Tuesday, October 2.  There had been a violent wind from S.E. during the night, which having moderated we set sail with Mr. Valle, who visited us this morning and accompanied us for two miles.  He is one of three French traders who have halted here, expecting the Sioux who are coming down from the Ricaras, where they now are, for the purposes of traffic.  Mr. Valle tells us that he passed the last winter three hundred leagues up the Chayenne under the Black mountains.  That river he represents as very rapid, liable to sudden swells, the bed and shores formed of course gravel, and difficult of ascent even for canoes.  One hundred leagues from its mouth it divides into two branches, one coming from the south, the other at forty leagues from the junction enters the Black mountains.  The land which it waters from the Missouri to the Black mountains, resembles the country on the Missouri, except that the former has even less timber, and of that the greater proportion is cedar.  The Chayennes reside chiefly on the heads of the river, and steal horses from the Spanish settlement, a plundering excursion which they perform in a month’s time.  The Black mountains he observes are very high, covered with great quantities of pine, and in some parts the snow remains during the summer.  There are also great quantities of goats, white bear, prairie cocks, and a species of animal which from his description must resemble a small elk, with large circular horns.

At two and a half miles we had passed a willow island on the south, on the north side of the river were dark bluffs, and on the south low rich prairies.  We took a meridian altitude on our arrival at the upper end of the isthmus of the bend, which we called the Lookout bend, and found the latitude to be 44 degrees 19’ 36”.  This bend is nearly twenty miles round, and not more than two miles across.

In the afternoon we heard a shot fired, and not long after observed some Indians on a hill:  one of them came to the shore and wished us to land, as there were twenty lodges of Yanktons or Boisbrule there; we declined doing so, telling him that we had already seen his chiefs, and that they might learn from Mr. Durion the nature of the talk we had delivered to them.  At nine miles we came to the lower point of a long island on the north, the banks of the south side of the river being high, those of the north forming a low rich prairie.  We coasted along this island, which we called Caution island, and after passing a small creek on the south encamped on a sandbar in the middle of the river, having made twelve miles.  The wind changed to the northwest, and became very high and cold.  The current of the river is less rapid, and the water though of the same colour contains less sediment than below the Chayenne, but its width continues the same.  We were not able to hunt to-day; for as there are so many Indians in the neighbourhood, we were in constant expectation of being attacked, and were therefore forced to keep the party together and be on our guard.