Volume 1

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CHAPTER XI.
FROM THE MANDANS TO PEMBINA: 1806.
^1 T five o'clock we reached the great Mandane village
^^ safe, and found our people anxiously waiting for us
they had received intelligence of the misunderstanding
among the Schians, and as we had not kept company with
the Mandanes, they feared some accident had happened us.
They now informed us that during our absence a party of
30 Rocky Mountain Indians of the Crow nation had arrived
with their families at the Big Bellies' villages, with a great
number of horses, and some skins, furs, and slaves, to barter
for guns, ammunition, tobacco, axes, etc., as those people
have no other means of procuring European articles.
Some
of them, indeed, go toward the Spanish settlements with
the Flatheads ;
but what they get in that way is too trifling
to answer their purposes. They brought word that the
American party of Captains Lewis and Clark had ascended
the Missourie, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and fallen
upon a large river which they supposed would conduct
them to the ocean.
They also informed us that these gentlemen
had had trouble with the Snake, Flathead, and
Oreille [Nez] Perce nations, who inhabit the Rocky Mountains.'
My kind landlord asked me where I had left his
young wife, and, on my informing him that I had not seen
her, excepting once in the Schian camp, he appeared
displeased, and reproached me for neglecting her.
'
A sample of the way rumor flew in those days, and lost all semblance of fact
in its flight. Needless to say, L. and C. had no trouble with any of the
Indians named; and Captain Lewis' brush with the Blackfeet on Maria's river
did not take place till July 27th, the day after that whose incidents Henry is
narrating. By "Oreille Perce" of the above passage I presume we are to
understand Nez Perce, or Chopunnish, as L. and C. did not meet with the
Pend d'Oreilles.
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