Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839, part 1

We halted, and attempted to approach them; but they had been hunted a few days before by the French trappers, whom we had met, and by no means relished our companionship. Away they ran like the wind. Our hopes of finding game were at an end; the French trappers had seen, on all their way out, no other game than this band of antelopes. Our faithful greyhound could be eaten as a last resource, and we travelled on. Our excellent guide insisted upon walking nearly all the way that I might ride. This was inestimably kind in him. The act flowed from his own goodness; for, during our long journey together, he had never failed to take every opportunity to make me comfortable. We arranged our camp to-night with unusual care. The Sioux were among the hills on the right, and every preparation was therefore made to receive an attack from them. But like many other expectations of the kind, this vanished as the beautiful mountain morn dawned upon the silent desert.

7th. To-day we travelled across a great southward bend in the river.152 The face of the country a desert – neither tree nor shrub, nor grass, nor water in sight. During the afternoon we fell in with an old grisly bear and two cubs. It was a dangerous business, but starvation knows no fear.

Kelly and Smith, having horses that could run, determined to give chase and shoot one cub, while the greyhound should have the honour of a battle with the other. Under this arrangement the chase commenced. The old bear, unfaithful to her young, ran ahead of them in her fright, and showed no other affection for them than to stop occasionally, raise herself on her hind feet, and utter a most piteous scream. The horses soon ran down one cub, and the greyhound the other, so that in half an hour we were on the route again with the certain prospect of a supper when we should encamp. Had we found water and wood where we killed our meat, we should have believed it impossible to have proceeded further without food; but as necessity seldom deals in mercy, she compelled us in this case, to travel till dark, before we found wood enough to cook our food, and water enough to quench our parching thirst. At last, turning from our track and following down a deep ravine that ran toward the river, we came upon a filthy, oozing sulphurous puddle which our horses, though they had had no water the entire day, refused to drink. There was no alternative, however, between drinking this and thirsting still, and we submitted to the lesser of two evils. We drank it; and with the aid of dry wormwood for fuel, boiled our meat in it. These cubs were each of about twelve pounds weight. The livers, hearts, heads, and the fore quarters of one of them, made us a filthy supper. It, however, served the purpose of better food as it prevented starvation. We had travelled eighteen miles.

8th. The morning being clear and excessively warm, we thought it prudent to seek the river again, that we might obtain water for ourselves and animals. They had had no grass for the last twenty-four hours; and the prospect of finding some for the poor animals upon the intervales, was an additional inducement to adopt this course. We accordingly wound down the ravine two or three miles, struck the river at a point where its banks were productive, and unpacked to feed them, and treat ourselves to a breakfast of cub meat. Boiled or roasted, it was miserable food. To eat it, however, or not to eat at all, was the alternative. Furthermore, in a region where lizards grow poor, and wolves lean against sand banks to howl, cub soup, without salt, pepper, &c., must be acknowledged to be quite in style.

Having become somewhat comfortable by feasting thus, we travelled on down this river of deserts twenty miles, and encamped again on its banks. At this encampment we ate the last of our meat; and broke the bones with our hatchet for the oily marrow in them. The prospect of suffering from hunger before we could arrive at Brown's Hole, became every hour more and more certain. The country between us and that point was known to be so sterile, that not even a grisly bear was to be hoped for in it. It was a desert of black flint, sand and marl, rendered barren by perpetual drought.

9th. Travelled twenty-three miles along the river – nothing to eat, not even a thistle stalk. At night we tried to take some fish; the stream proved as ungenerous as the soil on its banks.

10th. Made fifteen miles to-day; country covered with wild wormwood; at intervals a little bunch grass – dry and dead; face of the country formerly a plain, now washed into hills. Our dog was frantic with hunger; and although he had treated us to a cub, and served us with all the fidelity of his race, we determined in full council to-night, if our hooks took no fish, to breakfast on his faithful heart in the morning. A horrid night we passed: forty-eight hours without a morsel of food! Our camp was eight miles above the junction of Little Bear and Little Snake Rivers.

11th. This morning we tried our utmost skill at fishing. Patience often cried 'hold' but the appearance of our poor dog would admonish us to continue our efforts to obtain a breakfast from the stream. Thus we fished and fasted till eight o'clock. A small fish or two were caught – three or four ounces of food for seven starving men! Our guide declared the noble dog must die! He was accordingly shot, his hair burnt off, and his fore quarters boiled and eaten! Some of the men declared that dogs made excellent mutton; but on this point, there existed among us what politicians term an honest difference of opinion. To me, it tasted like the flesh of a dog, a singed dog; and appetite keen though it was, and edged by a fast of fifty hours, could not but be sensibly alive to the fact that, whether cooked or barking, a dog is still a dog, every where. After our repast was finished, we saddled and rode over the plains in a northerly direction for Brown's Hole. We had been travelling the last five days, in a westerly course; and as the river continued in that direction, we left it to see it no more, I would humbly hope, till the dews of Heaven shall cause its deserts to blossom and ripen into something more nutritive than wild wormwood and gravel.

We crossed Little Snake River about ten o'clock. This stream is similar in size to that we had just left.153 The water was clear and warm; the channel rocky and bordered by barren bluffs. No trees grew upon its banks where we struck it; though I was informed that higher up, it was skirted with pretty groves of cotton wood. But as the Sioux war party which had attacked the French trappers in this neighbourhood, was probably not far from our trail, perhaps on it, and near us, we spent little time in examining either groves or deserts; for we were vain enough to suppose that the mere incident of being scalped here would not be so interesting, to ourselves at least, as would be our speedy arrival at Craig and Thomson's post – where we might eat Christian food and rest from the fatigues of our journey. For these, and several other palpable reasons, we drove on speedily and silently, with every eye watchful, every gun well primed, every animal close to his fellows, till ten o'clock at night. We then halted near a place where we had been told by the French trappers, we could find a spring of water. The day had been excessively warm, and our thirst was well nigh insufferable. Hence the long search for the cooling spring to slake its burnings. It was in vain. Near midnight therefore it was abandoned by all, and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets, hungry, thirsty, and weary, and sunk to rest upon the sand. Another dreadful night! Thirst, burning thirst! The glands cease to moisten the mouth, the throat becomes dry and feverish, the lungs cease to be satisfied with the air they inhale, the heart is sick and faint; and the nerves preternaturally active, do violence to every vital organ. It is an incipient throe of death.

12th. We arose at break of day, and pursued our journey over the grey, barren wastes. This region is doomed to perpetual sterility. In many portions of it there appears to be a fine soil. But the trappers say that very little rain or snow falls upon it; hence its unproductiveness. And thus it is said to be with the whole country lying to the distance of hundreds of miles on each side of the whole course of the Colorado of the West. Vast plateaux of desolation, yielding only the wild wormwood and prickly pear! So barren, so hot, so destitute is it of water that can be obtained and drunk, that the mountain sheep, and hare even, animals which drink less than any others that inhabit these regions, do not venture there. Travellers along that stream are said to be compelled to carry it long distances upon animals, and draw it where it is possible so to do, with a rope and skin bucket from the chasm of the stream. And yet their animals frequently die of thirst and hunger; and men often save their lives by eating the carcasses of the dead, and by drinking the blood which they from time to time draw from the veins of the living.

Between this river and the Great Salt Lake, there is a stream called Severe River, which rises in the high plateaux to the S. E. of the lake, and running some considerable distance in a westerly course, terminates in its own lakes. On the banks of this river there is said to be some vegetation, as grasses, trees, and edible roots. Here live the "Piutes" and "Land Pitches," the most degraded and least intellectual Indians known to the trappers. They wear no clothing of any description – build no shelters. They eat roots, lizards, and snails. Their persons are more disgusting than those of the Hottentots.154

They provide nothing for future wants. And when the lizard and snail and wild roots are buried in the snows of winter, they are said to retire to the vicinity of timber, dig holes in the form of ovens in the steep sides of the sand hills, and, having heated them to a certain degree, deposit themselves in them, and sleep and fast till the weather permits them to go abroad again for food. Persons who have visited their haunts after a severe winter, have found the ground around these family ovens strewn with the unburied bodies of the dead, and others crawling among them, who had various degrees of strength, from a bare sufficiency to gasp in death, to those that crawled upon their hands and feet, eating grass like cattle. It is said that they have no weapons of defence except the club, and that in the use of that they are very unskilful. These poor creatures are hunted in the spring of the year, when weak and helpless, by a certain class of men, and when taken, are fattened, carried to Santa Fé and sold as slaves during their minority. "A likely girl" in her teens brings oftentimes £60 or £80. The males are valued less.

At about eleven o'clock we came to a stream of good water and halted to slake our thirst and cook the remainder of our dog mutton. Our animals' sufferings had nearly equalled our own. And while we ate and rested under the shade of a tree, it added much to our enjoyment to see the famished beasts regale themselves upon a plat of short wiry grass beside the stream. Some marks of dragging lodge poles along the now well defined trail, indicated to us that a portion of the Shoshonie or Snake tribe had lately left Brown's Hole. From this circumstance we began to fear what afterwards proved true, that our hopes of finding the Snakes at that post and of getting meat from them would prove fallacious. Our filthy meal being finished, we gathered up our little caravan and moved forward at a round pace for three hours, when the bluffs opened before us the beautiful plain of Brown's Hole.155 As we entered it we crossed two cool streams that tumbled down from the stratified cliffs near at hand on the right; and a few rods beyond, the whole area became visible. The Fort, as it is called, peered up in the centre, upon the winding bank of the Sheetskadee. The dark mountains rose around it sublimely, and the green fields swept away into the deep precipitous gorges more beautifully than I can describe.

How glad is man to see his home again after a weary absence! Every step becomes quicker as he approaches its sacred portals; and kind smiles greet him; and leaping hearts beat upon his; and warm lips press his own. It is the holy sacrament of friendship. Yet there is another class of these emotions that appears to be not less holy. They arise when, after having been long cut off from every habit and sympathy of civilized life, long wandering among the deep and silent temples of the eternal mountains, long and hourly exposed to the scalping knife of savages and the agonies of starvation, one beholds the dwellings of civilized men – kindred of the old Patriot blood, rearing their hospitable roofs among those heights, inviting the houseless, wayworn wanderer to rest; to relax the tension of his energies, close his long watching eyes, and repose the heart awhile among generous spirits of his own race. Is not the hand that grasps yours then, an honest hand? Does it not distil, by its sacred warmth and hearty embrace, some of the dearest emotions of which the soul is capable; friendship unalloyed, warm, holy, and heavenly?

Thus it seemed to me, at all events, as we rode into the hollow square and received from St. Clair, the person in charge, the hearty welcome of an old hunter to "Fort David Crockett."156 A room was appropriated immediately for our reception, our horses were given to the care of his horse guard, and every other arrangement within his means, was made, to make us feel that within that little nest of fertility, amid the barrenness of the great Stony Range – far from the institutions of law and religion – far from the sweet ties of family relations, and all those nameless endearing influences that shed their rich fragrance over human nature in its cultivated abiding places – that there even could be given us the fruits of the sincerest friendship. Such kindness can be appreciated fully by those only who have enjoyed it in such places; who have seen it manifested in its own way; by those only, who have starved and thirsted in these deserts and been welcomed, and made thrice welcome, after months of weary wandering, to "Fort David Crockett."

After partaking of the hospitality of Mr. St. Clair, I strolled out to examine more minutely this wonderful little valley. It is situated in or about latitude 42° north; one hundred miles south of Wind River mountains, on the Sheetskadee (Prairie Cock) River. Its elevation is something more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. It appeared to be about six miles in diameter; shut in, in all directions, by dark frowning mountains, rising one thousand five hundred feet above the plain. The Sheetskadee, or Green River, runs through it, sweeping in a beautiful curve from the north-west to the south-west part of it, where it breaks its way through the encircling mountains, between cliffs, one thousand feet in height, broken and hanging as if poised on the air. The area of the plain is thickly set with the rich mountain grasses, and dotted with little copses of cotton wood and willow trees. The soil is alluvial, and capable of producing abundantly all kinds of small grains, vegetables, &c., that are raised in the northern States. Its climate is very remarkable. Although in all the country, within a hundred miles of it, the winter months bring snows, and the severe cold that we should expect in such a latitude, and at such an elevation above the level of the sea, yet in this little nook, the grass grows all the winter; so that, while the storm rages on the mountains in sight, and the drifting snows mingle in the blasts of December, the old hunters here heed it not. Their horses are cropping the green grass on the banks of the Sheetskadee, while they themselves are roasting the fat loins of the mountain sheep, and laughing at the merry tale and song.

The Fort is a hollow square of one story log cabins, with roofs and floors of mud, constructed in the same manner as those of Fort William. Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers, who were away on their "fall hunt," and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians, who had preceded their tribe to this, their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of Mr. Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse; and buffalo robes were spread upon the ground and counter, on which he displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and whisky. In exchange for these articles he receives beaver skins from trappers, money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business. And indeed, when all the "independent trappers" are driven by approaching winter into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake village, two or three thousand strong, impelled by the same necessity, pitch their lodges around the Fort, and the dances and merry makings of a long winter are thoroughly commenced, there is no want of customers.

These winters in Brown's hole are somewhat like winters among the mountains of New England, in the effects they produce on the rise and progress of the art of all arts – the art of love. For, as among the good old hills of my native clime, quiltings, and singing-schools, and evening dances, when the stars are shining brightly on the snow crust, do soften the heart of the mountain lad and lassie, and cause the sigh and blush to triumph over all the counsels of maiden aunts and fortune-tellers; so here in this beautiful valley, and in the skin lodge village of the Snakes, there are bright evenings, beaming stars, and mellow moons, and social circles for singing the wild ditties of their tribe, and for sewing with the sinews of the deer, their leggings, moccasins and buffalo robes, and for being bewitched with the tender passion.

The dance, too, enlivens the village. The musician chants the wild song, and marks the time by regular beatings with a stick upon a sounding board; and light heels, and sturdy frames, and buxom forms respond to his call. To these, and other gatherings, the young go, to see who are the fairest, and best, and most loved of the throng. Our friend Cupid goes there too. Yes, Cupid at an Indian dance! And there measuring bow and arrow with those who invented them, he often lays at his feet, I am told, the proudest hawk's feather that adorns the brow of Chief or Chiefess. For, on the morning after the dance, it not unfrequently happens that he of the beard is compelled, by force of certain uneasy sensations about the heart, to apply to some beardless one for the balm of sweet smiles for his relief.

He does not wait for the calm hour of a Sunday night. Nor does he delay putting the question by poetical allusions to the violet and firmament. No! Calm hours and the poetry of nature have no charms for him. He wants none of these. Our friend Cupid has cast an arrow into his heart, bearded with the stings of irresistible emotion; and he seeks that mischievous fair one, her alone who selected the arrow and the victim; her alone who was a "particeps criminis" in the loss of that great central organ of his life, called in the annals of Christian countries, "the heart." No! his course is vastly more philosophical and single-minded, (I mean no offence to my countrymen – none to you, ye Britons over the waters,) than the ginger-bread, sugar-candy courtships of Christian people. He first pays his addresses to his band of horses; selects the most beautiful and valuable of them all, and then goes with his chosen horse to the lodge of his chosen girl's father or mother, or if both these be dead, to the lodge of her eldest sister, ties the animal to the tent pole, and goes away. After his departure, the inmates of the lodge issue from it, and in due form examine the horse, and if it appears to be worth as much as the girl whom the owner seeks, an interview is had, the horse taken by the parents, or sister, as the case may be, and the lover takes the girl. A fair business transaction, you perceive, my readers – "a quid pro quo" – a compensation in kind.

The girl, received in exchange for the horse, becomes the absolute personal property of the enamoured jockey, subject to be re-sold whenever the state of the market and his own affection will allow. But if those, whose right it is to judge in the matter, are of opinion that the girl is worth more than the horse, another is brought; and if these are not enough, he of the beard may bring another, or get Cupid to shoot his heart in another direction.

There are many benefits in this mode of obtaining that description of legal chattels called a wife, over the mode usually adopted among us. As for example: by this mode there is a price given for a valuable article. Now to my apprehension, this is an improvement upon our plan; for it removes entirely from certain old daddies, the necessity of disposing of their daughters by gift, to certain worthless, portionless young men, who are merely virtuous, talented, honest and industrious; an evil of no small magnitude, as may be learned by inquiry in the proper quarter. But the Indian system of matrimony extirpates it. Wealth measures off affection and property by the peck, yard or dollar's worth, as circumstances require; and no young lady of real genuine property, respectability and standing, and family, will think of placing her affections upon a talented, virtuous and industrious, promising and prosperous coxcomb of poverty; nor, vice versâ, will a young man of these vulgar qualities have unfathomable barefacedness to propose himself to a young lady of real genuine property respectability, property form, property face, property virtue, property modesty, and property intelligence.

No, bless the day! such impudence will cease to interfere with the legitimate pretensions of those who are able – while they declare their passion mighty, unalterable and pure – to place in the hands from which they receive the dear object of their property love, the last quoted prices of the family stock.

But I pass to the consideration of another view of this matter which I deem, if possible, of still greater importance. As, if in disposing of young ladies in marriage, a valuation in money should be made of their property beauty, property modesty, property intelligence, &c., and required to be paid before marriage, the false opinion that honesty, probity, intelligence, integrity, virtue and respectability can exist without a property basis, would gradually fade away before the influence of our rich daddies' daughters. Oh the age that would then bless our earth! The piety of the church would fan itself in the property pew. The forum of jurisprudence would then echo to the lofty strains of property eloquence. The groves of Academus would breathe the wisdom of property philosophy. The easel of the artist would cast upon the canvas the inspirations of property genius. And music, and sculpture, and poetry, born in garrets, would give place to another race of these arts – a property race, that could be kept in one's apartments without compelling one to blush for their origin. We should then have a property fitness of things, that would place our property selves in a state of exalted property beatitude. It is hoped that the Legislators of the world will bestow upon this matter their most serious attention, and from time to time pass such laws as will aid mankind in attaining this splendid and brilliant exaltation of our nature, when the precious metals shall be a universal measure of value.

This is diverging. But after my reader is informed that the only distinct aim I proposed to myself in writing my journal, was to keep the day of the month correctly, and in other respects "keep a blotter," the transition from this strain of true philosophy, to a notice of the white men and their squaws, will be thought easy and natural.

If, then, a white man is disposed to take unto himself a squaw among the Snakes, he must conform to the laws and customs of the tribe, which have been ordained and established for the regulation of all such matters. And, whether the colour in any individual case be of black or white, does not seem to be a question ever raised to take it out of the rules. The only difference is, that the property, beauty, &c. of the whites frequently give them the preference on 'change, and enable them to obtain the best squaws of the nation. These connexions between the white trappers and squaws I am told, are the cause of so many of the former remaining during life in these valleys of blood. – They seem to love them as ardently as they would females of their own colour.