“Sacajawea, our Indian woman, informs us that we are encamped on the precise spot where her countrymen, the Snake Indians, had their huts five years ago, when the Minnetarees of Knife River first came in sight of them, and from whom they hastily retreated three miles up the Jefferson, and concealed themselves in the woods.  The Minnetarees, however, pursued and attacked them, killed four men, as many women, and a number of boys; and made prisoners of four other boys and all the females, of whom Sacajawea was one.  She does not, however, show any distress at these recollections, nor any joy at the prospect of being restored to her country; for she seems to possess the folly, or the philosophy, of not suffering her feelings to extend beyond the anxiety of having plenty to eat and a few trinkets to wear.

“This morning the hunters brought in some fat deer of the long-tailed red kind, which are quite as large as those of the United States, and are, indeed, the only kind we have found at this place.  There are numbers of the sand-hill cranes feeding in the meadows:  we caught a young one of the same color as the red deer, which, though it had nearly attained its full growth, could not fly; it is very fierce, and strikes a severe blow with its beak. . . .

“Captain Lewis proceeded after dinner through an extensive low ground of timber and meadow-land intermixed; but the bayous were so obstructed by beaver-dams that, in order to avoid them, he directed his course toward the high plain on the right.  This he gained with some difficulty, after wading up to his waist through the mud and water of a number of beaver-dams.  When he desired to rejoin the canoes he found the underbrush so thick, and the river so crooked, that this, joined to the difficulty of passing the beaver-dams, induced him to go on and endeavor to intercept the river at some point where it might be more collected into one channel, and approach nearer the high plain.  He arrived at the bank about sunset, having gone only six miles in a direct course from the canoes; but he saw no traces of the men, nor did he receive any answer to his shouts and the firing of his gun.  It was now nearly dark; a duck lighted near him, and he shot it.  He then went on the head of a small island, where he found some driftwood, which enabled him to cook his duck for supper, and laid down to sleep on some willow-brush.  The night was cool, but the driftwood gave him a good fire, and he suffered no inconvenience, except from the mosquitoes.”

The easy indifference to discomfort with which these well-seasoned pioneers took their hardships must needs impress the reader.  It was a common thing for men, or for a solitary man, to be caught out of camp by nightfall and compelled to bivouac, like Captain Lewis, in the underbrush, or the prairie-grass.  As they pressed on, game began to fail them.  Under date of July 31, they remark that the only game seen that day was one bighorn, a few antelopes, deer,