The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas | Page 8

enlisting the parties required, I was to proceed on to Santa Fé, either with a party of Apaches Indians, who were always at peace with the Shoshones, or else with one of the Mexican caravans.
In Santa Fé there were always a great number of French and Canadians, who came every year from St. Louis, hired by the Fur Companies; so that we had some chance of procuring them. If, however, my endeavours should prove fruitless, as I should already have proceeded too far to return alone, I was to continue on from Santa Fé with the fur traders, returning to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, where I was to dispose of some valuable jewels, hire men to form a strong caravan, and return to the settlement by the Astoria trail.
As my adventures may be said but to commence at my departure upon this commission, I will, before I enter upon my narrative, give the reader some insight into the history and records of the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, with whom I was domiciled, and over whom, although so young, I held authority and command.

CHAPTER IV
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The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people, occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east to west, and nearly 300 miles from north to south. It lies betwixt 38° and 43° north latitude, and from longitude 116° west of Greenwich to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which there extend themselves to nearly the parallel of 125° west longitude. The land is rich and fertile, especially by the sides of numerous streams, where the soil is sometimes of a deep red colour, and at others entirely black. The aspect of this region is well diversified, and though the greatest part of it must be classified under the denomination of rolling prairies, yet woods are very abundant, principally near the rivers and in the low flat bottoms: while the general landscape is agreeably relieved from the monotony of too great uniformity by numerous mountains of fantastical shapes and appearance, entirely unconnected with each other, and all varying in the primitive matter of their conformation.
Masses of native copper are found at almost every step, and betwixt two mountains which spread from east to west in the parallel of the rivers Buona Ventura and Calumet, there are rich beds of galena, even at two or three feet under ground; sulphur and magnesia appear plentiful in the northern districts; while in the sand, of the creeks to the south gold dust is occasionally collected by the Indians. The land is admirably watered by three noble streams--the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nú elejé sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of moskito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of buffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during the hunting season, in undisturbed security.
The Shoshones[6] are indubitably a very ancient people. It would be impossible to say how long they may have been settled on this portion of the continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiatic origin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumes all the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi.
[Footnote 6: The American travellers (even Mr. Catlin, who is generally correct) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones. One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that part of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and the hospitable shores of the Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. That the Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likely enough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very far from their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixt the Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the "hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake. I don't know what it means, unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swamps with deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "such hospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of the Crows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone.]
A proof of their antiquity and foreign extraction is, that but few of their records and traditions are local; they refer to countries on the other