their companions, and, without losing a single man, completely routed the enemy. Their escape is the more remarkable, as, rushing into the intrenchments of the Blackfeet, they received a volley of shot poured in upon them by the enemy.
The Flatheads were again attacked, during the winter hunt of 1845, by a party of the Bannocks, which, though outnumbering them nearly three times, they soon put to flight, with the loss of three of the Bannock party. The Flatheads acknowledge that the Bannocks are the bravest of their enemies; yet this did not deter them, though but seven in number, from fighting a whole village of the latter that had rashly violated the rights of hospitality.
During the summer hunt of the same year, the united camp of Flatheads and Pend d'Oreilles, when threatened, hesitated not a moment to engage with a band of Blackfeet four times their number. The latter, fearing the " medicine of the Black-robes," skulked around their enemies, avoiding an open fight. The former, perceiving this, pretended flight, in order to draw the Blackfeet into the open plain: the snare succeeded; and the Flatheads and Pend d'Oreilles, suddenly wheeling, attacked and repulsed them with considerable loss, driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit, as they would a herd of buffaloes. Twentythree Blackfeet warriors lay dead on the field after the engagement, while the Pend d'Oreilles lost but three, and the Flatheads only one.
I shall close these sketches of Indian warfare, so remarkably evincing, as they do, the special protection of heaven, with an account of an engagement which, as it was the occasion of my first interview with the Blackfeet, and by its consequences contributed much toward my favorable reception among them, will not, I trust, prove entirely devoid of interest, if given a little more in detail.
In 1846, while engaged in one of these hunting excursions, the camp of the Flatheads was reinforced by thirty lodges of the Nez Perces, and a dozen lodges of the Black