Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/334

 this, pretended flight, in order to draw the Black-Feet into the open plain: the snare succeeded; and the Flat-Heads and Pends-d'Oreilles suddenly wheeling, attacked and repulsed them with considerable loss, driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit, as they would a herd of buffaloes. Twenty-three Black-Feet warriors lay dead on the field, after the engagement, while the Pends-d'Oreilles lost but three, and the Flat-Heads only one.

I shall close these sketches of Indian warfare, so remarkably evincing, as they do, the special protection of Heaven, with an account of an engagement which, as it was the occasion of my first interview with the Black-Feet, and by its consequence contributed much towards my favourable reception among them, will not, I trust, prove entirely devoid of interest, if given a little more in detail.

In 1846, while engaged in one of these hunting excursions, the camp of the Flat-Heads was reinforced by thirty lodges of the Nez-percés, and a dozen lodges of the Black-Feet at their own solicitation. The Flat-Heads encamped in the neighbourhood of the Crows,[191] purposely to renew {296} the terms of peace, if the latter felt so disposed. The Crows, perceiving in the united camp, the Nez-Percés and Black-Feet, with whom they were at war, and knowing their own superiority both in numbers and bodily strength, (they are the most robust of the Indian tribes) rushed into it like a torrent, evidently more anxious to provoke a contest than to make overtures of peace. The calm remonstrances of the Flat-Heads, and the wise admonitions of their own chief, were lost upon the now almost infuriated mutinous band of the Crows.

If the threatened outbreak had occurred at that moment, it is probable that the whole united camp would have been massacred in the hand-fight, for which evidently