THE 1832 RENDEZVOUS WAS in full swing. Once
again, mountain men had come together from all across the
Rockies to do their trading and sow a few wild oats. For a
little while, at least, they left behind the hardship and
mortal danger of the high mountains for the peace and quiet
of a jewel-like valley of deep grass and plentiful
game.
The valley was called Pierre's Hole.
It lay west of the Teton Range and was about 20 miles long
and perhaps two miles wide (in present-day Teton County,
Idaho). Through its lush mountain meadows, flanked by stands
of timber, ran the south fork of the Teton River, headed
north for its own rendezvous with the Snake River. For a few
days each year, the mountain men could enjoy plenty of raw
whiskey and compliant Indian women and, as the saying went,
"sleep with both eyes shut." The valley might be full of
rattlesnakes, but no Indian war party would dare disturb so
many armed men.
To the west and southwest, the valley
was sheltered by the Big Hole Mountains; to the south loomed
the Palisade Range. Through a gap in the Palisades a
trappers' trail wound into the valley, branching up from the
well-used route between the Green River and the
Snake.
Across the guardian peaks of the
Tetons, through Teton Pass, lay a similar oasis, Jackson's
Hole, named, like Pierre's, for an early trapper. Pierre, in
this case, was one "le grand Pierre" Tivanitagon, who
flourished in this wild country until the implacable
Blackfeet cut him down in the winter of 1828.
Beginning in late June, the trappers
rested and waited to commence trading, told tales of
isolation and hardship and comrades dead in last season's
Indian fights. At noon on the 8th of July, the popping of
rifle shots announced the arrival of the 180-mule supply
caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. At the column's
head was its "booshway" (bourgeois, or boss), the veteran
trapper-turned-trader, scar-faced Bill Sublette, followed by
more than 100 men.
Tagging along for safety was a party
of 17 Eastern tenderfeet, led by Nathaniel Wyeth of
Cambridge, Mass. Wyeth was a tough-minded Yankee
entrepreneur, a former ice merchant with a nose for
opportunity. He had his eyes fixed on Oregon, on what he
perceived as a golden opportunity for trade in furs and
salmon.
Photo Labelled "Billy Sublett"
Hand Colored Very Black Tintype in Grandmother's Bible where
names were mostly "Sublette"
Wyeth had started west with his men
and a conglomeration of trade goods and equipment. He even
dragged along three incredibly clumsy boats on wheels, the
better to ford western rivers. Some of his men lost heart
and turned back, and Wyeth dumped the boats in St. Louis,
but with the remainder of his goods and men he was still
westbound, his enthusiasm unabated.
Sublette had won the race against his
archcompetitor, the American Fur Company, some 1,800 miles
of tough trail from St. Louis. American's caravan, led by
Lucien Fontenelle, was still far to the north, in the Big
Horn Valley. Sublette's column traveled military-style,
camping in a hollow-square formation, changing their guards
every four hours, standing-to before dawn each morning. Even
so, it had not been an easy trip.
First, they had repulsed a Blackfoot
nighttime horse raid in the Wind River country. They lost 10
horses, but the raiders did not charge home, and nobody was
hurt on either side. Next, famous trapper Thomas "Broken
Hand" Fitzpatrick, sent from Pierre's Hole to hurry them on,
had been cut off by Blackfeet on the return trip, losing his
horses, his weapons, and nearly his hair. After days alone
on foot, he at last fell in with two friendly Iroquois and
was brought safely to Pierre's Hole. Exhausted, emaciated
and with prematurely snow-white hair, he was a grim reminder
of the death that lurked everywhere in the primeval
wilderness.
Sublette's column had brought the
necessary supplies, and now both celebration and trading
could begin. Sublette would have first crack at the bales of
fine fur brought in by his own men, by unaffiliated
trappers, and by the several hundred Indians in the basin:
some Flatheads, about 120 lodges of Nez Perce, and a handful
of Iroquois and Delaware. Altogether, counting men from the
American and Rocky Mountain companies, the free trappers,
the Indians, and some men recently employed by a bankrupt
fur company, there were almost 1,000 men at the
rendezvous.
The trading and roistering went on
for more than a week. The trappers exchanged their precious
beaver pelts for powder and ball, knives, hatchets, kettles,
blankets, and the bright trade goods beloved by Indian
women. They traded for fresh horses as well. The Nez Perce
bred a particularly fine pony called the palouse horse,
ancestor of today's Appaloosa.
The mountain men did not seem to mind
that everything was marked up as much as 2,000 percent over
St. Louis prices. Life in the mountains was an uncertain
thing at best. They could not know that this was the last
great harvest of the beaver trade, but they did know that it
was better to take life as it came, enjoying it while they
could.
The trappers and Indians partook
copiously of Sublette's little square kegs of pure alcohol.
Because it was unlawful to give or sell liquor to Indians,
Sublette had gotten a "passport" in St. Louis to carry up to
450 gallons of whiskey "for the special use of his boatmen."
That was purest nonsense, of course, since Sublette came
overland and had no boatmen. At the rendezvous, nobody cared
how the alcohol got to Pierre's Hole. Most of the men
present simply enjoyed it, got gloriously drunk and found
cooperative Indian women.
Then, whiskey drunk and their furs
gone, the mountain men began to pack for the high country
and the beaver streams, for the Green, the Yellowstone, the
Snake and the Humboldt rivers. The rendezvous began to break
up on July 17, as Sublette's brother Milton led 13 of his
men southwestward out of Pierre's Hole.
With them were Wyeth and 10 of his
people, the rest having decided that western adventure was
not for them. Wyeth intended to accompany Milton Sublette to
the lower Snake until he cleared Blackfoot country, then
strike out for the Columbia. Also with Sublette were 15 free
trappers under veteran Alexander Sinclair. A few Flathead
braves tagged along; there was safety in numbers in this
perilous land.
They did not get far, perhaps from
too much celebration, and camped a mere eight miles south of
Pierre's Hole. Perhaps they were just cautious, wary from
the horse raid on Bill Sublette's column and from Broken
Hand's terrible experience. It was well that they were
careful, for trouble was not far away.
Next morning, while they were
breaking camp, the remains of their holiday mood vanished,
and they reached for their long rifles. Dropping down from
the Palisade Range to the south wound a long column of
Indians, perhaps as many as 200 of them, displaying a
British flag. The mountain men sent a couple of trappers
clattering back to the rendezvous for reinforcements, looked
to their priming, made a barricade of their packs, and
waited. Now, as the trappers watched, most of the Indian
women and children returned to the mountains, an ominous
sign. The braves came on, and the trappers thumbed back
their hammers, for these were Gros Ventre Indians.
All mountain men knew the Big
Bellies, so-called for their insatiable appetites, capable
of wearing out anybody's hospitality. Even their kinsmen,
the Arapaho, called them "spongers." American trappers
simply called them "Blackfeet," lumping them together with
that much-stronger nation whose language they often spoke,
and with whom they often allied against the white man. The
Gros Ventre were, however, a distinct tribe, not only
acquisitive but also very tough.
This group was returning from a visit
to the Arapaho, a vacation taken at least in part to escape
the wrath of the British Hudson's Bay Company, to whom the
Big Bellies had been a perpetual plague and menace. In fact,
this Gros Ventre party had stolen their British colors from
a Hudson's Bay Company party they had recently
ambushed.
Perhaps as a ruse, perhaps sincerely,
the Gros Ventre sent forward an unarmed war chief, Baihoh.
He carried a red blanket and medicine pipe, a holy article
with a green soapstone bowl and long, decorated wooden stem.
It may be that Baihoh thought he was dealing with
Fontenelle's men, whom he knew should be in that area; the
Gros Ventre were then at peace with the American Fur
Company. As the Arapaho said later, Baihoh would never have
advanced alone and unarmed if he knew he was dealing with
his enemies, the Rocky Mountain Company men.
Milton Sublette was too old a dog to
wholly trust the Big Belly envoy, but he was willing to
parley. He chose, however, the wrong men to talk peace. He
sent a mixed-breed Iroquois named Antoine Godin, one of the
men who had rescued Broken Hand. Beside him rode a Flathead,
whose tribe had been repeatedly savaged by both Blackfoot
and Gros Ventre war parties.
Godin had cause to detest the
Blackfeet, for they had killed his father up on Big Lost
River two years before. And this chief, in Godin's eyes, was
just another Blackfoot. So, as the Gros Ventre extended his
hand, Godin gripped it hard and shouted to the Flathead,
"Fire!" The Flathead's rifle roared, Baihoh toppled from his
horse, and before the Gros Ventre could react, Godin and the
Flathead were galloping back to the trappers' barricade,
whooping and waving the red blanket--and the chief's
scalp.
A roar of rage erupted from the Gros
Ventre, and the fight was on. The Big Bellies quickly took
cover in a wooded, swampy area, fortifying their refuge with
logs, branches and trenches dug furiously by some of their
women. Both sides filled the air with lead, but there was
little movement until Bill Sublette arrived with white and
Indian reinforcements.
He had brought, by frontier
standards, a whole army. Behind him rode some 200 white
trappers, plus about 200 Flatheads and 300 Nez Perce
warriors, all eager to fall on the hated Big Bellies. Taking
command, Sublette got Wyeth's greenhorns out of the line of
fire, then led a force of some 60 volunteers into the
willow-shaded swamp. With Sublette was veteran frontiersman
Robert Campbell, with whom Sublette exchanged oral wills as
they moved into combat.
The fighting soon turned into a
murderous point-blank hail of arrows and rifle balls, and
the Indian barricade proved a tough nut to crack. The
veteran trapper Sinclair went down, mortally wounded, and
was carried out of the line of fire. Sublette nailed one
Gros Ventre brave peering through a chink in his barricade,
but it was difficult for the besiegers to get a clear
shot.
The Big Bellies were shooting
well--veteran trapper Henry Fraeb lost a lock of hair to a
well-aimed ball. Even under such circumstances, the
Sublettes and others pressed ahead into the fire.
Bill Sublette, standing behind a tree
reloading, was hit in the shoulder by a ball that went on to
strike another trapper in the head. Although Sublette
remained in command for a time, the shoulder was broken, and
he was losing blood. He finally collapsed and was carried
back to safety.
Other trappers and Indian allies fell
under the Big Bellies' accurate fire. One boozy white man
wobbled into the open, climbed onto the logs of the Indian
barricade, and promptly took two bullets in the head. There
was considerable confusion, and the attackers recoiled. A
flanking party led by Milton Sublette also failed to gain
any ground from the Gros Ventre.
Even the bravest of the trappers were
glad to fall back. One of them, the indestructible Zenas
Leonard, later wrote that he was delighted to carry away a
wounded trapper. It gave him a chance to fall back without
anybody questioning his courage, and he lost no time in
packing his companion out of the fight.
The trappers had now managed to cover
two sides of the Gros Ventre's position, but in doing so,
they were shooting at each other as well as their enemies.
It was desperate work at close quarters, and some of the
trappers began to lose any enthusiasm they might have had.
Wyeth, in the thick of the fight, observed dryly, "The idea
of a barbed arrow sticking in a man's body, as we had
observed it in the deer and other animals, was appalling to
us all, and it is no wonder that some of our men recoiled
from it." Nevertheless, the attackers worked in closer and
closer to the Gros Ventre line, both sides screaming insults
at one another.
As the day wore on, however,
ammunition began to run low--so low, in fact, that after the
fight the trappers would have to return to the battlefield
to dig lead from the trees. Finally, the attackers decided
to burn the Big Bellies out and began to gather dry wood and
brush. The Indian allies were not happy with the idea--fire
would destroy the booty they hoped to gain--but they need
not have worried.
Before any fire was laid, the Gros
Ventre shouted that they would be avenged, that 400 lodges
of their tribe were near and would exterminate the white men
utterly. Somehow this threat got mistranslated into a
warning that a multitude of Gros Ventre were even now
plundering the trappers' main camp back at the rendezvous.
Leaving only a small guard to watch the Gros Ventre, most of
the trappers immediately raced off north to save their
possessions.
Other besiegers heard only "Blackfeet
comin', heap Blackfeet, heap big fight!" This was enough to
convince them that unseen Gros Ventre reinforcements were
about to attack them directly, and many of them ran for
their lives. It did not take them long to realize that no
hostile reinforcements were nearby, and some returned to
continue the siege of the Big Belly breastworks.
The trappers who had raced off to
defend their camp did not return until after dark. They had
found their possessions intact; no Gros Ventre warriors had
even come near the camp. Now they waited out the long night
and with the dawn began again to close in on the Gros Ventre
stronghold. Closer and closer they crept, and no shot was
fired. Finally, they mounted a charge, up and over the logs
and branches, to find...nothing.
Sometime during the darkness, the
Gros Ventre had skillfully withdrawn, taking their wounded
with them. Inside their defensive position lay 20 or 30 dead
horses, but only nine Indian corpses. A few more Gros Ventre
bodies turned up as the trappers fruitlessly followed blood
trails into the woods. The trappers also found a few
forgotten white men, a wounded mountain man who soon died,
and a wounded Gros Ventre squaw whom the Flatheads murdered
forthwith.
The fight was over. As Wyeth somewhat
melodramatically wrote, "The din of arms was now changed
into the noise of the vulture and the howling of masterless
dogs." That was all, except to bury the dead and collect the
booty. There was lots of that, blankets and other personal
possessions and a herd of several dozen horses, including
the treasured pony Broken Hand had lost during his escape
from the Blackfeet.
The Gros Ventre body count rose to
16, and the Big Bellies later admitted that 26 of their
people had been killed. Since Indians customarily
understated their losses, this was probably substantially
below their actual casualties. Of the fur company men, five
were dead and six wounded. Seven friendly Indians had been
killed and seven more hurt.
The Gros Ventre had fought well,
against great odds. Leonard honestly wrote that the Big
Bellies had shown themselves to be both smarter and braver
than their attackers. They had, he thought, deserved to
win.
There would be more trouble to come.
Although the trappers returned to Pierre's Hole for a few
days, giving Sublette time to heal a little, there were
beavers to trap and miles to cover, and the mountain men
began to filter off toward the far rivers. Almost
immediately, one small party lost three dead to the Gros
Ventre on the slopes of Jackson's Hole. Others were picked
off by ones and twos that year and later, in the merciless
wilderness. Ironically, a veteran leader of the unoffending
American Fur Company trappers was among those ambushed and
murdered by the Gros Ventre before the year was out.
Bill Sublette, on his way east with
168 packs of precious beaver, ran head-on into the main
Gros Ventre body, angry and painted for war. But the
Indians were short of powder, and from long experience they
were a little reluctant to tangle with "Cutface,"
(scar on
chin) as they called Sublette.
Sublette avoided a fight, mixing a judicious combination of
ready rifles and a gift of 25 pounds of tobacco. He could
afford the present; his pelts were worth $85,000.
Sublette came out of the high country
safely, his animals laden with the last great beaver
harvest. Washington Irving, out on the frontier with a
government commission, watched Sublette lead his men home:
"Their long cavalcade stretched in single file for nearly
half a mile. Sublette still wore his arm in a sling. The
mountaineers in their rude hunting dresses armed with rifles
and roughly mounted. . . looked like banditti returning with
plunder."
Bad as Pierre's Hole had been for the
defeated Gros Ventre, the worst was yet to come. Continuing
their travel home, they now moved east of the Continental
Divide, into the Absaroka Range, heartland of their bitter
hereditary enemies, the Crow. At least 40 Big Bellies left
their bones in Crow country, and many of those who did get
home did not survive long. Only a few years after the
Pierre's Hole fight, deadly smallpox swept through the Gros
Ventre, killing many members of the bands who had fought so
well against Sublette's men. It was the beginning of a sad
end for a tough, proud people.
Robert Smith is a retired Army
colonel and an assistant dean of law at the University of
Oklahoma. For further reading, see Mountain Men, by
Stanley Vestal, or Across the
Wide Missouri, by Bernard
DeVoto.