Chapter 9

Horses turned loose Preparations for winter quarters Hungry

times Nez Perces, their honesty, piety, pacific habits, religious

ceremonies Captain Bonneville's conversations with them Their

love of gambling

IT WAS GRATIFYING to Captain Bonneville, after so long and

toilsome a course of travel, to relieve his poor jaded horses of

the burden under which they were almost ready to give out, and to

behold them rolling upon the grass, and taking a long repose

after all their sufferings. Indeed, so exhausted were they, that

those employed under the saddle were no longer capable of hunting

for the daily subsistence of the camp.

All hands now set to work to prepare a winter cantonment. A

temporary fortification was thrown up for the protection of the

party; a secure and comfortable pen, into which the horses could

be driven at night; and huts were built for the reception of the

merchandise.

This done, Captain Bonneville made a distribution of his forces:

twenty men were to remain with him in garrison to protect the

property; the rest were organized into three brigades, and sent

off in different directions, to subsist themselves by hunting the

buffalo, until the snow should become too deep.

Indeed, it would have been impossible to provide for the whole

party in this neighborhood. It was at the extreme western limit

of the buffalo range, and these animals had recently been

completely hunted out of the neighborhood by the Nez Perces, so

that, although the hunters of the garrison were continually on

the alert, ranging the country round, they brought in scarce game

sufficient to keep famine from the door. Now and then there was a

scanty meal of fish or wild-fowl, occasionally an antelope; but

frequently the cravings of hunger had to be appeased with roots,

or the flesh of wolves and muskrats. Rarely could the inmates of

the cantonment boast of having made a full meal, and never of

having wherewithal for the morrow. In this way they starved along

until the 8th of October, when they were joined by a party of

five families of Nez Perces, who in some measure reconciled them

to the hardships of their situation by exhibiting a lot still

more destitute. A more forlorn set they had never encountered:

they had not a morsel of meat or fish; nor anything to subsist

on, excepting roots, wild rosebuds, the barks of certain plants,

and other vegetable production; neither had they any weapon for

hunting or defence, excepting an old spear: yet the poor fellows

made no murmur nor complaint; but seemed accustomed to their hard

fare. If they could not teach the white men their practical

stoicism, they at least made them acquainted with the edible

properties of roots and wild rosebuds, and furnished them a

supply from their own store. The necessities of the camp at

length became so urgent that Captain Bonneville determined to

dispatch a party to the Horse Prairie, a plain to the north of

his cantonment, to procure a supply of provisions. When the men

were about to depart, he proposed to the Nez Perces that they, or

some of them, should join the hunting-party. To his surprise,

they promptly declined. He inquired the reason for their refusal,

seeing that they were in nearly as starving a situation as his

own people. They replied that it was a sacred day with them, and

the Great Spirit would be angry should they devote it to hunting.

They offered, however, to accompany the party if it would delay

its departure until the following day; but this the pinching

demands of hunger would not permit, and the detachment proceeded.

A few days afterward, four of them signified to Captain

Bonneville that they were about to hunt. "What! " exclaimed he,

"without guns or arrows; and with only one old spear? What do you

expect to kill? " They smiled among themselves, but made no

answer. Preparatory to the chase, they performed some religious

rites, and offered up to the Great Spirit a few short prayers for

safety and success; then, having received the blessings of their

wives, they leaped upon their horses and departed, leaving the

whole party of Christian spectators amazed and rebuked by this

lesson of faith and dependence on a supreme and benevolent Being.

"Accustomed," adds Captain Bonneville, "as I had heretofore been,

to find the wretched Indian revelling in blood, and stained by

every vice which can degrade human nature, I could scarcely

realize the scene which I had witnessed. Wonder at such

unaffected tenderness and piety, where it was least to have been

sought, contended in all our bosoms with shame and confusion, at

receiving such pure and wholesome instructions from creatures so

far below us in the arts and comforts of life." The simple

prayers of the poor Indians were not unheard. In the course of

four or five days they returned, laden with meat. Captain

Bonneville was curious to know how they had attained such success

with such scanty means. They gave him to understand that they had

chased the buffalo at full speed, until they tired them down,

when they easily dispatched them with the spear, and made use of

the same weapon to flay the carcasses. To carry through their

lessons to their Christian friends, the poor savages were as

charitable as they had been pious, and generously shared with

them the spoils of their hunting, giving them food enough to last

for several days.

A further and more intimate intercourse with this tribe gave

Captain Bonneville still greater cause to admire their strong

devotional feeling. "Simply to call these people religious," says

he, "would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and

devotion which pervades their whole conduct. Their honesty is

immaculate, and their purity of purpose, and their observance of

the rites of their religion, are most uniform and remarkable.

They are, certainly, more like a nation of saints than a horde of

savages."

In fact, the antibelligerent policy of this tribe may have sprung

from the doctrines of Christian charity, for it would appear that

they had imbibed some notions of the Christian faith from

Catholic missionaries and traders who had been among them. They

even had a rude calendar of the fasts and festivals of the Romish

Church, and some traces of its ceremonials. These have become

blended with their own wild rites, and present a strange medley;

civilized and barbarous. On the Sabbath, men, women, and children

array themselves in their best style, and assemble round a pole

erected at the head of the camp. Here they go through a wild

fantastic ceremonial; strongly resembling the religious dance of

the Shaking Quakers; but from its enthusiasm, much more striking

and impressive. During the intervals of the ceremony, the

principal chiefs, who officiate as priests, instruct them in

their duties, and exhort them to virtue and good deeds.

"There is something antique and patriarchal," observes Captain

Bonneville, "in this union of the offices of leader and priest;

as there is in many of their customs and manners, which are all

strongly imbued with religion."

The worthy captain, indeed, appears to have been strongly

interested by this gleam of unlooked for light amidst the

darkness of the wilderness. He exerted himself, during his

sojourn among this simple and well-disposed people, to inculcate,

as far as he was able, the gentle and humanizing precepts of the

Christian faith, and to make them acquainted with the leading

points of its history; and it speaks highly for the purity and

benignity of his heart, that he derived unmixed happiness from

the task.

"Many a time," says he, "was my little lodge thronged, or rather

piled with hearers, for they lay on the ground, one leaning over

the other, until there was no further room, all listening with

greedy ears to the wonders which the Great Spirit had revealed to

the white man. No other subject gave them half the satisfaction,

or commanded half the attention; and but few scenes in my life

remain so freshly on my memory, or are so pleasurably recalled to

my contemplation, as these hours of intercourse with a distant

and benighted race in the midst of the desert."

The only excesses indulged in by this temperate and exemplary

people, appear to be gambling and horseracing. In these they

engage with an eagerness that amounts to infatuation. Knots of

gamblers will assemble before one of their lodge fires, early in

the evening, and remain absorbed in the chances and changes of

the game until long after dawn of the following day. As the night

advances, they wax warmer and warmer. Bets increase in amount,

one loss only serves to lead to a greater, until in the course of

a single night's gambling, the richest chief may become the

poorest varlet in the camp.