Opposite the mouth of Vermilion creek is a much larger stream, from the north-west, which is called medicine-lodge creek,[136] from an old Indian medicine lodge, which formerly stood near its mouth. A few miles further, on the same side, is Grand Camp creek, heading also in the mountains. About four years previous to the time of our visit, there had been a large encampment of Indians and hunters on this creek. On that occasion, three nations of Indians, namely, the Kiawas, Arrapahoes, and Kaskaias or Bad-hearts, had been assembled together, with forty-five French hunters in the employ of Mr. Choteau and Mr. Demun of St. Louis.[137] They had assembled for the purpose of holding a trading council with a band of Shiennes. These last had been recently supplied with goods by the British traders on the Missouri, and had come to exchange them with the former for horses. The Kiawas, Arrapahoes, &c. who wander in the fertile plains of the Arkansa and Red river, have always great numbers of horses, which they rear with much less difficulty than the Shiennes, whose country is cold and barren. [136] Medicine Lodge Creek, Cannon Ball Creek, mentioned above, and Grand Camp and Grape creeks, referred to a few lines below, cannot be certainly identified. Streams most nearly answering the descriptions given are now called Clear, Bear, and Deer creeks.—ED. [137] A. P. Chouteau and Julius De Munn formed a partnership in 1815, for trading on the upper Platte and Arkansas. De Munn soon after went to Santa Fé, where he sought permission to trap within Spanish territory; but the negotiations, which at first promised to be successful, took an unfavorable turn, with the result that both partners were arrested in 1817, and after a short confinement deprived of their goods and ejected from the Spanish dominions. The Santa Fé route was not fully open to trade until after the downfall of Spanish power in 1821.—ED. [Illustration: View of the Chasm through which the Platte issues from the Rocky Mountains] The British traders annually supply the Minnetarees or Gros-ventres of the Missouri with goods; from these they pass to the Shiennes and Crow Indians, who, in their turn, barter them with remoter tribes: in this manner the Indians who wander near the mountains receive their supplies of goods, and they give a decided and well founded preference to those which reach them by this circuitous channel, to those which they receive from any other source. Two miles beyond Grand Camp creek, is the mouth of Grape creek, and a little above, on the {187} opposite side, that of Defile creek,[138] a tributary to the Platte, from the south, which has its course in a narrow defile, lying along the base of the mountains. [138] Defile Creek is the modern Plum Creek, which flows north through Douglas County.—ED.