s.

Some of them are armed in the primitive style, with bows and arrows; the
greater part have American fusees, made after the fashion of those of
the Hudson's Bay Company. These they procure at the trading post of the
American Fur Company, on Marias River, where they traffic their peltries
for arms, ammunition, clothing, and trinkets. They are extremely fond
of spirituous liquors and tobacco; for which nuisances they are ready
to exchange not merely their guns and horses, but even their wives and
daughters. As they are a treacherous race, and have cherished a lurking
hostility to the whites ever since one of their tribe was killed by
Mr. Lewis, the associate of General Clarke, in his exploring expedition
across the Rocky Mountains, the American Fur Company is obliged
constantly to keep at that post a garrison of sixty or seventy men.

Under the general name of Blackfeet are comprehended several tribes:
such as the Surcies, the Peagans, the Blood Indians, and the Gros
Ventres of the Prairies: who roam about the southern branches of the
Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, together with some other tribes further
north.

The bands infesting the Wind River Mountains and the country adjacent
at the time of which we are treating, were Gros Ventres of the Prairies,
which are not to be confounded with Gros Ventres of the Missouri, who
keep about the lower part of that river, and are friendly to the white
men.

This hostile band keeps about the headwaters of the Missouri, and
numbers about nine hundred fighting men. Once in the course of two or
three years they abandon their usual abodes, and make a visit to the
Arapahoes of the Arkansas. Their route lies either through the Crow
country, and the Black Hills, or through the lands of the Nez Perces,
Flatheads, Bannacks, and Shoshonies. As they enjoy their favorite state
of hostility with all these tribes, their expeditions are prone to be
conducted in the most lawless and predatory style; nor do they hesitate
to extend their maraudings to any party of white men they meet with;
following their trails; hovering about their camps; waylaying and
dogging the caravans of the free traders, and murdering the solitary
trapper. The consequences are frequent and desperate fights between them
and the "mountaineers," in the wild defiles and fastnesses of the Rocky
Mountains.

The band in question was, at this time, on their way homeward from one
of their customary visits to the Arapahoes; a