Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/410



368 T. C. ELLIOTT

named it) ; thence he proceeded south up the Bitter Root Val- ley, along the stream which is the original Clark's Fork of the Columbia named by Captain Lewis when at its source in 1805. On a small mountain prairie of the easterly fork of this stream he was snowbound for a month, and that prairie has very properly been known ever since as Ross' Hole. Finally he succeeded in forcing a way across the continental divide by what is now known as the Gibbon Pass (but which Olin D. Wheeler rightly says should be called Clark's Pass), over to Big Hole Prairie, where a monument now stands commemo- rating the battle between General Gibbon and Chief Joseph during that memorable Nez Perce retreat in 1877. Mr. Ross now crossed the various small source streams of the Big Hole or Wisdom river and passed over the low divide to the Beaver- head, which is another of the sources of Jefferson's Fork of the Missouri. Thence he again crossed the continental divide southwest into Idaho, using perhaps the same pass that Lewis and Clark had in 1805 and was upon the waters of the Lemhi river, and then spent the entire summer and early fall upon the mountain streams of central Idaho, including the Snake river from the Weiser southward a considerable distance. He returned by practically the same route and arrived at Flathead fort the last of November.

As the Lewis and Clark party in 1805-6 traveled over a part of this same route it is very interesting in this connection to compare with the careful and voluminous notes of Dr. Elliott Coues and Mr. Olin D. Wheeler, both of whom personally fol- lowed the path of those explorers through these mountains.

But the really beautiful as well as valuable portion of this journal is the brief and vivid picture of the grand assembly of the Indians at their customary council ground, Horse Plains, in December, 1824, and the ceremonial opening of the annual trading period at the Flathead Post, followed by the outfitting of the next Snake Expedition under Mr. Peter Skene Ogden, the brief mention of the holiday season at the fort, and of the closing up and departure of the trader in the spring. Here are facts and figures useful to the writers of poetry and ro- mance, as well as to the historian.