CHAPTER I.
VOYAGES TO FORT BENTON IN 1862 AND 1863.
Six-weeks' voyage up the Missouri - Everywhere welcomed by Indians-Brings supplies to Blackfoot mission-Eastern trip-The 1863 journey - The Sioux war - Pleasant voyage - Water low - Passengers and freight landed at Milk River-Indian attack fortunately averted - Hard wagon trip - Baptizes Crow children - Decides to return by the Pacific.
EARLY in May, 1862,1 I left St. Louis in the steamboat Spread Eagle 2 of the Honorable St. Louis Fur Company. [Pierre Chouteau, Jr. Company, popularly called the American Fur Company.] The respectable and worthy captain, Mr. Charles P. Chouteau, had had a little chapel prepared on board - I had the great consolation of offering the holy sacrifice of the mass every day, during my long voyage. The boat was bound for Fort Benton, in the Rocky Mountain region and upwards of 3,000 miles, by the Missouri river, from the mouth of that stream. The river was bank-full at the time, and a great deal of power was required to stem the current. We were six weeks in making the trip.
At various places or stations we found more or less numerous camps of Indians on the banks of the river. The boat would stop to distribute among the savages the Government gifts or annuities, and I would seize all these precious moments to visit them in their buffalo-skin dwellings or cabins; and on all these occasions I passed my days
1 Extract of a letter to Reverend Father Boone, containing a synopsis of my trip among the Indians in 1862.-Author. (From the French of the Linton Album, pp. 58-6o.)
2 For particulars of this interesting voyage see History Missouri River Navigation.