[F. N. Fletcher, The Trappers and Explorers of the Great Basin, Nevada Historical Society Papers (1920)]

 

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THE TRAPPERS AND EXPLORERS OF THE GREAT BASIN*

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By F. N. FLETCHER

            The first white men to enter the Great Basin country were the Spaniards who came from the southeast and explored a comparatively small portion of it. Their accounts tell but little, and their incursion left no lasting impress upon the country. For the explorations that led to permanent occupancy by civilized peoples we must turn to the northern portion of the Great Basin and to a date half a century later than the visit of the Spaniards.  Before taking up the story of these explorations a brief explanation of the geography of the country which is the scene of the activities to be described will be in order. The Great Basin country comprises all that portion of the United States lying between the western portions of the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierras on the west; and between the watershed of the Columbia river on the north and the Colorado on the south. It is a vast plateau, roughly speaking, 600 miles in width and 800 miles

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in length, with an average altitude of nearly one mile above sea level in the north, and gradually declining to sea level in the south, Unlike any other portion of the North American continent all its rivers run away from the sea. The high mountain chains on either side serve to squeeze nearly all the moisture from the air before it reaches the interior, with a resultant rainfall in the Basin so light that vast stretches are uninhabitable wastes. So wide were these deserts and so dreaded by the savage inhabitants, that undoubtedly their exploration by the whites was long delayed by the stories which the Indians told about them.

            To try to understand the early history of the Great Basin without some knowledge of the fur-trade in the West, would be as futile as to attempt to write the history of New England with no reference to the long struggle for religious freedom in Europe. How long the Great Basin country would have remained a terra incognita to civilization but for the efforts of the trappers, it would be rash to guess. But that it was first permanently explored and occupied by trappers, that their reports first made it known to the world, and that the geographers who subsequently explored it and the emigrants who traveled over it generally followed their trails and under their guidance, there can be no doubt.

            The steam engine has so revolutionized our commercial life and the commerce of the world, that we forget, or if we remember think it of slight account,

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* Paper read before the Leisure Hour Club of Carson City, 1918

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that for three hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus, bartering in furs was perhaps the chief business enterprise of North America. We think of our pioneers as going out through the Alleghany Mountains to take up the fertile lands in the valleys of the Ohio, the Kentucky, and the Tennessee, down into the prairies of the Mississippi valley and out over the plains of the Rockies, forgetting that they were a generation behind the trappers and hunters who had blazed the trails. Always it was the trapper and the fur-trader who sought out the hidden streams of an unknown and unexplored continent far in advance of the emigrant and the settler.

            Without going too far afield in the romantic and fascinating story of the fur-trade it will help us to a clearer understanding of the history of our own State if we consider for a moment the conditions surrounding that trade in the Rocky Mountains about one hundred years ago. In 1804-05 Lewis & Clark made their famous expedition up the Missouri river and its chief tributary, over the Rockies and down the Columbia to the ocean, and thence back to St. Louis. On their return they met several parties going up the Missouri in search of furs; and from that time on St. Louis has been the center of the fur trade in the United States.

            A few years later John Jacob Astor sent his ill-fated expeditions by land and by sea to found Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia, and to control the fur trade in the far Northwest. Up on the head-

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waters of the Columbia and its tributaries, along the streams in the great frozen country to the north, on the rivers and lakes that extended from the Rockies to the Great Lakes, and from these lakes to Hudson Bay and the Coast of Labrador, was the old and powerful Hudson Bay Fur Company, a huge and relentless machine which for generations had domineered the financial and political life of the Canadian Northwest. Against such a competitor no individual without government backing had a chance to cope; and Astor had no such backing. Astoria was lost and the Columbia became for a time the hunting ground of the Canadians.

            The taking of furs like mining is a business of wasting assets; the more one takes the less remains. Profits to the trappers depended upon finding new and untrapped streams; and this in turn meant going farther and farther from the navigable rivers. Along in 1820 and the years following, the fur traders whose headquarters were in St. Louis found their richest hunting grounds in the headwaters of the streams whose sources were in the Rocky Mountains in what are now portions of Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Idaho. The sources of these streams were almost at a common point, but wended their devious ways to oceans which a continent divides.

            It would be interesting if time allowed to speak of some of the more prominent of these fur traders of the West in general, and describe their methods of

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barter with the free trappers and the hardly less civilized Indians. It is a story replete with thrilling adventure and constitutes a chapter of prime importance in the history of the United States in the West. We can touch only upon that portion which has a direct bearing upon the future of the Great Basin country.

            Remembering that the western fur-trade along in 1820 and thereabouts had gradually worked its way up to the headwaters of the Rocky Mountain streams and that the trappers of the Hudson Bay Company were crowding into this territory from the north, we are prepared to find the American traders with headquarters at St. Louis disputing this territory from the south. Between the two contending forces, whose competition was as fierce as it was unscrupulous, the fur-trade in that portion of the country was approaching extinction. So fierce was this competition that some of the traders, in order to secure the beaver skins and other valuable furs which had been obtained by the Indians and free trappers, were accustomed to take to the rendezvous the strongest alcohol, dilute it, and barter it for furs. Frequently it happened that after a wild debauch in the mountains the agents of the fur traders would return to Montreal or St. Louis with furs worth many thousands of dollars for which they had paid a few barrels of alcohol and sufficient powder and lead to keep the trappers at work for another season.

            The first white men to enter the Great Basin from

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the northeast were most probably a party of five men, Hoback, Miller, Johnson, Reimer and Cass, who had been left by the outbound Astorians on the Snake river in 1811 with orders to explore the country for fur-bearing streams. Their explorations took them two hundred miles south to the Bear river, one of the principal streams of the Great Basin. They later, after many wanderings and much hardship, returned to the Snake where they met in August, 1812, a party of Astorians under Robert Stuart returning to St. Louis. Miller joined Stuart's party and acting as guide led it across the divide into the valley of the Bear river, the second party of white men to enter the Great Basin from the north. They went up the river for a day's march, then having met with a band of hostile Indians they hastened eastward and re-crossed the divide into the valley of the Snake.

            In 1818 Donald M'Kenzie heading a party of the Northwest Company trappers went up the Snake and trapped "on the Spanish waters" to the south, which would naturally mean the Green river and its tributaries but might well include the streams tributary to the Great Salt Lake. It seems probable that Bear river was visited by trappers in the years following M'Kenzie's expedition of 1818.

            In the year 1824 Great Salt Lake was first discovered by white men. The honor of its discovery has been generally ascribed to James Bridger, a trapper. He belonged to the Ashley & Henry party en- 

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camped in Cache Valley on Bear river. He was sent down the river to discover its course and probable outlet, and returned with the information that the stream flowed into a great lake whose waters were too salt to drink and in which nothing could live. Bridger's claim to priority of discovery has been disputed by others—notably by Ettienne Provot, who at the head of another of Ashley & Henry's parties passed the winter of 1824-25 at the mouth of Weber river where it flows into Great Salt Lake. It is a question whether Bridger or Provot was the first to reach the lake. The lake had no particular interest for the trappers and it was not explored until the Spring of 1826 when a party of four men sailed around it in canoes to see if there were streams entering it where beaver could be caught, and further to note if it had an outlet. They were twenty-four days in making the trip around the lake; and reported that they found neither beaver nor outlet.

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JEDEDIAH SMITH CROSSES THE GREAT BASIN

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            It was in the spring of this year 1826 that the firm of Ashley & Henry, which had become a dominant factor in the northwest fur trade, sold out their business to three men, Smith, Jackson and Sublette. It is in the subsequent career of the first of these men, Jedediah Strong Smith, that we are especially interested, for he was the first white man to cross the Great Basin. Oddly, as it seems, he crossed from west to east, from the Sierras to the Rockies, as the story will show. Jedediah Smith was born in 1798 in Western New York. In 1823 he joined Ashley's party of trappers, and from this time until 1826, when he became one of the owners, he was employed by Ashley & Henry, in a confidential capacity. He was fairly well educated, trustworthy, of tireless energy and unflinching courage. At the age of twenty-eight he became the senior partner in one of the leading fur companies of the country and one which by priority of discovery and possession held a vast territory to the east of Great Salt Lake, almost without competition.

            In this region the trapping was still very profitable but as always in this business new hunting grounds must constantly be found. There was a

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vast unexplored territory between the great salt lake and the ocean on the west and the Spanish country on the south. Into this unknown country in the hope of finding new and profitable fur bearing streams the new firm determined to push its way. The plan adopted was for Jackson and Sublette to continue trapping in the streams already known while Smith with a small party was to explore the unknown country to the south and west. On August 22, 1826, he started from Great Salt Lake with a party of fifteen men, "for the purpose," as he states in a letter, "of exploring the country S. W. which was entirely unknown to me, and of which I could collect no satisfactory information from the Indians who inhabit this country in its N. E. borders."

            The records of Smith's trip to the southwest are meagre and at times misleading. He appears to have left Great Salt Lake near the mouth of the Jordan river, followed this river to Utah lake, thence south to the Sevier river, thence over the low divide to the Virgin river, which still retains the name he gave it in honor of one of his men. From there he proceeded down the Virgin to the Colorado river which he calls the Seedskeedeer. He followed this river for four days and remained fifteen days in the Mohave valley near the present site of Needles, California, to recuperate his men from the great hardships they had borne. Then having secured two Indian guides he traveled a west course as he says "over a country of complete barrens, especially traveling from morn- 

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ing till night without water." Finally leaving the Mohave desert he went up through El Cajon pass and down to San Gabriel Mission, twelve miles east of the present city of Los Angeles, where he arrived Nov. 27, 1826.

            The good padres at the mission were kind and hospitable but the political authorities were suspicious and hostile. One of Smith's party, Harrison G. Rogers, kept a rather voluminous journal of the trip, portions of which have survived. From these we catch some very human glimpses of the life at the missions. They arrived at the mission late in the afternoon and Smith and Rogers were invited to dine at the mansion. "Here," says Rogers, "I was introduced to two priests over a glass of good old whiskey and found them to be very jovial friendly gentlemen. Plenty of good wine during supper, and before the cloth was removed cigars were introduced." Rogers was a strict Calvinist and he notes with surprise and evident relief that although all at the mission were "Catholicks by profession, they allow us the liberty of conscience and treat us as brethren." On the next day they were again invited to dine. Of this affair Rogers says, "When dinner was ready the priest came after us to go and dine; we were invited into the office and invited to take a glass of gin and water and eat some bread and cheese; directly after we were seated at dinner, and everything went on in style, both the priests being pretty merry." Rogers and Father Sanchez became great friends. "I must

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say he is a very fine man and very much of a gentleman?' says Rogers.

            The Spanish authorities ordered Smith and his party out of the country, and after several weeks' delay they started back toward the mountains; but Smith had no intention of returning by the same route he had followed coming out. So he turned toward the north following generally along the western base of the Sierras though some distance away. After traveling in this direction for more than 300 miles the party encamped on a river supposed to be the Stanislaus. After hunting several days to replenish the food supplies they attempted to cross the Sierras but after suffering great hardships and losing several horses in the deep snows they were obliged to give up the attempt and return to the valley.

            Leaving most of his party there Smith again started out to cross the mountains with two men and nine horses, the latter carrying food for man and beast on the long and trackless journey from the Stanislaus to the Great Salt Lake. He started on May 20, 1827, and traveled twenty-eight days before he reached "the southwest corner of Great Salt Lake."

            It would be of great interest to us who live in the country he was the first to explore if we could trace with certainty the hazardous journey he made in 1827. Smith kept a journal of his travels and it was his intention to publish it, but most unfortunately his journal, maps, and other data were destroyed by fire in St. Louis. The only reliable information we have

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as to his route across the Great Basin is contained in a letter which he wrote to Gen. Clark [of Lewis & Clark fame] written at little Bear Lake, July 17, 1827, very soon after his return. In this letter he says :

            "On May 20 I started with two men, seven horses and two mules, which I loaded with hay for the horses and provisions for ourselves, and succeeded in crossing it [the mountain] in eight days, having lost only two horses and one mule. I found the snow on the top of this mountain from 4 to 8 feet deep, but it was so consolidated by the heat of the sun that my horses only sunk from half a foot to one foot deep."

            "After traveling twenty days from the east side of the mountain, I struck the S. W. corner of the Great Salt Lake, traveling over a country completely barren and destitute of game. We frequently traveled without water, sometimes for two days over sandy deserts, where there was no sign of vegetation, and when we found water in some rock hills we most generally found some Indians who appeared the most miserable of the human race, having nothing to subsist upon except grass seed, grasshoppers, etc., nor any clothing. When we arrived at the Salt Lake we had but one horse and one mule remaining, which were so feeble and poor that they could scarce carry the little camp equipage which I had along; the balance of my horses I was obliged to eat as they gave out."

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            This is the entire record of the first journey undertaken by white men across the Great Basin.

            Smith's route has been variously located by different writers, some of whom have had him return to Salt Lake by the way of the Truckee and the Humboldt and others by the Santa Fe trail; but there seems no room to doubt that he crossed the Sierras somewhere to the south of the Yosemite, probably striking the west branch of the Walker river, following down that stream into Mason valley and thence directly across the Great Basin to Salt Lake. A few days later he joined his partners, Jackson and Sublette, at the annual rendezvous at Bear Lake on the headwaters of Bear river.

            After a month at the rendezvous, on July 13th, he set out with nineteen men to rejoin his party in California. On this second trip he followed for the most part his route of the year before, going south to the Colorado river, thence west and south into California. While crossing the Colorado river his party was attacked by Indians and ten were killed, and all his provisions were lost. By forced marches the remainder of the party crossed the Mohave desert almost without food or water, in the heat of summer, and in nine days arrived at the San Gabriel Mission. Resting here a few days he pushed on to the north to join the party he had left on the Stanislaus in the previous May. He found them as destitute of supplies as he was himself.

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            This ends the chapter so far as Jedediah Smith's connection with the Great Basin is concerned. The thrilling adventures of Smith's expedition through interior California and its tragic fate on the Umpqua in Oregon, his return to his partners with only two survivors of his party, and his untimely death on the Santa Fe trail, constitute a story of absorbing interest. He was really one of the greatest of American . explorers and his name ought to be perpetuated by some of the mountains or lakes or rivers that he discovered; but unfortunately he has been overlooked and well-nigh forgotten, while men of less merit and far less achievement, who followed the trails he was the first to open, have become the heroes of our western history.

JOSEPH WALKER, THE REAL PATH  FINDER

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            The reports made by Jedediah Smith on his return from the barren lands south and west of Great Salt Lake, were such as to discourage exploration in that direction and for several years thereafter no attempts were made to cross the Great Basin. The taking of furs in the streams which formed the headwaters of the Missouri, the Columbia and the Colorado, had gone on until, in 1833, it was evident that new grounds for trapping must be found or the business itself would soon be ruined.

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            In that year the great rendezvous of trappers and fur-traders was held on the headwaters of the Green river, in Wyoming. At that rendezvous were gathered the agents of all the great fur companies, and among others was Capt. Bonneville at the head of a company of nearly 200 men. He had the financial backing of wealthy men in New York and probably the most elaborate outfit ever sent into the mountains in the fur-trading business.

            His expedition had thus far been a complete financial failure, and he had evidently come to the conclusion that the only hope for success in the future lay in finding new and fresh fields for trapping. Bonneville's chief success in life seems to lie in the fact that he later interested that great American writer, Washington Irving, in his story, and the publication of "Bonneville's Adventure" made him famous.

            Bonneville's chief lieutenant was a hardy hunter and trapper named Joseph Walker. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1798, he was a child of the frontier, and in 1822 we find him acting as a guide and scout in the Indian country west of the Mississippi. He joined Bonneville's party, in St. Louis in 1832, and continued with him until 1835. After the rendezvous in the Spring of 1833 Bonneville arranged to send Walker on an expedition to the west. Washington Irving's account of the object and destination of this expedition, while no doubt as he received it from Bonneville, does not agree with

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Walker's account, or with other contemporary accounts. According to Irving the intention was to explore the west shore of Great Salt Lake and to hunt for beaver in that vicinity. According to Walker his plans were to cross from the lake over to Ogden's river [now known as the Humboldt] and then to go West to the California mountains and find new streams for trapping.

            Whatever Bonneville's real intention may have been Walker with a party of 40 men left Green river on July 24, 1833, for Great Salt Lake, and remaining in that vicinity only long enough to secure fresh buffalo meat, he left the west shore on Aug. 13th and took a westerly course across the barren plains. Walker had with him as a clerk one Zenas Leonard, who a few years later published the daily journal of his trip in a little country paper in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, files of the paper have been preserved and recently the journal has been published in book form. It is our chief source of information of this interesting voyage of discovery, but it falls far short of being a chart by which their route can be traced with exactness.

            There is little doubt that after leaving the lake their route in a general way was that followed later by the emigrants and later still by the Central Pacific. The journal describes Pilot Peak and the sandy plains in that vicinity, and the finding of the headwaters of Ogden's river, which they called Barren river, and speaks of the Indians they met, as did

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Smith, as being "of the most poor and dejected kind —entirely naked and very filthy.' From one Indian family living in a hut they obtained a beaver skin robe worth $40.00 for two awls and a fish-hook.

            The journey continued down the river, the party trapping as it went. The Indians became more numerous and developed a habit of stealing traps and other material belonging to the party until the whites were out of patience. Capt. Walker, whether from motives of prudence or humanity, cautioned his men against any retaliation. This expedition has long borne the disgrace of cruel and wanton murder of innocent Indians, fastened upon it by Irving's narrative; it is pleasant to note in Leonard's journal that Walker constantly ordered his men not to kill the natives except as a last resort and in self-defense. Finally two of the party while out setting traps got into trouble with a party of Indians and shot two of them. Finding this out Capt. Walker hurried on down the river finally reaching Humboldt lake. The Indians had followed them and when the party encamped on the lake shore a large party of natives, as many as eight or nine hundred, Leonard says, issued from the tall grass and approached the camp. They were warned off by signs and by the shooting of guns. The next day the Indians continued to follow the whites in large numbers, and even surrounded them. Finally Capt. Walker concluded that the safety of his party depended upon drastic action and he ordered his men to charge on the Indians and drive them

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away. In the battle which ensued Leonard states that thirty-nine Indians were killed and the “remainder were overwhelmed with dismay" as we may easily imagine. "Our object," says Leonard, "was to strike a decisive blow. This we did—even to a greater extent than we intended."

            On Oct. 10th the party came to a lake which Leonard says was formed by a stream which heads in a snow-covered mountain to the west. This was undoubtedly Carson Lake and the stream Carson river. The water in the lake, Leonard says, tasted like lye and was admirably adapted for washing clothes without soap. So far as known these were the first white people on the Carson river—and that was only eighty-five years ago.

            As the experiences of Walker's party in the next few days relate to the very beginning of our local history it will be worth our while to consider them in some detail. While the exact route followed by Walker from Carson Lake to and across the Sierras has always been in doubt, it has generally been claimed by writers of Western history that he went south from Carson Lake to Walker river, thence to Walker Lake and then over the mountains by the pass at Bodie. A careful reading of the Leonard narrative would seem to indicate that Walker's party came up the Carson river, probably leaving the river at the present site of Empire and coming into Eagle valley where they camped, and that they finally left the valley for the mountains by way of the Kingsbury can 

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yon. Supporting this view are Leonard's statements that on Oct. 11th they traveled up the river [i. e. the river emptying into the lake] "towards the mountains where we encamped for the night." "In the morning, (Oct. 13th), we despatched hunters to the mountains on search of game and also to look out for a pass." These hunters returned without game and reporting no pass in sight.

            This means that the party came up to the vicinity of the mountains from Carson Lake in two days, and as they followed the river, it is evident that they did not take the route toward Walker river, but directly toward the mountains. The only mountains they could have reached in two days' march would be in the vicinity of Eagle valley, near the present site of Carson City. One of the small parties of hunters who were looking for a mountain pass as well as game returned to camp on Oct. 12th, having in its possession, according to Leonard, one colt and a camel, which they had taken at an Indian Camp after the Indians had run away. Just what Leonard means by "a camel" is hard to say. On Oct. 13th hunting parties again set out but returned to camp without any game.

            One of the parties reported that an Indian path had been found leading down from the mountains. The next day, Oct. 14th, the entire party set out "along the foot of the mountain in search of the path discovered in the previous day, and found it. On examination," says Leonard, "we found that horses

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traveled it, and must of course come from the west. This gave us great encouragement. . . . Here we encamped for the night." If we are right in supposing that the first camp of the party was near the present site of Carson City, the day's journey along the foot of the mountain to the Indian path would take them hardly farther than Kingsbury canyon, a distance of seventeen miles. Another member of the party, Stephen Meek, in a newspaper account published the following year states that immediately following the Indian battle between Humboldt and Carson lakes, the party "traveled four days across the Salt plains, when they struck the California mountains." This would agree with Leonard's account.

            On the other hand Walker himself told Col. Fremont several years later that he traveled southward day by day searching for the famous Bueneventura river which the old maps showed leading from the Great Basin to San Francisco Bay, and finally despairing of finding it, he had turned abruptly to the right and crossed the great chain of the Sierras. It is impossible with the data now possessed to determine the route followed, but the evidence points strongly to the Kingsbury canyon route.

            After camping at the foot of the mountain where the Indian path came down they started next morning on their arduous trip across the Sierras. Leonard says, "Ascending the mountain we found to be very difficult from the rocks and its steepness. We made

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poor speed and encamped on the side of the mountain . . . the next afternoon we arrived at what we took to be the top where we again encamped without anything to eat for our horses, as the ground was covered with deep snow." From the time they entered the mountains, Oct. 15th, to the time they reached the San Joaquin Valley two weeks later there is little to indicate the route they followed; so far as Leonard's descriptions are concerned it might have been anywhere in the Sierras after the snow began to fall. Owing to the depth of the snow in the gulches they followed the ridges as much as possible. At one point of their trip Leonard describes the streams as precipitating "themselves from one lofty precipice to another until they are exhausted in rain below. Some of these precipices appeared to us to be more than a mile high." Walker claimed to have discovered the Yosemite on this trip and his claim has been generally accepted. Leonard's description would apply to the Yosemite and it is probable that the party traveled along its border, but did not enter the valley.

            All this however is outside the Great Basin and not strictly pertinent to our story. Walker's party crossed the San Joaquin Valley, went down the south side of the Sacramento, skirted the east shore of San Francisco Bay, and reached the ocean west of San Jose. Later they went to Monterey, then the Spanish capital of California. They spent most of the

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winter in that vicinity and on the San Joaquin river near its junction with King's river.

            In the middle of February they began their homeward trip to the Great Salt Lake. They traveled up the San Joaquin river to the base of the mountains, thence south along the mountain range looking for a pass, as they had on the eastern side the year before. Finally they fell in with a large band of Indians some of whom could speak Spanish, who guided them to a pass over the mountains south of Mt. Whitney, now known as Walker's pass. They were four days in the snow going over this pass and came down into the Great Basin south of Owen's Lake. Turning thence to the north they skirted the base of the mountains in order to have water from the mountain streams and grass for their stock. They followed up Owens Valley for its entire length and passed over the divide south of Sodaville. They were now looking for the point where they started to cross the Sierras in October.

            Knowing that their real route to Salt Lake was almost east and desiring to get there as soon as possible, they decided to leave the mountains and cross the plains in a northeasterly direction expecting in a few clay's to reach the Barren river, as they called the Humboldt. They undoubtedly started from the mountains near the dry lake south of Sodaville, and for two days crossed the sandy deserts without food or water for their animals. Finally it was decided to turn back to the mountains and after twenty-four

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hours of forced march they suddenly came about midnight to "a beautiful stream of fresh water." This was of course the Walker river. In this vicinity having found pasture for their stock they rested for a day.

            "The next morning," says Leonard, "our stock having rested, we resumed our journey along the edge of the plain; traveled as fast as their weakened state would admit of . . . until after several days constant traveling we fortunately came to our long sought for passage to the west." This statement by Leonard is conclusive evidence to my mind that Walker's party crossed the Sierras from Eagle valley in 1833 and that it did not discover the Walker river which Fremont afterwards named for him until its return in 1834.

            Leonard further says that after resting a day at this point (where they had started to cross the mountain in October) they "left the California mountains, and took a northeast direction, keeping our former path. . . . After continuing our course in this direction for a few days we at length arrived in the neighborhood of the lakes at the mouth of Barren river." It is evident that this remark would not apply either in direction traveled or time consumed if the Walker party had left the Great Basin to cross the Sierras at a point south of Walker Lake; while it exactly applies both as to direction and time if they went over Kingsbury canyon, or some other pass, from Carson valley.

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            At the lakes at the mouth of Barren river, they again had an encounter with the Indians, and they named the lakes Battle Lakes. The Indians appeared in even greater numbers than the year before and were evidently bent on avenging the death of their friends; at least that was the idea they gave to the whites. Leonard says: "We had used every endeavor that we could think of to reconcile and make them friendly but all to no purpose . . . Being thus compelled to fight, as we thought, in a good cause and in self-defense, we drew up in battle array, and fell on the Indians in the wildest and most ferocious manner we could, which struck dismay throughout the whole crowd, killing fourteen, besides wounding a great many more as we rode right over them . . . This decisive stroke appeared to give the Indians every satisfaction they required as we were afterwards permitted to pass through the country without molestation. We then continued our course up Barren river without meeting anything to interrupt us until about the 30th of June when we found that if we continued in this direction our provisions would become scarce long before we would reach the Rocky Mountains; and accordingly on the 21st our Captain decided on leaving this river and taking a northern direction for the purpose of striking the headwaters of the Columbia river where we would find game plenty and also beaver. After leaving Barren river we made a quick passage across the country and the first water we came to was the

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Lewis river, near its head where we found game such as deer, elk, bear and beaver plenty." It is probable that the stream which Leonard says was the Lewis river was either the Owyhee or some more easterly branch of the Snake. Having now reached a country well watered and abounding in game they took an easterly course and rejoined Capt. Bonneville's party on Bear river on July 12, 1834, having been absent nearly a year.

            Bonneville represents himself to Irving as having been much disgusted with Walker for crossing the Great Basin and going to California; but it is evident that his only disappointment lay in the fact that Walker did not succeed in finding a promising beaver country, and that the cost of the trip had greatly encroached upon his resources.

            Walker remained with Bonneville another year as his confidential agent and later became a well-known guide for the emigrant trains which in 1844 began to cross the Great Basin bound for California, and also for Fremont in the expedition of 1845. The route from Salt Lake to the Sierras which he was the first to travel had become one of the great roadways of commerce and civilization. There was some ground for Walker's complaint that the title of Pathfinder should have been bestowed upon Fremont who did not enter the Basin until after Walker had crossed it at least four times.