The Adventures of Captain Bonneville | Page 7

The American fur companies keep no established posts beyond the

mountains. Everything there is regulated by resident partners; that is to
say, partners who reside in the tramontane country, but who move
about from place to place, either with Indian tribes, whose traffic they
wish to monopolize, or with main bodies of their own men, whom they
employ in trading and trapping. In the meantime, they detach bands, or
"brigades" as they are termed, of trappers in various directions,
assigning to each a portion of country as a hunting or trapping ground.
In the months of June and July, when there is an interval between the
hunting seasons, a general rendezvous is held, at some designated place
in the mountains, where the affairs of the past year are settled by the
resident partners, and the plans for the following year arranged.
To this rendezvous repair the various brigades of trappers from their
widely separated hunting grounds, bringing in the products of their
year's campaign. Hither also repair the Indian tribes accustomed to
traffic their peltries with the company. Bands of free trappers resort
hither also, to sell the furs they have collected; or to engage their
services for the next hunting season.
To this rendezvous the company sends annually a convoy of supplies
from its establishment on the Atlantic frontier, under the guidance of
some experienced partner or officer. On the arrival of this convoy, the
resident partner at the rendezvous depends to set all his next year's
machinery in motion.
Now as the rival companies keep a vigilant eye upon each other, and
are anxious to discover each other's plans and movements, they
generally contrive to hold their annual assemblages at no great distance
apart. An eager competition exists also between their respective
convoys of supplies, which shall first reach its place of rendezvous. For
this purpose, they set off with the first appearance of grass on the
Atlantic frontier and push with all diligence for the mountains. The
company that can first open its tempting supplies of coffee, tobacco,
ammunition, scarlet cloth, blankets, bright shawls, and glittering
trinkets has the greatest chance to get all the peltries and furs of the
Indians and free trappers, and to engage their services for the next
season. It is able, also, to fit out and dispatch its own trappers the

soonest, so as to get the start of its competitors, and to have the first
dash into the hunting and trapping grounds.
A new species of strategy has sprung out of this hunting and trapping
competition. The constant study of the rival bands is to forestall and
outwit each other; to supplant each other in the good will and custom of
the Indian tribes; to cross each other's plans; to mislead each other as to
routes; in a word, next to his own advantage, the study of the Indian
trader is the disadvantage of his competitor.
The influx of this wandering trade has had its effects on the habits of
the mountain tribes. They have found the trapping of the beaver their
most profitable species of hunting; and the traffic with the white man
has opened to them sources of luxury of which they previously had no
idea. The introduction of firearms has rendered them more successful
hunters, but at the same time, more formidable foes; some of them,
incorrigibly savage and warlike in their nature, have found the
expeditions of the fur traders grand objects of profitable adventure. To
waylay and harass a band of trappers with their pack-horses, when
embarrassed in the rugged defiles of the mountains, has become as
favorite an exploit with these Indians as the plunder of a caravan to the
Arab of the desert. The Crows and Blackfeet, who were such terrors in
the path of the early adventurers to Astoria, still continue their
predatory habits, but seem to have brought them to greater system.
They know the routes and resorts of the trappers; where to waylay them
on their journeys; where to find them in the hunting seasons, and where
to hover about them in winter quarters. The life of a trapper, therefore,
is a perpetual state militant, and he must sleep with his weapons in his
hands.
A new order of trappers and traders, also, has grown out of this system
of things. In the old times of the great Northwest Company, when the
trade in furs was pursued chiefly about the lakes and rivers, the
expeditions were carried on in batteaux and canoes. The voyageurs or
boatmen were the rank and file in the service of the trader, and even the
hardy "men of the north," those great rufflers and game birds, were fain
to be paddled from point to point of their migrations.

A totally different class has now sprung up:--"the Mountaineers," the
traders