CHAPTER II
CROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
We left the Flathead Valley and came to the South Fork of Flathead River, entering a gorge, narrow and precipitous, where the river roared and thundered against huge rocks. The current was swift, swollen by the melting of mountain snows under a hot sun. On both sides of the gorge were sheer cliffs, and, because of the rocks, it was hard and dangerous going. We followed the river, seeking a place to ford, until we came upon open flats, where the channel was wider; then with shouting and shooting of guns, we drove the frightened horses across.
We camped near a band of Kutenai Indians. Their smoke-colored tepees stood on rising ground. Near by was a grove of trees where a woman was chopping, and a stream with groups of children swimming and playing in the water. In a broad meadow many horses were grazing, men driving picket pins and looking after their horses for the night.
The Kutenai were famed for their good horses. In former days they brought them across the mountains to run buffalo on the plains and to race with the Blackfoot. Whenever the scout visited their country, he traded for horses and took them back across the Rockies to his ranch on the prairies.
That evening I went with the scout to the Kutenai camp and saw the men gathered in a gambling game. They sat in a circle, the players in the center, surrounded by a throng of women spectators. It was a guessing game, played with marked sticks of bone, with horses and blankets for stakes. The players sang gambling songs; they joked and taunted each other; they beat with sticks and drummed. The game came to an end, when one of the sides which was led by the chief of the Kutenai lost all their counting-sticks; and then the scout began to trade.
In the meantime, I was on the lookout for a good saddle horse. Near the circle of gamblers I saw a fine bay tethered. He was a stocky horse, built from the ground up, a four-year-old with a white star on his forehead. He had a sleek and glossy coat, slender legs, and a beautiful pair of brown eyes. He belonged to the chief of the Kutenai, the Indian who lost the gambling game. He saw me looking at his horse and came near. He wore a suit of deerskin decorated with colored beads, a beaded necklace of many strands, white shell earrings, and his hair in long braids over his shoulders.
We bargained in the sign language, and our trading was short. I asked him “how much,” by holding out my closed right hand and opening the fingers, one after the other. He sold me his horse for nine dollars. And with the money he opened again the gambling game. This time he won all the counting-sticks and the game was his, while I was the owner of a fine saddle horse. I named him “Kutenai,” after his Indian tribe.
Then we entered a broad timber belt, where the forest was dense and the trees large, for the most part giant cedar, hemlock, larch, white pine, great silver fir and canoe birch. The forest floor was covered with a thick carpet of moss and ground pine. Sun and wind did not penetrate. Along the trail the light was dim and the air still. But overhead, through the tops of the big trees, I heard the rushing of the wind.
We rode through glades rank with dense clumps of fragrant ferns and grasses growing shoulder high, forded streams and passed foaming cascades and chains of lovely lakes hidden in deep recesses of the forest. On the western slope of the Rockies the vegetation is luxuriant and the forests dense, because of the mild climate and abundant rainfall. Just across the Continental Divide, on the eastern slope, the climate is cold and dry, with extreme changes of temperature.
When the trail was blocked with fallen trees, the scout went ahead and chopped our way through, while I followed driving the pack horses. He had the marvelous instinct of an Indian for direction and keeping his course. On the trail he was cheerful; he never disputed, found fault, or cursed. He rarely said whether he liked or enjoyed anything. He was courteous and had the quiet manners of a gentleman. If I made mistakes, I found it was better to remain silent than to apologize, or try to make excuses.
We camped near the forks of two streams, where a huge white pine towered above the rest of the forest. I heard the ringing, rippling song of a water ouzel, almost fierce in its wildness, as if sung by a free and untamable spirit. So wild was he, and continually on the alert, he reminded me of a watchful Indian. Springing from rock to rock, he ran along the shore, filled with nervous energy, ever shaking himself and bobbing up and down.
That night by our camp-fire Siksikaí-koan told about his life. Most of his youth was spent north of the Line among the Cree Indians in Canada. In those early days on the plains, he was daring and reckless, and suffered permanent injuries. In 1874, he was scout for General Custer on his expedition to the Black Hills of Dakota, and went with him against the Sioux. He served under General Miles and General Terry, and the Government of the Northwest Territories in the Riel Rebellion. Some of his scouting companions in the Cheyenne Service were the warriors, White Bull, Beaver Claws, Shell, Two Moons, and Brave Wolf.
On the day when General Custer and his battalion of the Seventh Cavalry were cut to pieces by the Sioux, Siksikaí-koan was with Reno’s command. With fifteen scouts he made a stand and tried to stop the Indians. In that charge, all but two of those brave scouts were killed. Bloody Knife and Siksikaí-koan alone were left. Then Bloody Knife shook hands and said: “This is the last day I shall ever fight.” He rushed among the enemy, killed two and was slain himself. But Siksikaí-koan escaped; he hid in the underbrush, and lay in the river close to the bank. After two days and nights of terrible exposure and without food, he made his way with two white soldiers to Reno’s command on the bluffs above the river. In the night, Siksikaí-koan led them past the Sioux sentinels, through his knowledge of the Sioux language.1
We left our camp at the big pine in the early morning, when the mists were lifting from the valley, and came that afternoon to a fine meadow surrounded by the forest, where we camped because of good pasture, grass in full seed and thistles, of which the horses were very fond. We hobbled and tethered them, caught a mess of trout, and a grouse which the scout killed by a skillful throw of a stone. The day was warm and bright, and the trout were rising in the river. The scout used bait in deep water and caught many fish. I stood on a high bank where the facilities for fly-fishing were of the best. In the clear swift water I saw many fish swimming over the gravelly bottom, but they scorned a fly. Finally the scout called: “Try the white entrail of another fish.” So I baited my hook and cast toward a place where the current eddied in a deep pool. For a moment I let it lie. Suddenly there was a swirl and a big form broke the water. I struck and saw a golden flash as he sprang from the river. “Hold him fast!” shouted the scout. “Don’t slacken your line.” The fish rushed upstream and across; he struggled in vain. I reeled him in and pulled him to the shore, and the scout landed him on the clean stones. He was a five-pound fish, the biggest I had caught. The scout called him a bull-trout, but he is also known by the name of “Dolly Varden” (Salmo clarkii). He had a large mouth filled with sharp teeth, and was dotted all over with small black spots. The upper half of his body was yellow, the lower half pink, and silvery white underneath. He was good eating; we had him with the grouse for our evening meal.
In the night I wakened to the sound of the ever-rushing river, and saw the forest lighted by moonlight; it made shadows on the trunks of the big trees and lay in patches on the ground. The air was fragrant with the smell of leaves, the freshness of the woods and the subtle perfume of the earth. At daybreak I heard the early chorus of the birds, and went after our horses in the meadow, wading through masses of wild flowers and tall grass growing in bunches. I felt in accord with the world, as though I belonged to the forest. My heart was light; I was as free as the air.
When I found Kutenai, my saddle horse, he gave a gentle whinny of recognition and rubbed his soft nose against my hand. He was a good and faithful companion, just the horse for the Indian country. He was young and spirited, yet gentle and friendly; I could trust him, and rode him without saddle or bridle.
Before the sun was high, we had our horses packed and were on our way toward the Blackfoot country. Our trail led through a broad valley and along the banks of a swift stream, where the current dashed against moss-covered boulders. The peaks of the Continental Divide sparkled in the sunlight, revealing snowfields and glaciers, which over-hung the mountain sides like ice cataracts. Early in the day the water of the stream was clear, but in the afternoon changed to a milky white, from glaciers melting under a hot sun.
I saw a water ouzel dive fearlessly into the foaming rapids and flit about in the spray. The more boisterous the water, the better he seemed to enjoy himself. He sat on a rock in midstream and burst into a cheerful song with delicate trills. Then flew like a flash to his moss-covered nest on a ledge, so close to the rushing water it was continually bathed in spray.
We passed through a forest of fir and spruce, the trees tall and straight, and soon had high peaks and massive mountain ranges towering over us. We rode along the base of a great mountain, which rose precipitously several thousand feet. There were lateral valleys with cirques, formed by the erosion of glaciers. Through each of these valleys flowed a stream, which had its source in an overhanging glacier at the head, pine forests sweeping upwards in long and gentle curves.
Finally we entered a great basin, a vast amphitheater. In the center was a sparkling blue lake with wooded shores, surmounted by walls of rock several thousand feet in height. The lake was fed by many streams springing from glaciers and snowdrifts; they fell over high cliffs with an incessant roar, which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding walls of rock. We crossed high rock ledges, ravines and gullies, jumped fallen trees, and forced our way through windfalls and thickets of balsam and fir.
I marveled at the endurance and sure-footedness of our Indian horses. In the worst places they rarely stumbled; I did not see one of them fall. In emergencies they never lost their heads. They walked serenely along the edges of precipices where I shuddered to look down. Steep places did not bother them; they sat back on their haunches, bunched their feet together and slid.
But we had one rattle-brained pack horse. If he happened to get in the lead, he wavered and hesitated and held back the outfit; he wandered from the trail to try fool routes of his own, and tore his pack against rocks and trees.
Our last camp on the western slope of the Rockies was in a grassy park surrounded by groups of tall firs, spruces and thickets of balsam, close to huge banks of snow and the precipitous cliffs of the Continental Divide. A stream of water, cold as ice, flowed through a meadow of rich grass, fine food for our horses, tired and hungry after their hard climb.
Hoary marmots greeted us with shrill whistles from the cliffs, and a red fox barked sharply and ran into his den. We saw a herd of Rocky Mountain goats feeding on a high shelf in an inaccessible part of the mountain. They lay in the sunlight near a cavern in the wall-rock, while their sentinel, an enormous billy with long white beard, stood like a statue close to the edge of a precipice.
Then from a high elevation above our camp, where everlasting snowdrifts lay under the shadow of huge rocks, we had a view of massive mountain ranges, with fields of snow and ice glistening in the sunlight; great valleys with sky-blue lakes and vast forests stretching toward the west to meet blue and distant plains. Through a massive rent in the rocky wall of the Divide, we looked eastward, toward the Blackfoot country and the end of our journey—a view of plains so vast and distant they looked like an ocean meeting the horizon.
North, lay Triple Divide Mountain, the Crown of the Continent, where the watershed divides between the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico. To the northwest was Mount Blackfoot and the Blackfoot Glacier, a vast expanse of snow and ice; Mount Cleveland (10,438 ft.), a lofty and massive dome; Mount Siyeh (10,004 ft.), named after the Blackfoot chief who was to be my Indian father; and Mount Jackson (10,023 ft.), named after my Indian guide Siksikaí-koan (William Jackson), because he was the first to climb its steep and rocky slopes.
1 This incident is referred to in the Report of General W. T. Sherman, Secretary of War, 1876, p. 33. ↑