came to see them.  They did not like the looks of the chief, who made signs that he wanted a horse as payment for the privilege of trapping in his domain.  As the trappers recognised no rights on the part of the natives, they peremptorily refused, whereat the chief drew himself erect with a stern and fierce air and sent an arrow into a tree, at the same time “raising his hand to his mouth and making their peculiar yell.”  The captain of the Pattie band replied by taking his gun and shooting the arrow in two.  Driven out of the camp the following day, the chief shot a horse as he rode past it and was himself instantly pierced with four rifle balls.

* The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, etc., edited by Timothy Flint.  Cincinnati, E. H. Flint, 1833.  There is a copy in the Astor Library, New York.

* There were two classes of trappers, the free and those in the employ of some company.  The Patties belonged to the former class.

A band of his followers, armed, of course, with only bows and arrows, next day made a concerted attack, but were cut down by the rifles and fine marksmanship of the Americans.  As these Mohaves had been good friends to Garces, and afterwards treated Americans well till they were instigated by the Spaniards to fight, it is probable that a somewhat more conciliatory approach might have avoided the trouble this party experienced.

Farther up they reached the “Shuenas,” who had apparently never before heard the report of a gun, and on the 25th of March they arrived at what we now call Bill Williams Fork.  A party was sent up this stream to trap.  As they did not return next day according to the plan, scouts were dispatched, who found the bodies cut to pieces and spitted before a great fire.

On the 28th of March they came to a place on the river where “the mountains shut in so close upon its shores that we were compelled to climb a mountain and travel along the aclivity, the river still in sight, and at an immense depth beneath us.”  This was probably Black Canyon; they are the first white men on record to reach it.  They now took a remarkable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little detail is given, probably because Pattie’s editor considered a cut across the country of little importance.  They travelled, they thought, one hundred leagues along these canyons, with the “river bluffs on the opposite shore never more than a mile” from them.* Thus they evidently did not see the Grand Canyon at its widest part.  By April l0th they arrived “where the river emerges from these horrid mountains, which so cage it up as to deprive all human beings of the ability to descend to its banks and make use of its waters.  No mortal has the power of describing the pleasure I felt when I could once more reach the banks of the river.”  They had suffered for food on this journey, but now they were again in a beaver country and also killed plenty of elk, the skins of which they dressed for clothing.