Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/110



48 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OP OREGON

possible ; but learning of the hostility and numbers of the Blaekfeet Indians who had given noticfe that they would destroy the whole party, he decided to stop with the Riearees at their villages on the river, purchase an outfit of horses and cross the mountains near the head of Platte river away south of the Lewis and Clark trail, and thus avoid the hostile Blaekfeet. Hunt must have left the Missouri river about fifty or seventy-five miles above the site where the city of Omaha now stands.

Having disposed of his boats and superfluous baggage, Hunt and his party left the Missouri river on the 18th of July, 1811, and struck out west into the trackless, boundless prairies of Nebraska with forty-eight men, one Indian woman and two children, and eighty-two pack horses loaded with luggage, goods and all sorts of supplies to carry them from the Missouri river to Astoria, Ore- gon; nearly all the men being on foot and carrying their arms ready for an Indian fight at any time. When the party reached the country of the Cheyennes, they obtained thirty-six more horses and divided up the packs and gave a horse to ride and tie alternately to each two men. Here bearing to the north the party skirted around the Black Hills in Wyoming and passed over the great coal and gold region of that country without seeing anything but Indians and buffaloes, and then struck westward along the dividing ridge between the watersheds of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. By the end of August they had reached the Big Horn mountains and were in the country of the Crow Indians. Continuing on westward until they struck Wind river valley they followed up that stream for five days. But finding no game and their food supplies running short, the party changed its course to the southwest until it struck a branch of the Colo- rado, now called Green river, and once called Spanish river, because of the fact that the Spaniards lived far south at the mouth of the river. From a high ele- vation in this vicinity from which Mr. Hunt made observations in all directions, he discovered the Three Teton mountain peaks, and made out the guess that these mountains were at the head of the Columbia river.

The party were now in the country of the Shoshone Indians; and turning north from Green river they followed up a small branch of that stream to its source and passed over the dividing ridge between the watershed of the great Colorado of the south and the still greater Columbia of the north. Hunt had no knowledge of this region save what he could gather from a straggling Indian band, and the meagre facts gathered by Henry while he was on the Henry brajieh of the Snake river in the summer of 1808 ; although Henry himself did' not know at that time that he was on a branch of the Columbia river.

The Hunt party had now, September, 1811, reached the south branch of the Snake river, and finding it a rough stream for canoes, pushed on north over the divide to the north branch called Henry river, and found it a beautiful stream three hundred feet wide and apparently easy of navigation. They now thought all their labors and trials at an end. For concluding that this stream ran smoothly down to the Pacific ocean, although a thousand miles distant, all they had to do was to build canoes, load in their baggage and float with the stream un- til they landed at Astoria. Never were men more bitterly disappointed. They had absolutely no knowledge of what was before them. No civilized man had ever been through the region ahead of them and returned alive to tell the tale

With high hopes and willing hands the whole party set to work to make