In 1880, Col. P. W. Norris, Second Superintendent of the Park, had a long interview on the shore of the Yellowstone Lake with We-Saw, "an old but remarkably intelligent Indian" of the Shoshone tribe, who was then acting as guide to an exploring party under Governor Hoyt, of Wyoming, and who had previously passed through the Park with the expedition of 1873 under Captain W. A. Jones, U. S. A. He had also been in the Park region on former occasions. Colonel Norris records the following facts from this Indian's conversation:[I] "We-Saw states that he had neither knowledge nor tradition of any permanent occupants of the Park save the timid Sheepeaters.... He said that his people (Shoshones) the Bannocks and the Crows, occasionally visited the Yellowstone Lake and River portions of the Park, but very seldom the geyser regions, which he declared were '_heap, heap, bad_,' and never wintered there, as white men sometimes did with horses." [I] Page 38, Annual Report of Superintendent of the Park for 1881. It seems that even the resident Sheepeaters knew little of the geyser basins. General Sheridan, who entered the Park from the south in 1882, makes this record in his report of the expedition:[J] "We had with us five Sheep Eating Indians as guides, and, strange to say, although these Indians had lived for years and years about Mounts Sheridan and Hancock, and the high mountains south-east of the Yellowstone Lake, they knew nothing about the Firehole Geyser Basin, and they exhibited more astonishment and wonder than any of us." [J] Page 11, Report on Explorations of Parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, 1882. See Appendix E. Evidence like the foregoing clearly indicates that this country was _terra incognita_ to the vast body of Indians who dwelt around it, and again this singular fact presents itself for explanation. Was it, as is generally supposed, a "superstitious fear" that kept them away? The incidents just related give some color to such a theory; but if it were really true we should expect to find well authenticated Indian traditions of so marvelous a country. Unfortunately history records none. It is not meant by this to imply that reputed traditions concerning the Yellowstone are unknown. For instance, it is related that the Crows always refused to tell the whites of the geysers because they believed that whoever visited them became endowed with supernatural powers, and they wished to retain a monopoly of this knowledge. But traditions of this sort, like most Indian curiosities now offered for sale, are evidently of spurious origin. Only in the names "Yellowstone" and "Burning Mountains" do we find any original evidence that this land of wonders appealed in the least degree to the native imagination.