taking his gun and shooting the
arrow in two. Driven out of the camp the following day, the chief shot
a horse as he rode past it and was himself instantly pierced with four
rifle balls.

* The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, etc.,
edited by Timothy Flint. Cincinnati, E. H. Flint, 1833. There is a copy
in the Astor Library, New York.

* There were two classes of trappers, the free and those in the
employ of some company. The Patties belonged to the former class.

A band of his followers, armed, of course, with only bows and arrows,
next day made a concerted attack, but were cut down by the rifles and
fine marksmanship of the Americans. As these Mohaves had been good
friends to Garces, and afterwards treated Americans well till they were
instigated by the Spaniards to fight, it is probable that a somewhat
more conciliatory approach might have avoided the trouble this party
experienced.

Farther up they reached the "Shuenas," who had apparently never before
heard the report of a gun, and on the 25th of March they arrived at what
we now call Bill Williams Fork. A party was sent up this stream to
trap. As they did not return next day according to the plan, scouts
were dispatched, who found the bodies cut to pieces and spitted before a
great fire.

On the 28th of March they came to a place on the river where "the
mountains shut in so close upon its shores that we were compelled to
climb a mountain and travel along the aclivity, the river still in
sight, and at an immense depth beneath us." This was probably Black
Canyon; they are the first white men on record to reach it. They now
took a remarkable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little
detail is given, probably because Pattie's editor considered a cut
across the country of little importance. They travelled, they thought,
one hundred leagues along these canyons, with the "river bluffs on the
opposite shore never more than a mile" from them.* Thus they evidently
did not see the Grand Canyon at its widest part. By April 10th they
arrived "where the river emerges from these horrid mountains, which so
cage it up as to deprive all human beings of the ability to descend
to its banks and make use of its waters. No mortal has the power of
describing the pleasure I felt when I could once more reach the banks
of the river." They had suffered for food on this journey, but now they
were again in a beaver country and also killed plenty