their 
loads and to rest to gain strength for the hard 
pull that lay before them. By the trail, Laramie 
their property and settled themselves and then, 
“Our arrangements made, we stepped out to 
the balcony to take a more leisurely survey of 
the long looked for haven at which we had ar¬ 
rived at last. Beneath us was the square area 
surrounded by little rooms, or rather cells, which 
opened upon it. These were devoted to various 
purposes, but served chiefly for accommodation 
for the men employed at the fort or of the 
equally numerous squaws who they were allowed 
to maintain in it. Opposite to us arose the block 
■house above the gateway. It was adorned with 
a figure which even now haunts my memory, a 
horse at full speed daubed upon the boards with 
red paint and exhibiting a degree of skill which 
might rival that displayed by the Indians in exe¬ 
cuting similar designs upon their robes and 
lodges. A busy scene was enacting in the area. 
The wagons of Vaskiss,* an old trader, were 
about to set out for a remote post in the moun¬ 
tains, and the Canadians were going through 
their preparations with all possible bustle, while 
here and there an Indian stood looking on with 
imperturbable gravity. 
“Fort Laramie is one of the posts established 
by the American Fur Company who well nigh 
monopolize the Indian trade of this whole re¬ 
gion. Here their officials rule with an absolute 
sway. The arm of the United States has little 
force, for when we were there the extreme out¬ 
posts of her troops were about seven hundred 
miles to the eastward. The little fort is built 
of bricks dried in the sun and externally is of 
an oblong form with bastions of clay in the form 
of ordinary block houses at two of the corners. 
The walls are about fifteen feet high and sur¬ 
mounted by a slender palisade. The roofs oi 
the apartments within, which are built close 
against the walls, serve the purpose of a ban¬ 
quette. Within, the fort is divided by a partition 
*This was Vascruez, a noted trader of early days. Ham 
ilton, in “My Sixty Years on the Plains,” speaks o 
him at a date earlier than the one mentioned b; 
Parkman. 
