Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/333

 sixty, betook themselves to prayer, imploring the aid of Heaven, which alone could save them in the unequal contest. Confident of success, they rose from their knees in the presence of their enemies, and engaged the overwhelming odds against them. The battle lasted five days. The Black-Feet were defeated, leaving eighty warriors dead upon the field; while the Flat-Heads and Pends-d'Oreilles sustained a loss of only one man; who, however, survived the battle four months, and had the happiness of receiving baptism the day before his death.

{294} In 1842, four Pends-d'Oreilles and a Pointed Heart were met and immediately attacked by a party of Black-Feet. At the first onset, the Black-Feet had to deplore the loss of their chief. Aroused by the noise of the musketry, the camp of the Pends-d'Oreilles rushed to the assistance of their companions, and without losing a single man, completely routed the enemy. Their escape is the more remarkable, as rushing into the entrenchments of the Black-Feet, they received a volley of shot poured in upon them by the enemy.

The Flat-Heads were again attacked, during the winter hunt of 1845, by a party of the Banax, which, though outnumbering them nearly three times, they soon put to flight, with the loss of three of the Banax party. The Flat-Heads acknowledge that the Banax are the bravest of their enemies; yet this did not deter them, though but seven in number, from fighting a whole village of the latter, that had rashly violated the rights of hospitality.

During the summer hunt of the same year, the united camp of Flat-Heads and Pends-d'Oreilles, when threatened, hesitated not a moment to engage with a band of Black-Feet four times their number. The latter, fearing the "medicine {295} of the Black-gowns," skulked around their enemies, avoiding an open fight. The former perceiving