In ascending the upper Missouri they would have
to pass through the country of the Sioux Indians, who had manifested
repeated hostility to the white traders, and rendered their expeditions
extremely perilous; firing upon them from the river banks as they passed
beneath in their boats, and attacking them in their encampments. Mr.
Crooks himself, when voyaging in company with another trader of the name
of M'Lellan, had been interrupted by these marauders, and had considered
himself fortunate in escaping down the river without loss of life or
property, but with a total abandonment of his trading voyage.

Should they be fortunate enough to pass through the country of the Sioux
without molestation, they would have another tribe still more savage and
warlike beyond, and deadly foes of white men.

These were the Blackfeet Indians, who ranged over a wide extent
of country which they would have to traverse. Under all these
circumstances, it was thought advisable to augment the party
considerably. It already exceeded the number of thirty, to which it
had originally been limited; but it was determined, on arriving at St.
Louis, to increase it to the number of sixty.

These matters being arranged, they prepared to embark; but the
embarkation of a crew of Canadian voyageurs, on a distant expedition, is
not so easy a matter as might be imagined; especially of such a set of
vainglorious fellows with money in both pockets, and cocks' tails in
their hats. Like sailors, the Canadian voyageurs generally preface a
long cruise with a carouse. They have their cronies, their brothers,
their cousins, their wives, their sweethearts, all to be entertained
at their expense. They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they
dance, they frolic and fight, until they are all as mad as so many
drunken Indians. The publicans are all obedience to their commands,
never hesitating to let them run up scores without limit, knowing that,
when their own money is expended, the purses of their employers must
answer for the bill, or the voyage must be delayed. Neither was it
possible, at that time, to remedy the matter at Mackinaw. In that
amphibious community there was always a propensity to wrest the laws in
favor of riotous or mutinous boatmen. It was necessary, also, to keep
the recruits in good humor, seeing the novelty and danger of the service
into which they were entering, and the ease with which they might at
anytime escape it by jumping into a can