er had reached the mouth of the Platte River, in
Nebraska--was almost "home," to the States, after an absence of three
years; but he cared little. Trader Lisa wished him to be their scout
to the Yellowstone and help them with the Indians; so he promptly
turned around and took the back trail. He loved the trapper's life.

They built the post, named Manuel's Fort, beside the Yellowstone at the
mouth of the Big Horn River in southeastern Montana. Trader Lisa found
out that the Blackfeet were friendly; but their trade was not enough
for him. He coveted the furs of the Crows and other Indians. John
Colter was the man to carry the word that a trading post had been
"brought" to the Yellowstone, and that all Indians were invited to
visit it. He set out with the news.

This part of the Yellowstone was really Crow country; they ranged in
southern Montana, the Blackfeet ranged in northern Montana, but they
fought each other whenever they met in south or north, or in the
mountains west. The Blackfeet were the stronger; they were eating the
Crows, year after year. Trader Lisa should have known better than to
invite them both to trade with him.

John Colter shouldered a pack of thirty pounds weight, containing
presents, and with his rifle and ammunition started to hunt the Crows
in the southwest. He paddled his canoe up the Big Horn into northern
Wyoming, and finally discovered the Crows in their summer quarters of
the Wind River Valley, to the westward.

With them he traveled westward still, across the Wind River Mountains
and the Teton Mountains into northeastern Idaho. For the first time
the eyes of a white American saw this wild and grandly beautiful
scenery of a hunter's paradise.

He had traveled by canoe and foot and horse about five hundred miles.
Here he met the Flathead Indians, with whom he had made friends when
with Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark. Here he met the Blackfeet,
too--fifteen hundred of them on a horse-stealing expedition. But he
met them in battle. He was with the Crows and Flatheads, and of course
had to aid his own party. It was do or die, because the Crows and
Flatheads numbered only eight hundred.

He showed them how a white man could fight; he was wounded in the leg,
the Blackfeet were driven off, they had seen him as a leader in the
ranks of their enemies, they refused to forget, and ever after that
they were the sworn foes of the whites.

There was no use now in his trying to t