Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/30

 18 Joseph J. Hill From here the narrative becomes confused for some distance and it is impossible to trace their route with certainty. Pattie says that they descended the South Platte some five days, when they struck across to the North Platte, which they left in four days for the Big- horn. Crossing this, they set out for the Yellowstone, which they ascended to its head and then crossed the mountains to Clarke's Fork of the Columbia, which they ascended "to its head, which is in Long's Peak near the head waters of the Platte." A glance at the map shows at once how absolutely impossible it would be to follow this route. It is probable that the party became con- fused in their streams. We cannot be sure as to their route but the following is suggested as a possible solution of the difficulty. It may be that they crossed from the South Fork of the Platte to the Laramie which they mis- took for the North Fork of the Platte. From there they crossed to the North Fork of the Platte which they thought to be the Bighorn, and then to the Sweetwater which they called the Yellowstone. From the Sweetwater they could have crossed to some of the streams flowing into Green River, possibly the Little Snake River, and then up the Yampa to its source not far from Long's Peak. Crossing the mountains, they struck the Arkansas. Here they had an encounter with a party of Blackfoot Indians in which they killed sixteen Indians but lost four of their own men. They ascended the Arkansas to its head and then crossed the mountains to the Rio del Norte. From here they went to Santa Fe, where, Pattie records, "disaster awaited us. The governor, on the pre- text that we had trapped without a license from him, robbed us of all our furs." Comparison of Puttie's narrative with the accounts of Ewing Young's expedition, 1826-7. The points in com- mon between the Pattie narrative and the fragmentary accounts that we have of the Ewing Young expedition are certainly striking, to say the least. In the first place