Another writer says: “The Bannocks of Idaho are highly intelligent and lively, the most virtuous and unsophisticated of all the Indians in the United States.” These Indians were at least intelligent enough to devise a system of hieroglyphics, examples of which are still to be seen on the lava rocks to the west and south of Pocatello, although the Indians of today seem to have lost the art of reading them, and their contents remain a mystery. They are recent enough in execution to have survived the wear of wind and weather, but how interesting it would be if we could read the crude romance they tell--some memorable page of barbarous history or some forgotten tragedy of desert life! There are in the neighborhood of Pocatello also some old Indian forts--crude constructions of dug-outs and mountain boulders, interesting only on account of their origin. The curious may find one about two miles out of Pocatello, to the left of the road that winds back from West Sublette street. It probably differs in no way from those built by the Indians of this vicinity two thousand years ago, and were they to construct another today it would be impossible except by age, to tell the new from the old. Civilization rolls on apace, and today’s triumph of mechanism is the scrap heap of tomorrow, but the stolid Indian, imperturbable and uninterested, remains much the same, yesterday, today and apparently forever. CHAPTER IV. THE COWBOY. Closely associated with the Indians in the minds of many people, especially in the east, are the cowboys. The prevalent idea in the eastern states about the far west is much the same today as it was fifty years ago--an illusion that the moving pictures help to keep alive. And yet, prosaic as it may be compared with the stirring times of yore, there is still a charm and freedom in western life unequalled in any other part of the United States. That western people are fully alive to the romance and adventure connected with the settlement of the west, is shown by the fact that moving picture representations of western life are popular to an equal extent in no other portion of the Union. The mouth of the Portneuf canyon was a favorite wintering place for cattle men and freighters because of the feeding ground to be found on the bottoms, the shelter afforded by the surrounding hills, and the water supplied by the Portneuf river. For similar reasons the Indians used the present site of Pocatello for their winter quarters. Just west of Pocatello, along the banks of the Snake river, lay a rich and fertile grazing ground, where was situated the headquarters of the old War Bonnet Cattle company, a big outfit that operated in this country for several years.