They travelled as fast as their horses could walk for fully twenty-four hours before they dared make another halt, but they soon found themselves in the country of the Crows, who were friendly with the whites.  The first village they encountered was a very large one, and the chief induced them to remain with him for nearly a week, during which time they went out on a buffalo-hunt with their newly found friends.  They were not satisfied, however, with the region, it being not nearly so fruitful in beaver as the country south of the Crows, so they made a detour to the south.

When about to leave the generous Crows, one of Captain Williams’ men, whose name was Rose, expressed his intention to abandon the party and take up his life with the Indians.  It appears that while Rose was in the village he was not able to resist the charms of a certain Crow maiden, whom he afterward chose as his wife, with whom he lived happily for several years.  When Rose joined Captain Williams’ party, his antecedents were entirely unknown to that grand old frontiersman.  It turned out that he was one of those desperadoes of the then remote frontier, who had been outlawed for his crimes farther east, and whose character was worse than any savage, with whom even now such men sometimes consort.  Rose had formerly belonged to a gang of pirates who infested the islands of the Mississippi, plundering boats as they travelled up and down the river.  They sometimes shifted the scene of their robberies to the shore, waylaid voyagers on their route to New Orleans, and often perpetrated the most cold-blooded murders.  When the villanous horde of cut-throats was broken up, Rose betook himself to the upper wilderness, and when Captain Williams was forming his company at St. Louis, he came forward and offered himself.  Captain Williams was not at all pleased with the sinister looks of the fellow, suspecting that his character was not good, but it was a difficult matter to induce men to join an expedition fraught with so much daring and danger.  So the refugee was dropped among the Crows, whose habits of life were much more congenial to the feelings of such a man than the restraints of civilization.[9]

The Crow chief at the time of the visit of Captain Williams’ party to their nation was Ara-poo-ish, who was succeeded by the famous Jim Beckwourth, who remained at the head of the tribe for many years.

When Captain Williams arrived at the headwaters of the Platte, the party met with another disaster.  Early one morning seven of the men, including the captain, went out to bring in their horses which had been turned out to graze the evening before.  As they were still in the country of the Crows, whom they regarded as their firm friends, they had not exercised their usual precaution of securely picketing their animals.  They merely had tied their two forefeet loosely together to prevent them from straying too far, while they retired to the shelter of some