The Adventures of Captain Bonneville | Page 8

and trappers that scale the vast mountain chains, and pursue
their hazardous vocations amidst their wild recesses. They move from
place to place on horseback. The equestrian exercises, therefore, in
which they are engaged, the nature of the countries they traverse, vast
plains and mountains, pure and exhilarating in atmospheric qualities,
seem to make them physically and mentally a more lively and
mercurial race than the fur traders and trappers of former days, the
self-vaunting "men of the north." A man who bestrides a horse must be
essentially different from a man who cowers in a canoe. We find them,
accordingly, hardy, lithe, vigorous, and active; extravagant in word,
and thought, and deed; heedless of hardship; daring of danger; prodigal
of the present, and thoughtless of the future.
A difference is to be perceived even between these mountain hunters
and those of the lower regions along the waters of the Missouri. The
latter, generally French creoles, live comfortably in cabins and log-huts,
well sheltered from the inclemencies of the seasons. They are within
the reach of frequent supplies from the settlements; their life is
comparatively free from danger, and from most of the vicissitudes of
the upper wilderness. The consequence is that they are less hardy,
self-dependent and game-spirited than the mountaineer. If the latter by
chance comes among them on his way to and from the settlements, he
is like a game-cock among the common roosters of the poultry-yard.
Accustomed to live in tents, or to bivouac in the open air, he despises
the comforts and is impatient of the confinement of the log-house. If
his meal is not ready in season, he takes his rifle, hies to the forest or
prairie, shoots his own game, lights his fire, and cooks his repast. With
his horse and his rifle, he is independent of the world, and spurns at all
its restraints. The very superintendents at the lower posts will not put
him to mess with the common men, the hirelings of the establishment,
but treat him as something superior.
There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth, says Captain
Bonneville, who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril, and
excitement, and who are more enamored of their occupations, than the
free trappers of the West. No toil, no danger, no privation can turn the

trapper from his pursuit. His passionate excitement at times resembles a
mania. In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages beset his path;
in vain may rocks and precipices and wintry torrents oppose his
progress; let but a single track of a beaver meet his eye, and he forgets
all dangers and defies all difficulties. At times, he may be seen with his
traps on his shoulder, buffeting his way across rapid streams, amidst
floating blocks of ice: at other times, he is to be found with his traps
swung on his back clambering the most rugged mountains, scaling or
descending the most frightful precipices, searching, by routes
inaccessible to the horse, and never before trodden by white man, for
springs and lakes unknown to his comrades, and where he may meet
with his favorite game. Such is the mountaineer, the hardy trapper of
the West; and such, as we have slightly sketched it, is the wild, Robin
Hood kind of life, with all its strange and motley populace, now
existing in full vigor among the Rocky Mountains.
Having thus given the reader some idea of the actual state of the fur
trade in the interior of our vast continent, and made him acquainted
with the wild chivalry of the mountains, we will no longer delay the
introduction of Captain Bonneville and his band into this field of their
enterprise, but launch them at once upon the perilous plains of the Far
West.

2. Departure from Fort Osage Modes of transportation Pack- horses
Wagons Walker and Cerre; their characters Buoyant feelings on
launching upon the prairies Wild equipments of the trappers Their
gambols and antics Difference of character between the American and
French trappers Agency of the Kansas General Clarke White Plume,
the Kansas chief Night scene in a trader's camp Colloquy between
White Plume and the captain Bee- hunters Their expeditions Their
feuds with the Indians Bargaining talent of White Plume
IT WAS ON THE FIRST of May, 1832, that Captain Bonneville took
his departure from the frontier post of Fort Osage, on the Missouri. He
had enlisted a party of one hundred and ten men, most of whom had
been in the Indian country, and some of whom were experienced

hunters and trappers. Fort Osage, and other places on the borders of the
western wilderness, abound with characters of the kind, ready for any
expedition.
The ordinary mode of transportation in these great inland expeditions
of the