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

The 1st of September was a fine day. The sun was bright and unclouded, as he came in his strength over the eastern mountains, and awakened us from our slumbers among the alders on the bank of Portneuf. Hunger, indeed, was still gnawing at our vitals. But sleep had banished weariness, and added something to the small stock of our remaining strength; and the recollection of past perils – perils of floods, of tempests, of Indian foes – death threatened at every step during a journey of three months in the plains and mountains – the inspiring view of the vale of the great southern branch of the Columbia, so long promised us in hope along our weary way – the fact that we were in Oregon, unmoored the mind from its anxieties, and shed over us a gladness which can only be comprehended by those who, having suffered as we had, have viewed as we did, from some bright height, their sufferings ended, in the rich, ripe possession of the objects so ardently sought. We were in Oregon. Fort Hall lay in the plain before us. Its hospitalities would be enjoyed ere sunset. Our wardrobes were overhauled, our razors put on duty, our sunburnt frames bathed in the Portneuf; and equipped in our best, our hearts beat joyfully back the rapid clattering of our horses' hoofs on the pavements of the mountains, as we rushed to the plains. An hour among the sands and wild wormwood, an hour among the oozing springs, and green grass around them, an hour along the banks of Saptin River, and we passed a line of timber springing at right angles into the plain; and before us rose the white battlements of Fort Hall!181

As we emerged from this wood, Jim intimated that we should discharge our rifles; and as we did so, a single armed horseman issued from the gate of the Fort approached us warily, and skulking among the copses, scanned us in the most inquisitive manner. Having satisfied himself at last that our skins were originally intended to be white, he came alongside; and learning that we were from the States; that we had no hostile intentions; that we knew Mr. Walker to be in the Fort, and would be glad to have our compliments conveyed to him, he returned; and Mr. Walker immediately appeared.182 A friendly salutation was followed by an invitation to enter the Fort; and a "welcome to Fort Hall," was given in a manner so kind and obliging, that nothing seemed wanting to make us feel that we were at home. A generous flagon of Old Jamaica, wheaten bread, and butter newly churned, and buffalo tongues fresh from the neighbouring mountains, made their appearance as soon as we had rid ourselves of the equipage and dust of journeying, and allayed the dreadful sense of starvation.

CHAPTER VIII {III}

The Rocky Mountains and their Spurs – Geography of the Mountain Region – Wyeth – The Outset – The Beaver Catcher's Bride – Trois Butes – Addition from a Monastery – Orisons – A Merry Mountain Trapper – Root Diggers – Enormous Springs – Volcanic Hearths and Chasms – Carbo – An old Chief – A Bluff – Boisais River – Incident of Trade – The Bonaks – The Dead Wail – Fort Boisais, its Salmon, Butter and Hearty Cheer – Mons. Payette – Curiosity – Departure – Passing the Blue Mountains – The Grandeur of them – Their Forests, Flowers, and Torrents – Descent of the Mountains – Plain, a Christian Crane – Arrival at Dr. Whitman's Mission – Wallawalla – People – Farm – Mill – Learning – Religion – Mr. Ermitinger – Blair – Nez Percés – Racing – Indian Horse Training – Sabbath and its joys in the Wilderness.

It will not be uninteresting while pausing here, and making preparations to descend Snake, Lewis, or Saptin river,183 to lead my readers back over that portion of my journey which lay among the mountains. I do not design to retrace my steps here, however, in order again to attempt a description of sufferings which can never be described. They are past; and let their remembrance die. But a succinct account of the region lying west of the Anahuac ridge, and between latitudes 39° and 42° north – its mountains, its plains, its rivers, &c., will, I persuade myself, be new, and not without interest to the reader.

James' Peak, Pike's Peak, and Long's Peak, may be called the outposts of a lofty range of rocky mountains, which, for convenience in description, I have called Long's Range, extending nearly due north from the Arkansas, in latitude 39°, to the Great Gap in latitude 42° north.184

The range is unconnected with any other. It is separated from the Wind River Mountains by the Great Gap or Great Southern Pass, and from the Great Anahuac Range by the upper valleys of the Arkansas, those of the South Fork of the Platte, and those of the Green and Grand rivers. Two spurs spring off from it to the west: the one from James' Peak, the other from Long's Peak. These spurs, as they proceed westward, dip lower and lower till they terminate – the first in the rough cliffs around the upper waters of the Arkansas, and the latter in spherical sand-hills around the lower waters of Grand river.185 The Anahuac Mountains were seen from about latitude 39° to 42° north. This range lies about two hundred miles west of Long's Range, and between latitude 39 and 40°, has a general course of north north-west. It appeared an unbroken ridge of ice and snow, rising in some points, I think, more than fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. From latitude 41° it tends to the north-west by west, past the north-eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake to the northern end of it; and thence westwardly to a point south of Portneuf, where it unites with the range of the Snowy Mountains.

The Snowy Mountains are a transverse range or spur of the Rocky Mountains, which run from the Wind River Mountains, latitude 42° north, in nearly a right line to Cape Mendocino, latitude 40°, in Upper California. Many portions of this range, east as well as west of Fort Hall, are very lofty, and covered with perpetual snow. About one hundred miles from the coast of the Pacific it intersects that range of snowy peaks called the President's Range, which comes down from Puget's sound, and terminates in the arid plains about the mouth of the Colorado of the West.186

The Wind River Mountains are a spur which shoots from the great northern chain, commonly called the Rocky Mountains, in latitude 42° and odd minutes north; and running in a south-easterly direction into the Great Prairie Wilderness, forms the northern wall of the Great Gap or Great Southern Pass.187

On the northern side of the Wind River Peaks, are the sources of Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers;188 on the south-eastern side rises the Sweetwater, the north-western-most branch of the North Fork of the Great Platte; on the southern side the Sheetskadee or Green river, the northern branch of the Colorado of the West; on the north-western side and north of the Snowy Mountains, spring down the Saptin, Snake, or Lewis river, the great southern branch of the Columbia.

On the western side of Long's Range, rises the Grand river, the principal branch of the Colorado of the West.189 It furnishes four times the quantity of water that Green river does. Further south, in the vicinity of James' Peak, and on the west side of this range, rises the South Fork of the Great Platte.190

Close under the eastern base of the Anahuac or Great Main Ridge, and nearly in latitude 39½° north, are the sources of the Arkansas.

The immense parallelogram lying within these ranges of mountains, may be described by saying that it is a desert of arid plains and minor mountains. And if this general appellation be qualified by the accounts given on previous pages of Boyou Salade, Old Park, &c. very small portions of the whole area, the description will be complete.

Fort Hall was built by Captain Wyeth, of Boston in 1832, for the purposes of trade with the Indians in its vicinity. He had taken goods into the lower part of the Territory, to exchange for salmon. But competition soon drove him from his fisheries to this remote spot, where he hoped to be permitted to purchase furs of the Indians without being molested by the Hudson's Bay Company, whose nearest post was seven hundred miles away.191

In this he was disappointed. In pursuance of the avowed doctrine of that company, that no others have a right to trade in furs west of the Rocky Mountains, whilst the use of capital and their incomparable skill and perseverance can prevent it, they established a fort near him, preceded him, followed him, surrounded him every where, and cut the throat of his prosperity with such kindness, and politeness, that Wyeth was induced to sell his whole interest, existent and prospective, in Oregon, to his generous but too indefatigable, skilful, and powerful antagonists.

From what I saw and heard of Wyeth's management in Oregon, I was impressed with the belief that he was, beyond comparison, the most talented business-man from the States that ever established himself in the Territory.

The business of this post consists in exchanging blankets, ammunition, guns, tobacco, &c., with the neighbouring Indians, for the skins of the beaver and land otter; and in furnishing white men with traps, horses, saddles, bridles, provisions, &c., to enable them to hunt these animals for the benefit and sole use of the owners, the Hudson's Bay Company. In such cases the horses are borrowed without price; the other articles of the "outfit" sold on credit till the termination of the hunt; and the only security which the Company requires for the return of their animals, is the pledge of honour to that effect, and that the furs taken shall be appropriated at a stipulated price to the payment of arrears.

Goods are sold at this establishment fifty per cent lower than at the American posts. White trappers are paid a higher price for their furs than is paid the Indians; are charged less for the goods which they receive in exchange; and are treated in every respect by this shrewd Company with such uniform justice, that the American trappers even are fast leaving the service of their countrymen, for the larger profits and better treatment of British employment. There is also a company of men connected with this Fort, under the command of an American mountaineer, who, following various tribes in their migratory expeditions in the adjacent American and Mexican domain, collect whatever furs may chance to be among them.

By these means, and various others subsidiary to them, the gentlemen in charge of this trading establishment, collected, in the summer of 1839, more than thirty packs of the best beaver of the mountains.

We spent the 2nd and 3rd most agreeably with Mr. Walker, in his hospitable adobie castle; exchanged with him our wearied horses for fresh ones; and obtained dried buffalo meat, sugar, cocoa, tea, and corn meal, a guide, and every other necessary within that gentleman's power to furnish for our journey to Wallawalla. And at ten o'clock, A. M., of the 4th of September, we bade adieu to our very obliging countryman, and took to our saddles on the trail down the desert banks of the Saptin. As we left the Fort, we passed over the ground of an affray, which originated in love and terminated in death. Yes, love on the western declivity of the Rocky Mountains! and love of a white man for an Indian dame!

It appeared that a certain white trapper had taken to himself a certain bronze damsel of the wilderness to be his slave-wife, with all the solemn ceremonies of purchase and payment for the same in sundry horses, dogs, and loads of ammunition, as required by the custom in such affairs governing; and that by his business of trapping for beaver, &c., he was, soon after the banns were proclaimed, separated from his beloved one, for the term of three months and upwards, much against his tender inclination and interest, as the following showeth: for during the terms of his said absence, another white man, with intent to injure, &c., spoke certain tender words unto the said trapper's slave-wife, which had the effect to alienate from him the purchased and rightfully possessed affections of his slave-spouse, in favour of her seducer. In this said condition did the beaver-catcher find his bride when he came in from the hunt. He loaded his rifle, and killed the robber of his heart. The grave of the victim is there – a warning to all who would trifle with the vested rights of an American trapper in the love of an Indian beauty.

We made about ten miles, and halted for the night. Our guide displayed himself a five feet nine inch stout Wallawalla.192 He had been in the service of the Hudson Bay Company many years, and was consequently assiduous and dutiful. Yes, consequently so; for neither Indian nor white man is long in their service without learning his place, and becoming active and faithful in doing his duty. As soon as we entered camp, our pack-horses were stripped of their burdens, and turned loose to feed; wood was gathered, and a fire blazing under the kettles, and "all out door" immediately rendered as comfortable to us, as skies spangled with stars, and earth strewn with snowy sand could be made. Wallawalla was a jolly oddity of a mortal. The frontal region of his head had been pressed in infancy most aristocratically into the form of the German idiots; his eyes were forced out upon the corners of the head; his nose hugged the face closely like a bunch of affectionate leeches; hair black as a raven, and flowing over a pair of herculean shoulders; and feet – but who can describe that which has not its like under the skies. Such was Carbo, our Palinurus over the burnt plains of Snake River.

The short ride of the day had shown us the western limit of the partial fertility about Fort Hall. The earth had begun to be red, burnt, and barren; grass, sparse and dry; the shrubs and cotton-woods stinted and shrivelled.

The plain of the Trois Butes is situated between the Snowy mountain range on the south, and another ridge which, diverging from it above the sources of the Saptin River, follows that stream down to the Blue Mountains near Wallawalla. This plain by experiment is found to be eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. In the vicinity of the post, there is an abundance of grass for the subsistence of many thousands of animals. The soil, in various parts of it, also appears well adapted to the cultivation of the small grains and esculent roots. But the fact that frosts occur almost every month of the year, shows the extent to which the arable sections can be rendered available for such purposes.

The Trois Butes rise on the plain fifteen or twenty miles east of the Fort.193 They are pyramidal peaks, probably of volcanic origin, of two thousand feet in height above the plain, and twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. Around their dark bases grow evergreen trees; from their sides burst small brooks, rendering verdant strips of the plain which radiate beautifully in all directions from them; and over all, during most of the year, hang their crests of glittering snows! East of the Butes, vegetation continually decreases till it ceases in the black crags which embosom the head streams of the river.

On the 5th, travelled thirty miles down the western bank of the river;194 soil sandy and volcanic, bearing wild wormwood – in fact a desert; crossed a number of small streams putting into the Saptin; on these a little bunch of grass, and a few alders and willows, tried to grow. Whilst baiting at noon, we were agreeably surprised with an addition to our company, of a young Swiss trapper, eight years in the mountains; he learned the silversmith business when in youth; afterwards entered a monastery and studied Latin, &c., for the order of Priests; ran away from the monastery, entered the French army, deserted, and came to America; sickened, was visited by a Roman priest who had been a classmate with him at the monastery; and having had a more numerous family than was required by the canons of his order, had fled to America, where his orisons would not be disturbed by the cries of infants. On entering our trapper's chamber they mutually recognized each other; and horror immediately seized the pious priest at the recollection of the trapper's sinfulness; and particularly the sin of forsaking the holy places of the mother church; of taking carnal weapons in hands that had been employed in making crosses in the sacred precincts of the cloister. The trapper had contracted the dangerous habit of thinking for himself, and replied to the godly man in a sharp and retaliatory manner; and among other things drew a very ungracious comparison between escaping from prayers and chants, and flying from an unlawful family.

This reference to former delinquencies in a country to which he had fled to escape the remembrance of them, aroused the holy indignation of the priest to such an extent, that he immediately consigned the witness of his fault to worms, and his soul to an apprenticeship at fire eating in purgatory. Our trapper had become a heretic. In the blindness of his heart he had forgotten that the power to save and destroy the soul of man, had been committed to an order of men chosen, and set apart as the repositories of that portion of Omnipotence; and that whatever errors of conduct may occur in the life of these men, the efficiency of the anathematizing and saving commission is not thereby annulled; and he rose from his bed and hurled at the priest sundry counter anathemas in the form of chairs, and shovel and tongs. I could perceive in him no returning belief in the Omnipotent key of the "Roman Catholic apostolical mother Church." Instead of saying his prayers, and counting the beads of his rosary, he talked of the stirring scenes of a trapper's life, and recounted the wild adventures of the mountains; instead of the sublime Te Deum, he sang the thrilling martial airs of his native land; instead of the crosier, he bore the faithful rifle; instead of the robes of sacred office, he wore the fringed deer skin frock of the children of the wilderness. He was a trapper – a merry mountain trapper.

6th. Twenty-five miles to-day; face of the country, black, hard and barren swells; encamped on a small tributary of the Saptin; very little grass for the animals; found here a family of the Root Digger Indians; the man half clad, children naked, all filthy. She was clad in a wrapper of mountain sheep skin.195

7th. Twenty miles. About mid-day heard a loud roaring of waters; descended the chasm of the river and discovered two enormous springs bursting from the basaltic cliffs of the opposite shore. Their roaring was heard three miles. The lower one discharged water enough to turn the machinery of twenty ordinary manufactories. The water foamed and rushed down inclined planes of rocks the distance of two hundred feet.196 The country, an undulating, barren, volcanic plain; near the river cut into bluffs; lava every where; wild wormwood and another shrub two feet in height, bearing a yellow blossom, the only wood seen; encamped on a small stream about three miles from the river. Found here the only grass which I had observed during the day.

8th. Still on the western bank of the Saptin; river one-fourth of a mile wide; water extremely clear; current five miles the hour; depth of water about four feet. On the eastern side, the soil appeared a dark mass of imbedded fused rock, stretching in broken undulations to the distant highlands. In that direction twenty miles lay a range of mountains like an irregular line of darkness on the horizon. Every thing touched by our horses' feet claimed a volcano for its birth-place. Thirty miles to-day.

9th. Face of the country the same as that passed over on the 8th – scarcely grass enough to feed our animals, and that dried to hay. The mountains on the west side of the river gradually nearing it. No timber since we left the immediate vicinity of Fort Hall. We cooked our food with the willow bushes which the Indians had killed and rendered dry for such purposes. All the rocks more or less fused; many large tracts of lava; a number of clear little brooks bubbling over the cinders of this great hearth of Nature's fire. Made forty miles.

10th. Fifteen miles over "cut rock" and wormwood deserts; and at mid-day descended about six hundred feet in the chasm of the Saptin, and travelled along the brink of the river a short distance; crossed at a place called "The Islands," to the eastern shore.197

The river has been dipping deeper in the plain the last three days. A bird's eye view of it for sixty miles above the Islands would present a tortuous chasm, walled by basalt, trap, &c., and sunk along the centre of the valley, from one hundred to eight hundred feet deep, a black chasm, destitute of timber and other evidences of fertility, from a quarter to half a mile in width. In the centre of the bottom rushes the Saptin; over rocks and gravel a clear, pure, strong stream, with a current of five miles to the hour; water three and four feet in depth. Travelled seven or eight miles from the ford and fell in with eight or ten springs of limpid water, bubbling through the flinty crust of the plain. The sun was pouring upon us his fiercest rays, and our thirst was excessive. A halting, dismounting and rushing to the water, the application of our giant's lips to the liquid – a paralysis of his thirst produced by the boiling hot sensation which it imparted to his swearing apparatus, prepared us to resume our ride. Hot springs, boiling hot – no apparent mineral properties.198

11th. Travelled to-day thirty-five miles over an irregular, rough, unseemly desert; volcanic stones strewn every where on a black, impenetrable, baked surface; soil too poor to bear the wormwood – trail too far east to see the river. At ten o'clock, met a petty chief of the Snake Root Diggers and his son on horseback, from Boisais river. He was dressed in a blanket coat, deer skin pants, and moccasins garnished with cut glass beads and strips of red flannel; the boy entirely naked. Carbo learned from him the situation of his tribe, and a few bits of Indian scandal, ascertained that we could reach Boisais river the next day, and that we could probably obtain fresh horses there. His copper-coloured highness than left us to pursue his way to Fort Hall, to get his guns repaired, and we continued ours to the lower Columbia, to get out of this grave of desolation. I had not seen an acre of land since leaving Fort Hall, capable of producing the grains or vegetables. Encamped on a small brook running westwardly towards the Saptin.

12th. On route at six o'clock in the morning; horses weary, and getting crippled pitifully on the "cut rock;" face of the country absolute sterility; our trail near the mountains, about two hundred miles east of the Saptin.199 At nine o'clock, came to the bluff overlooking Boisais river. Here the valley is sunken six or seven hundred feet; the whole of it below, to the limit of sight, appears to have subsided nearly to a level with the waters of the Saptin. Lines of timber ran along the Boisais, and plats of green grass and shrubs dotted its banks. The mountains, whence the river came, rose in dark stratified ridges. Where the stream escaped from them, there was an immense chasm, with perpendicular sides, which seemed to open into their most distant bases. Horrid crags beetled over its dismal depths. Lofty, rocky ridges extended far into the north. In the west and north-west towered the Blue Mountains.

We descended the bluff, followed down the Boisais three or four miles, and crossed the river into an encampment of Snake fishermen.200 They were employed in laying in their winter store of salmon. Many horses were feeding on the plain. We turned ours loose also for a bite of the fresh grass, while we bought fish, &c., and made other arrangements to improve digestion and our speed in travelling. Our business was transacted as follows: – For one large fish-hook we bought one salmon; for one paper of vermillion, six bunches of spawn; for one butcher-knife, one leathern fish rope. Carbo exchanged horses; disposed of one worth five shillings for one worth three, and gave a blanket and ten loads of ammunition to boot. He was vastly pleased with his bargain, and endeavoured to show himself so, by trying to grin like a white man; but he was not skilled in the science of manufacturing laughter, and made a deplorable failure of it. One of my own horses, whose feet were worn and tender, was exchanged with like profit to the shrewd jockeys.

These Indians are more filthy than the Hottentots. Both sexes were nearly naked. Their shelters were made with rush mats wrapped around cones of poles.

Having finished our trading, we travelled about ten miles down the stream, and encamped upon its bank. The plains were well covered with grass; many portions seemed susceptible of cultivation. The bed of the river presented the usual characteristics of a mountain torrent; broad, shallow, with extensive bars of coarse gravel crossing the channel in all directions. The water limpid, and its quantity might be expressed by saying that the average depth was six inches, width ten yards, rate of current three miles an hour. In the month of June, however, it is said to bring from its maternal mountains immense floods.