Two main trails ran from the Red River to the Missouri: one from Pembina, west; the other from the Assiniboine, by way of Souris, south. The latter was generally followed, and from the time that David Thompson, the Northwest surveyor, first led the way to the Mandans, countless perils assailed the traveler to the Missouri. Not more than $3000 worth of furs were won a year, but the traders here were the buffalo hunters that supplied the Northern departments with pemmican; and on these hunts was the constant danger of the Sioux raiders. Eleven days by pony travel was the distance from the Assiniboine to the Missouri, and on the trail was terrible scarcity of drinking water. “We had steered to a lake,” records MacKenzie of the 1804 expedition, “but found it dry. We dug a pit. It gave a kind of stinking liquid of which we all drank, which seemed to increase our thirst. We passed the night with great uneasiness. Next day, not a drop of water was to be found on the route and our distress became unsupportable. Lafrance (the voyageur) swore so much he could swear no more and gave the country ten thousand times to the Devil. His eyes became so dim or blurred we feared he was nearing a crisis. All our horses became so unruly we could not manage them. It struck me they might have scented water and I ascended the top of the hill where to my great joy I discovered a small pool. I ran and drank plentifully. My horse had plunged in before I could stop him. I beckoned Lafrance. He seemed more dead than alive, his face a dark hue, a thick scurf around his mouth. He instantly plunged in the water ... and drank to such excess I fear the consequences.” In winter, though there was no danger of perishing from thirst where snow could be used as water, perils were increased a hundredfold by storm. The ponies could not travel fast through deep drifts. Instead of eleven days, it took a month to reach the Assiniboine, one man leading, one bringing up the rear of the long line of pack horses. If a snow storm caught the travelers, it was an easy matter for marauding Indians to stampede the horses and plunder packs. In March, they traveled at night to avoid snow glare. Sleeping wrapped in buffalo robes, the men sometimes wakened to find themselves buried beneath a snow bank with the horses crunched up half frozen in the blizzard. Four days without food was a common experience on the Mandane trail.