Kit Carson joined a party of fifty men, to explore the highest tributaries of the Missouri river.  The region was occupied by a numerous band of warlike Indians, called Blackfeet.  Many of the warriors had obtained rifles.  The itinerant trader could not refrain from furnishing the Indians with guns and ammunition, at the exorbitant prices which the savages were ready to pay.  It shows the superiority of the white men, that fifty of them ventured to enter upon these plains and into these defiles, where thousands of these well-armed warriors were watching for their destruction.

The enterprise proved more bold than successful.  The trappers found the Indians so vigilant and hostile, that it was necessary to protect themselves by an intrenched camp.  They had to adopt the most wearisome precautions to protect their animals, never allowing them to graze beyond rifle distance from the camp, unless under a strong guard.  Matters grew daily more and more desperate.  The Indians seemed to be gathering from great distances, so as almost to surround the encampment.  If any small party wandered a mile, to examine their traps, they were pretty sure to find the traps stolen, and to be fired upon from ambush.  This state of affairs at length constrained them to quit the country.  Like an army, exposed hourly to an attack from its foes, this heroic band of fifty men commenced its march in military array, watching with an eagle eye, knowing not but that at any moment hundreds of strongly mounted, well-armed savages might come rushing down upon them.  They could indulge in no rest, till they got beyond the territory of the Blackfeet.

A march of one or two hundred miles brought them to the banks of the Big Snake river.  It was the month of November.  In those northern latitudes winter was setting in with much severity.  The hill-tops were covered with snow; the streams were coated with ice; freezing blasts from the mountains swept the bleak plains and the narrow defiles.  It was necessary to go into winter quarters for a couple of months.  But there was no discomfort in this.

They selected a snug valley having a southern exposure, with a northern barrier of hills, and in the midst of a wide-spread grove which fringed a pure mountain stream.  There were fifty men.  Every man belonged to the working class.  Every man was skilled in the trades of hunting, trapping, wigwam-building, cooking, and tailoring.  A few hours’ work reared their cosey huts.  Fuel was cheap and abundant.  The broadcloth for their clothing was already woven on the backs of buffaloes, bears, deer and wolves.  Their own nimble hands speedily formed them into garments impervious to wind and cold.  They had laid in quite a store of game, which the cold weather preserved, and there was enough more within their reach.  And fortunately for them all, nature’s law of prohibition, had effectually banished from the whole region all intoxicating drinks.  Where there is no whiskey there is rarely any quarrel.  The pure mountain stream supplied them with their health-giving beverage.