Contents ▼▲
Front Matter The Fur Traders Why I Am Not a Fur Trader Plan For the Future An Inquisitive Stranger An Unexpected Proposition I Set Out as a Guide John Mitchell's Outfit Making the Bargain We Leave St. Louis Hardships Encountered The Camp at Independence A Frontier Town The Start from Independence Careless Travelers Overrun by Wild Horses Searching for Live Stock Abandoning Missing Animals Meeting with Other Emigrants A Tempest Facing the Indians Teaching the Pawnees The Pawnee Village A Bold Demand I Gain Credit as a Guide A Difficult Crossing Wash Day Indian Pictures A Plague of Wood Ticks Another Tempest Cattle Stampeded Again Difficult Traveling Colonel Kearny's Dragoons Disagreeable Visitors Driving Away the Indians Turkey Hunting Eager Hunters Antelope Country Shooting Antelopes A Pawnee Visitor The Pawnees Frighten Us Defending Ourselves Scarcity of Fuel Lame Oxen An Army of Emigrants The Buffalo Country Hunting Buffaloes My Mother's Advice Ash Hollow Post Office New Comrades Fort Laramie A Sioux Encampment Indians on the March The Fourth of July Multitudes of Buffaloes We Meet Colonel Kearny Across the Divide Fort Bridger Trading at Fort Hall Thievish Snakes The Hot Springs Falls of the Snake River Signs of the Indians Beset with Danger Hunger and Thirst Nearly Exhausted Arrival at Fort Boise On the Trail Once More Cayuse Indians The Columbla River An Indian Ferry The Dalles of the Columbia Our Live Stock My Work as Guide Ended I Become a Farmer

Antoine of Oregon - James Otis




Arrival at Fort Boise

I shall not speak of that terrible time, save to say that the good God permitted us to arrive finally at Fort Boise at the very moment when I believed there was no hope of our succeeding. It was as if we had been dead and come alive again, when the trappers came out to meet us, and carried the women and children into the inclosure, for, having arrived where grass could be found, the hungry beasts came to a full stop nearly a quarter mile distant, nor was it possible to force them forward a single pace farther.

Fort Boise is a Hudson's Bay Company's post, and if the trappers and traders there had been members of the American Company they could not have treated us with greater kindness. Because of our exhausted condition the men took entire charge of our cattle, and we were treated almost as children, being waited upon during the first hours after our arrival as if we were not capable of caring for ourselves, which I suppose really was the case, for if we had been allowed to have all the food we desired some of the weaker ones might have eaten until they died.

[Illustration] from Antoine of Oregon by James Otis

Two days at this post served to put the members of the company, as well as the cattle, in fairly good condition, and the men who had treated us so kindly urged that we take our departure without further loss of time lest we be overtaken by snowstorms while among the Blue Mountains, which range it would be necessary to cross before we arrived at the Oregon country.