“You ever see’d Injuns leave any of their own like this afore?” asked one of the group.
“Never,” another answered, incredulous.
“No, not me, never,” Beckwith agreed.
“What made ’em take off so fast that they left their dead behind?” Titus asked.
With a shrug one of the trappers answered, “Yellow-bellied niggers is what Blackfoot is. Bad mother’s sons when they got the jump on you. But they’re yellow-bellied in a stand-up even fight of it.”
In the end that night the Shoshone village was alive with celebration, wailing, and mourning. While they had killed far more of the enemy, they nonetheless had lost the scalps of the first five victims, along with the death of eleven more warriors killed in the battle. Yet those bodies and their hair had not fallen into the hands of the enemy. The drumming and singing, the keening and chanting, continued till daybreak as the Snake conducted their wake over their dead and celebrated the spoils taken from the bodies of their enemies.
Meanwhile, downstream in the trapper camps lay seven wounded men expected to survive their wounds if they were allowed to get their rest. Still, the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette men, along with Provost’s outfit and the many free trappers still in the valley—all were anxious to celebrate their victory, right down to the last cup of liquor the general had hauled out from St. Louis.
For better than a day and another night the white men reveled in their defeat of the Blackfeet. Tales were told and retold of how that hated tribe first deceived the men with Lewis and Clark, then went on to take their revenge on Andrew Henry’s men trapping out of their fort in the Three Forks area.
For the better part of two decades now, the specter of a monstrous enemy had steadily grown all the bigger with every Blackfoot skirmish, fight, and pony raid. But now American trappers had fought their first concerted battle with a large force of Blackfeet warriors.
Already a new crop of legends were beginning to take shape around those glowing campfires that midsummer of 1826 in the Willow Valley.
Yet the story of Blackfeet against American trapper would be a tale long, harrowing, and most bloody before it reached its conclusion.
*Bear River Bay on the Great Salt Lake
** Present-day Antelope Island
*What some of the early Ashley men called the valley of the Great Salt Lake
14
“Mountaineers and friends!” William H. Ashley began, several days after that skirmish with the Blackfoot. “Most of you who know me must know by now that I’m not much good at this speech making.”
Never a man who felt at ease speaking on his feet, even among friends, the sturdy forty-six-year-old businessman and trader had nonetheless been prompted by the emotion of this moment to gather all those who had until recently owed him their allegiance. From this day these hundred-plus men would give their fealty to the new company in the mountains: Smith, Jackson, and Sublette. So this morning before he set off for St. Louis with his 125 packs of furry treasure—a fourth more than he had reaped last season—the visionary Ashley felt compelled to call these crude, unlettered, fire-hardened men together for his final farewell not only to them, but to these Rocky Mountains.
“When I first came to the mountains, I came a poor man,” he explained as the crowd slowly fell all the more quiet, respectful. “You, by your hard work, undying toils, and with your sacrifices, have made for me an independent fortune. For this, my friends, I feel myself under great obligation to you.”
Across the better part of three weeks these Ashley men had camped together, sang and danced with one another, told stories of their spring hunts, and swapped outrageous lies. They had tried to outshoot, outwrestle, and outrun every other man jack among them. And they had joined in nothing short of wonderment that the general had even rolled a cannon across the plains, over South Pass, and on to rendezvous: a six-pounder! On wheels, no less!
Damn—some would say—don’t you see? If wheels could rumble along the Platte River and rattle over South Pass, then the cursed wagons of settlers could not be far off! Perhaps this land was not as remote, nowhere near as forbidding as they had hoped it would be … not if General Ashley had dragged his cannon on its wheeled carriage all the way from St. Louis!
Yet, they figured, this institution of the rendezvous just might last long enough—if the trade goods they depended upon would continue to make it out here every summer. But as every summer must come to an end, the time had come to bid one another farewelclass="underline" time for the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette men to split apart into smaller trapping brigades, while the few free trappers in attendance drifted off to the four winds—going in secret to those places where their own most private medicine told them they would find a rich bounty of beaver.
This had been only the second rendezvous in the far west, yet it was to be Ashley’s last.
“Many of you have served with me personally,” the general continued, “and I shall always be proud to testify to your loyalty … how you men have stood by me through all danger. Let no man ever question the friendly and brotherly feelings which you have ever, one and all, shown for me.”
Titus Bass stood on the fringes of that group gathered in a crude crescent, the horns of which nearly touched Ashley’s shoulders. Scratch was not one of them, but nonetheless he was. Somewhere a quarter of a mile off lay Bud, Billy, and Silas—those three sleeping off one last hard night of swilling down the general’s liquor. Despite his own pounding hangover, for some reason Scratch realized that this morning he was likely to witness with his own eyes a man-sized chunk of history.
Out of their own heartfelt respect, many of the men had removed their hats—wide-brimmed beaver felt, or those of badger, skunk, wolf, or bear. A few men hung their heads, the better to shield their damp eyes from the appraisal of others. And a handful openly snorted back tears and dribbling noses.
“For these faithful and devoted services I wish you to accept my thanks; the gratitude that I express to you springs from my heart and will ever retain a lively hold on my feelings.”
With a loud sniffle the man beside Titus whispered, “I fought the Rees on the upper Missouri for the general.” He dragged the back of his sleeve under his nose. “And I’d still ride into hell and back again for the man.”
Such was a commonly held sentiment among that group simply because Ashley had all but single-handedly brought them here to the Rockies himself. And it was here in these mountains that most of these double-riveted but sentimental men had discovered, for the first time in their lives, just what it truly meant to live.
“My friends! I am now about to leave you, to take up my life in St. Louis. Whenever any of you return there, your first duty must be to call at my house, to talk over the scenes of peril we have encountered, and partake of the best cheer my table can afford you.”
“An’ you’ll always be welcome at my fire, General!” cried one of the throng.
“Hear! Hear!”
Ashley held up both hands to the noisy crowd, and when they had quieted, he concluded, “I now wash my hands of the toils of the Rocky Mountains. Farewell, mountaineers and friends! May God bless you all!”
Undoubtedly he must have felt the tide of good fortune was about to carry him home after four arduous western journeys. Twice he had fought his way up the Missouri, battling the Arikara and losing more than his share of good men. And twice now he had crossed the continental divide at South Pass—the very heart of the Rockies. No more would he face the scorching summer heat of the plains, nor the terrible, bone-numbing cold of the mountain winters … yet no more would he ever enjoy the company of such men as these.