ewspapers and among the people. His fights were believed, but not his
Yellowstone "yarns." He married, the next winter, and settled at
Dundee, on the Missouri River in Franklin County, west of St. Louis.
It was a tame life.

When the fur-traders and the beaver-trappers passed up, bound for the
plains and mountains and the Blackfeet country, he eyed their "fixin's"
wistfully, and longed to go. But he would not leave his wife. He
postponed his next hunt until in November, 1813, he died of the
jaundice while still an able-bodied man with his thoughts turned
westward to the land of the fierce Blackfeet.

CHAPTER XIV

HUGH GLASS AND THE GRIZZLY BEAR (1823)

"AS SLICK AS A PEELED ONION"

The Blackfeet remained firm enemies of the invading trappers and
fur-hunters. John Colter's adventures were the beginning of a long and
bitter war. The Crows made friends with the white men, and only stole
their horses and traps and other "plunder;" but to a Crow this was no
crime. The Sioux and Cheyennes and Arapahos and Utes frequently
declared that their hearts were good. The Blackfeet never softened.
They were many in number, and proud and scornful, and did not stoop
even to pretend friendship.

The Three Forks region became known as one of the most dangerous places
in the beaver country. All the Upper Missouri River, from the
Yellowstone River on, was dangerous by reason of the widely roaming
Blackfeet.

Of course, the American trapper and trader did not stay away, on this
account. Manuel Lisa and others had formed the Missouri Fur Company,
in 1809. In 1822 the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was organized, at St.
Louis, and advertised for "one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri
River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three
years," trapping.

It proved to be a famous company. It had on its rolls Jim Bridger, Kit
Carson, Jedediah Smith the Knight in Buckskin, the Sublette brothers,
Jim Beckwourth the French mulatto who lived with the Crows as chief,
and scores of others, mainly young men, genuine Americans of both
French and Anglo-Saxon blood. Its career did not cease until the
summer of 1834.

The two men who organized the company were General William Henry Ashley
of the Missouri militia, and first lieutenant-governor of the State;
and Major Andrew Henry who had helped to found the Missouri Fur Company
and now was mining for lead in Washington County southwest of St. Louis.

Major Henr