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The other great national trail, the Oregon Trail of the fur-hunters, was long a pack trail, until the wagons of the emigrants and gold-seekers to California began to throng it. The Santa Fe Trail soon became mainly a wagon trail, for the Santa Fe caravans.
The trapper who married a Pierced Nose woman thought that he was lucky. She would be a good wife for him gentle, neat and always busy. Besides, as a rule the Nez Percés women were better looking than the general run of Indian women. The early fur-hunters and explorers found that the Pierced Noses were very religious, in a way akin to the Christian way.
A taste, however, for articles of European manufacture is gaining ground among them, and to obtain those articles a more active life is necessary, so that some tolerable fur-hunters are now to be found among them. The Dogribs occupy the barren grounds that are around Great Bear Lake, and extend to the Copper-mine River.
The Grizzly bear is a very different animal; its home is in North America, and it will hunt down a man with such determination that it is very much dreaded by the fur-hunters.
He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gaiety and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.
Therefore Trapper Colter passed the winter in peace. The Crows, who also claimed the Yellowstone, did not molest him, either. In the spring he was taking the lone trail for St. Louis, when he met a company of American and French fur-hunters under Manuel Lisa, a swarthy Spaniard. They were coming in to build a trading post among the Blackfeet or Crows.
The Blackfeet remained firm enemies of the invading trappers and fur-hunters. John Colter's adventures were the beginning of a long and bitter war. The Crows made friends with the white men, and only stole their horses and traps and other "plunder;" but to a Crow this was no crime. The Sioux and Cheyennes and Arapahos and Utes frequently declared that their hearts were good.
In America there is also but one species of wild sheep, though it has also a variety. This is the Bighorn of the Rocky Mountains, lately much spoken of by prairie travellers and fur-hunters. It is not known in tropical North America, nor does its range extend to the Andes of the south; but it is found to the west, in the mountains of California, in a variety called the Californian sheep.
"They will sit in a ring presently and smoke the pipe of peace and enjoyment, and drop off to sleep. And for your satisfaction, not a few among those were fur-hunters and traders, white men, who have given up the customs of civilized life and enjoy the hardships of the wilderness, but who will fight like tigers for their brethren when the issue comes. They are seldom recreant to their own blood."
He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gayety and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.