Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/434

414 The following affernoon a Utah came to us. I asked him where his village was. He did not know, he said, as he had been away some time. I was going out to shoot game at the time, and I took the Indian with me, lending him a gun belonging to one of my men. I had killed two or three wild turkeys, when my Indian, discovering deer some distance off, went in pursuit. I returned to the camp, but the fellow had not arrived. When we started in the morning he had not shown himself. The second day after the disappearance of the Indian with my gun, I was some distance in advance of the party, when, on ascending a hill, I saw a large party of Utahs ahead. They were looking down, and examining the trail very closely, to see if we had passed. This convinced me that the Indian fugitive had lied to me; that he knew well where his village was, and had, no doubt, been sent out from it as a spy. We held on our way till we came up with them, and, it being then about noon, we halted to take a long rest. The Indians soon came flocking round us, but I gave strict orders to the men to keep a good look-out, and upon no account to let them touch the fire-arms. They swarmed round the camp, entering it one at a time, and I determined to make the first troublesome advance an excuse for getting rid of them.

We packed up, and moved on through the whole mass of Indians, but they did not venture an attack, although it had been their intention to do so if they could have got any advantage over us through our negligence. They were embittered against the whites at that time, on account of a severe whipping that had been recently inflicted upon two of their warriors by Chouteau, who had just passed through them, for a theft from his camp. To receive a whipping, especially at the hands of a white man, is looked upon by them as a lasting infamy, and they would prefer death to the disgrace. The next morning they overtook us again, and the Indian returned me my gun. I mollified them with a few trifling presents, and they finally left us on apparently good terms.

The next hostile country that lay upon our road was that of the Navajo tribe. They followed us through their whole strip of territory, shouting after us, and making insulting gestures;