A festive winter -- Conversion of the Shoshonies -- Visit of two free trappers -- Gayety in thecamp
-- A touch of the tender passion -- The reclaimed squaw -- An Indian fine lady -- An elopement-- A pursuit -- Market value of a bad wife.
GAME continued to abound throughout the winter, and the camp was overstocked withprovisions.
Beef and venison, humps and haunches, buffalo tongues and marrow-bones, were constantlycooking
at every fire; and the whole atmosphere was redolent with the savory fumes of roast meat. It was,indeed, a continual "feast of fat things," and though there might be a lack of "wine upon the lees,"yet
we have shown that a substitute was occasionally to be found in honey and alcohol.
Both the Shoshonies and the Eutaws conducted themselves with great propriety. It is true,they
now and then filched a few trifles from their good friends, the Big Hearts, when their backs wereturned; but then, they always treated them to their faces with the utmost deference and respect,and
good-humoredly vied with the trappers in all kinds of feats of activity and mirthful sports. Thetwo
tribes maintained toward each other, also a friendliness of aspect which gave Captain Bonnevillereason to hope that all past animosity was effectually buried.
The two rival bands, however, had not long been mingled in this social manner before theirancient
jealousy began to break out in a new form. The senior chief of the Shoshonies was a thinkingman,
and a man of observation. He had been among the Nez Perces, listened to their new code ofmorality
and religion received from the white men, and attended their devotional exercises. He hadobserved
the effect of all this, in elevating the tribe in the estimation of the white men; and determined, bythe
same means, to gain for his own tribe a superiority over their ignorant rivals, the Eutaws. Heaccordingly assembled his people, and promulgated among them the mongrel doctrines and formof worship
of the Nez Perces; recommending the same to their adoption. The Shoshonies were struck withthe
novelty, at least, of the measure, and entered into it with spirit. They began to observe Sundaysand
holidays, and to have their devotional dances, and chants, and other ceremonials, about which theignorant Eutaws knew nothing; while they exerted their usual competition in shooting andhorseracing, and the renowned game of hand.
Matters were going on thus pleasantly and prosperously, in this motley community of whiteand red
men, when, one morning, two stark free trappers, arrayed in the height of savage finery, andmounted
on steeds as fine and as fiery as themselves, and all jingling with hawks' bells, came galloping, withwhoop and halloo, into the camp.
They were fresh from the winter encampment of the American Fur Company, in the GreenRiver
Valley; and had come to pay their old comrades of Captain Bonneville's company a visit. An ideamay
be formed from the scenes we have already given of conviviality in the wilderness, of the mannerin
which these game birds were received by those of their feather in the camp; what feasting, whatrevelling, what boasting, what bragging, what ranting and roaring, and racing and gambling, andsquabbling and fighting, ensued among these boon companions. Captain Bonneville, it is true,maintained always a certain degree of law and order in his camp, and checked each fierce excess;but
the trappers, in their seasons of idleness and relaxation require a degree of license and indulgence,to
repay them for the long privations and almost incredible hardships of their periods of activeservice.
In the midst of all this feasting and frolicking, a freak of the tender passion intervened, andwrought
a complete change in the scene. Among the Indian beauties in the camp of the Eutaws andShoshonies, the free trappers discovered two, who had whilom figured as their squaws. Theseconnections frequently take place for a season, and sometimes continue for years, if notperpetually;
but are apt to be broken when the free trapper starts off, suddenly, on some distant and roughexpedition.
In the present instance, these wild blades were anxious to regain their belles; nor were thelatter loath
once more to come under their protection. The free trapper combines, in the eye of an Indian girl,all
that is dashing and heroic in a warrior of her own race -- whose gait, and garb, and bravery heemulates -- with all that is gallant and glorious in the white man. And then the indulgence withwhich
he treats her, the finery in which he decks her out, the state in which she moves, the sway sheenjoys
over both his purse and person; instead of being the drudge and slave of an Indian husband,obliged
