l, with incredible
benefits, and the trade increasing, the merchants reduced the number of
their guards, till, eventually, repeated attacks from the savages
obliged them to unite together, in order to travel with safety.

At first the Indians appeared disposed to let them pass without any kind
of interruption; but during the summer of 1826 they began to steal the
mules and the horses of the travellers; yet they killed nobody till
1828. Then a little caravan, returning from Santa Fe, followed the
stream of the north fork of the Canadian river. Two of the traders,
having preceded the company in search of game, fell asleep on the edge
of a brook. These were espied by a band of Indians, who surprised them,
seized their rifles, took their scalps and retired before the caravan
had reached the brook, which had been agreed upon as the place of
rendezvous. When the traders arrived, one of the victims still breathed.
They carried him to the Cimaron, where he expired, and was buried
according to the prairie fashion.

Scarcely had the ceremony been terminated, when upon a neighbouring hill
appeared four Indians, apparently ignorant of what had happened. The
exasperated merchants invited them into their camp, and murdered all
except one, who, although wounded, succeeded in making his escape.

This cruel retaliation brought down heavy punishment. Indeed from that
period the Indians vowed an eternal war--a war to the knife, "in the
forests and the prairies, in the middle of rivers and lakes, and even
among the mountains covered with eternal snows."

Shortly after this event another caravan was fallen in with and attacked
by the savages, who carried off with them thirty-five scalps, two
hundred and fifty mules, and goods to the amount of thirty
thousand dollars.

These terrible dramas were constantly reacted in these vast western
solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown,
until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered
with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on
the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone
had escaped.

In 1831, Mr. Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with
twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the
Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants.
They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the
trip. All that they knew was that