This great band of Indians also could hardly be made to believe that the immigrant train had no liquors, and begged insistently for the firewater. Fitzpatrick, the pilot, both with this band and that at Independence Rock, refused to be made known, not wishing to implicate himself as a leader of white people through their country; and remarked that all the prairie was home to him, and he could drop off anywhere. Matthieu, therefore, having learned the custom of the Sioux, and knowing some of them personally, was able to help the immigrants, and to greatly reduce the liability of trouble. “I actually believe,” he says, “that they might not have got through without me.” These Sioux, being of the Blackfoot division of the nation, were at this juncture on a great expedition to cross the Rocky Mountains and attack the Snake Indians. At Fort Hall, the exact date of reaching which is not remembered by Mr. Matthieu, the immigrants delayed, some for a shorter, others a longer time. The object was to change from their wagons to pack saddles. Mr. Matthieu does not recollect that the Hudson’s Bay commandant there offered to purchase any wagons, and thinks this improbable. “The Hudson’s Bay Company had no use for any wagons,” he observes. The commandant, Grant, is well remembered as very large and fine looking “as big a man as Dr. John McLoughlin”—which is as grand a comparison as could be made by a McLoughlin admirer. Grant assured the immigrants that it was impossible for wagons to cross the Blue Mountains into Oregon. This, Mr. Matthieu believes, was said because he thought it true, and he was simply representing what was generally understood as the fact. Mr. Matthieu remarks, however, “we all know very well that the Hudson’s Bay Company was not favorable to immigration to Oregon;” and, though only a young man at the time, he understood that the British expected to hold the Columbia River as their boundary line. As to bringing the wagons on to the Columbia River, he says that this could have been done, as wood and water and the grass were in most places abundant, and though in some places the trail was very difficult, it was not impossible to American teamsters. He and his comrades remained about eight days at Fort Hall, and then came on with the Hudson’s Bay express by the horse trail, crossing the Blue Mountains, and descending upon the valley of the Umatilla, and then going by Whitman’s farm at Waiilatpu to old Fort Walla Walla. At Waiilatpu he remained fifteen days waiting for the other immigrants to come in; as the trip from Fort Hall to Whitman’s was made in small parties, or even by families, as they were able, the later ones following the tracks of the earlier. There was here no danger of Indians, and the semi-military organization with which they started was entirely abandoned.