First Across the Continent: The Story of the Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6Brooks, Noah
History
First Across the Continent: The Story of the Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6
Brooks, Noah
Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806); United States -- Discovery and exploration; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
“We passed an island and two sand-bars, and at the distance of two
and a half miles came to a handsome river, which discharges itself on
the South, and which we ascended to the distance of a mile and a half:
we called it Judith’s River. It rises in the Rocky Mountains, in about
the same place with the Musselshell, and near the Yellowstone River. Its
entrance is one hundred yards wide from one bank to the other, the water
occupying about seventy-five yards, and being in greater quantity than
that of the Musselshell River. . . . There were great numbers of the
argalea, or bighorned animals, in the high country through which it
passes, and of beaver in its waters. Just above the entrance of it we
saw the ashes of the fires of one hundred and twenty-six lodges, which
appeared to have been deserted about twelve or fifteen days.”
Leaving Judith’s River, named for a sweet Virginia lass, the explorers
sailed, or were towed, seventeen miles up the river, where they camped
at the mouth of a bold, running river to which they gave the name
of Slaughter River. The stream is now known as the Arrow; the
appropriateness of the title conferred on the stream by Lewis and Clark
appears from the story which they tell of their experience just below
“Slaughter River,” as follows:
“On the north we passed a precipice about one hundred and twenty feet
high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred
carcasses of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the
lower part of the hill must have carried off many of the dead. These
buffaloes had been chased down the precipice in a way very common on
the Missouri, by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment. The mode of
hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is
disguised by a buffalo-skin round his body; the skin of the head with
the ears and horns being fastened on his own head in such a way as to
deceive the buffalo. Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient
distance between a herd of buffalo and any of the river precipices,
which sometimes extend for some miles. His companions in the mean
time get in the rear and side of the herd, and at a given signal show
themselves and advance toward the buffaloes. These instantly take
the alarm, and finding the hunters beside them, they run toward the
disguised Indian or decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the
river; when, suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff
which he had previously fixed on, the herd is left on the brink of the
precipice. It is then in vain for the foremost buffaloes to retreat or
even to stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, which, seeing
no danger but from the hunters, goad on those before them till the
whole are precipitated, and the shore is strewn with their dead bodies.
Sometimes, in this perilous seduction, the Indian is himself either
trodden under foot by the rapid movements of the buffaloes, or missing
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