and on killing the Buffalo, or Bison, what they do not use on the spot, they dry to eat through the winter. To prevent a famine, however, it is their custom to keep a large number of dogs; and they eat them as we do mutton and lamb. This tribe have imitated the white people in having fixed and stationary houses. They stick poles in the ground in a circular form, and cover them with buffalo-skins, and put earth over the whole, leaving at the top an aperture for the smoke, but small enough to be covered with a buffalo-skin in case of rain or snow.—We found here little game; but honey-bees in abundance.
We travelled on about a hundred miles farther, when we came to a large prairie, which name the French have given to extensive tracts of land, mostly level, destitute of trees, and covered with tall, coarse grass. They are generally dreary plains, void of water, and rendered more arid by the Indian custom of setting fire to the high grass once or twice a year to start the game that has taken shelter there, which occasions a hard crust unfavorable to any vegetable more substantial than grass. At this unpromising psot, three more or our company took French leave of us, there being, it seems, dissatisfaction on both sides; for each complained of the other. The names of the seceders were Livermore, Bell, Griswell.[1] In sixteen days more we reached the River La Platte, the water of which is foul and muddy.[2] We were nine days passing this dreary prairie.
- ↑ Thomas Livermore was a cousin of Nathaniel Wyeth, whose home was in Milford, New Hampshire. He was a minor, and his father's consent was essential that he might join the party.
Bell appears to have been insubordinate from the start, and upon his return to the East, published letters injurious to Wyeth's reputation; consult Wyeth's, Oregon Expeditions, index.—Ed.
- ↑ For the River Plate, see our volume xiv, p. 219, note 170. The Oregon Trail from Independence led westward, south of the Kansas, crossing the latter stream near the present site of Topeka; thence up the Big and Little Blue rivers, and across country to the Platte, coming in near Grand Island.—Ed.
