Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/80

74 aroused others, and we soon had a large blazing fire. We spent several hours in putting our arms in order, drying our clothes and bedding, and appeasing our appetites on roasted ribs and marrow bones.

There were twenty of us, and we have frequently heard every one of that number say, afterwards, that they had seen some rough service in the world, but they had never met with any thing that could equal the night of the storm on the Platte. We continued to travel up the river, hunting as we went; but without much success. We saw a number of small herds of Buffalo; but they were generally too wild to approach, and too poor to eat after we had killed them. At the Forks, one hundred miles above where we first struck the River, we encamped, and by going several miles out beyond the hills, we succeeded in killing a number of Buffalo, the meat of which we brought in, dried and distributed among the company, when they came up; but the quantity was so small, in proportion to the numbers with whom it was to be divided, that it made scarcely a taste.

The Forks of the Platte is about the middle ground between the Pawnees and the Sioux. We saw a few of the Pawnees, in passing through their country, who were returning from the South, where they had been hunting, with packs of dried Buffalo meat, to their village, situated about fifty miles below where we struck the Platte. They are tall, but well proportioned and active. They raise some corn, but live principally upon the Buffalo, and are the most notorious rascals any where East of the Rocky Mountains.

The valley immediately at the junction of the two Branches of the Platte, is nearly twenty miles wide, and a large portion of it has a good soil. After we had passed the Forks, we made several attempts to cross the South Branch, but always found the water too deep; and