About three weeks in advance of this party, there was a company of emigrants bound to Oregon.  There were sixteen or seventeen families, men, women and children.  Sixty-four of these were men.  They had suffered severely from illness, and there had been many deaths among them.  One of these emigrants, who had buried his child, and whose wife was very ill, left the company under the guidance of a hunter, and returned to the States.  The hunter visited the Fremont camp, and took letters from them to their friends.

Day after day the party thus journeyed on, without encountering anything worthy of special notice.  They had reached the Pawnee country.  These savages were noted horse-thieves.  The route of the surveyors led along the banks of a placid stream, about fifty feet wide and four or five feet deep.  The view up the valley, which was bordered by gracefully undulating hills, was remarkably beautiful.  The stream, as usual with these western rivers, was fringed with willows, cottonwood, and oak.  Large flocks of wild turkeys tenanted these trees.  Game, also, of a larger kind made its appearance.  Elk, antelope and deer bounded over the hills.

A heavy bank of black clouds in the west admonished them, at an early hour in the afternoon, to prepare for a stormy night.  Scarcely had they pitched their tents ere a violent wind came down upon them, the rain fell in torrents and incessant peals of thunder seemed to shake the very hills.  It so happened that the three who were to stand guard on that tempestuous night, were Carson and the two young gentlemen Brandt and Benton.

“This was their first night on guard,” writes Lieutenant Fremont “and such an introduction did not augur very auspiciously of the pleasures of the expedition.  Many things conspired to render their situation uncomfortable.  Stories of desperate and bloody Indian fights were rife in the camp.  Our position was badly chosen, surrounded on all sides by timbered hollows, and occupying an area of several hundred feet, so that necessarily the guards were far apart.  Now and then I could hear Randolph, as if relieved by the sound of a voice in the darkness, calling out to the sergeant of the guard, to direct his attention to some imaginary alarm.  But they stood it out, and took their turn regularly afterwards.”

The next morning, as they were proceeding up the valley, several moving objects were dimly discerned, far away upon the opposite hills; which objects disappeared before a glass could be brought to bear upon them.  One of the company, who was in the rear, came spurring up, in great haste, shouting “Indians.”  He affirmed that he had seen them distinctly, and had counted twenty-seven.  The party immediately halted.  All examined their arms, and prepared for battle, in case they should be attacked.  Kit Carson sprang upon one of the most fleet of the hunting horses, crossed the river, and galloped off, over the prairie, towards the hills where the objects had been seen.