The westward-bound Astoria party traveled up the Wind River Valley in the middle of September, 1811, without sighting any Indians (ibid., pp. 199-200). This was exactly the time of year when, according to contemporary informants, the Shoshone buffalo party should have been gathering there. However, on the western side of the Wind River Range, they found "a party of Snakes who had come across the mountains on their autumnal hunting excursion to provide buffalo meat for the winter" (p. 202). In September of the following year, the eastward-bound party under Stuart encountered a party of "Upsarokas, or Crows" on the Bear River, who said that they intended to trade with the Shoshone (p. 289). This Crow party later ran off the trappers' horses. Throughout their trip to the Green River country, the trapping party was in continual fear of the Blackfoot (p. 298). Upon arriving on the Green River on October 17, 1812, they met a party of about 130 "Snakes" living in some 40 "wigwams" made of pine branches (p. 306). The ostensibly peaceful Crow had run off all but one of the horses of this camp and had stolen some women also. The Astoria chronicle, then, documents a situation that appears consistently in later sources: the Shoshone were usually encountered west of the Continental Divide and were continually on the defensive against powerful tribes to the east and north that seemingly entered their hunting grounds at will. The activities of the early trappers in northern Utah and western Wyoming brought them into contact with a variety of Indian populations, not all of which are easily identifiable. This region is shown by the reports of the fur seekers to be characterized by a great fluidity of internal movement of Shoshone--and Bannock-speaking groups and by frequent entry by other tribes for purposes of war, trapping, and trade. The journal of J. P. Beckwourth gives a vivid, although not wholly reliable, account of the ebb and flow of population in the area under consideration. While camped near the east shore of the Great Salt Lake late in the year 1823, Beckwourth lost 80 horses to the "Punnaks [Bannocks], a tribe inhabiting the headwaters of the Columbia River" (Beckwourth, 1931, p. 60). His party pursued the Bannock to their village, some five days distant, and, after regaining part of the stolen herd, returned to camp to find some "Snake" (p. 61) (Shoshonean-speaking) Indians camped near by. He states that this group numbered 600 lodges and 2,500 warriors. The Indians were friendly and the locale was said to have been their winter camp (ibid.). Three years later, Beckwourth and his party were camped near the same site (today, Farmington, Utah) and encountered 16 Flathead Indians. Shortly thereafter the trappers were attacked by 500 mounted Blackfoot Indians, who were driven off (ibid., p. 66). Two days later, the fur party was joined by 4,000 Shoshone, who aided them in defeating another Blackfoot attack (pp. 70-71). (Beckwourth's