The earliest inhabitants of the forest are believed to have been Indians known as the “Sheepeaters.” Just who the “Sheepeaters” were is not definitely known. Some historians claim they were an unintellectual branch of the Snake tribe, others insist that they were renegades and misfits, driven out of the plains tribes, the Crows, Blackfeet, and Shoshones, who were forced to the timberclad hills where rough topography and cover permitted them to evade capture and killing at the hands of their erstwhile tribal members. They lived in crude tepees constructed entirely of poles. The “Sheepeaters” derived their name from the fact that they preyed extensively on mountain sheep and to some extent on other species of big game. They trapped their prey in pens or corrals made of stone. [Illustration: F-308547 _A section of the rugged Beartooth Plateau as seen from the Red Lodge-Cooke City Highway._] The first white men entered Wyoming more than 30 years before the American Revolution. In 1743, Francois and Louis De La Verendrye, French-Canadian brothers, traveled through the Rocky Mountain region to establish branch trading posts. Their home and main post was in the Great Lakes region. They entered the Big Horn Valley from the north and traveled up Wood River in the southern part of the forest and crossed the rugged Continental Divide near the Washakie Needles on their way into the Wind River country. Years later, in 1807, John Colter, who startled the world with his fantastic and unbelievable stories of the natural wonders in Yellowstone Park, traveled up the Clarks Fork River, after leaving the Lewis and Clark Expedition on the Missouri. Colter’s exact routes of travel are hotly disputed by historians, but it is well established that he was the first white man to see the “Stinking Water” River (the Shoshone), so named by him because of the foul odors from mineral hot springs along its banks. The trail along the Clarks Fork followed by Colter was for generations a transmountain route of Indian tribes living west of the Continental Divide which led to the great buffalo country to the east. Among the tribes using this trail were the Bannocks and Lemhi. After hunting among the herds in the Big Horn Basin and on the plains east of the Big Horn Mountains, they returned to their homes heavily laden with meat and hides. These expeditions frequently led to fiercely fought battles with the Shoshones and Crows, whose territories were being invaded.