1832-1834] Maximilian s Travels 227 not a sufficient quantity of goods, Mr. Kipp sent Charbon- neau (who was likewise in the service of the Columbian Fur Company), in company with another man, to fetch a wagon- load from Lake Travers; but, on their return, encountering a party of Assiniboins, they were compelled to abandon their wagon, horses, and goods, and all was lost. About this time the Crows arrived with a good supply of furs, but as Mr. Kipp had not a sufficient number of articles to barter, he himself undertook, with two Half-breeds, the journey to Lake Travers, and succeeded in bringing a wagon-load in safety. On his way he perceived a camp of the Dacota, and avoided it; and, during the night, lost his horses, but was fortunate enough to recover them. When he returned. Gen- eral Atkinson, with 500 or 600 troops, had been at the Man- dan villages, whence he proceeded upwards to Milk River. These troops returned during the summer, and hostilities had nearly ensued between them and the Crows, who were with the Mandans.*^^ The French Fur Company had sent some of their servants with the General to trade in the Mandan villages. Bissonette was the chief trader. In the autumn Mr. Tilton came up from St. Louis, in a keel-boat laden with goods. Mr. Kipp had, meantime, sent some people to the Assiniboins, Crees, and Ojibuas, to invite their chiefs to come hither and open a trade with them. The troops had
- ^^ This was Atkinson's Yellowstone Expedition of 1825. After the Arikara
troubles of 1823, President Monroe appointed General Henry Atkinson and Major Benjamin O'Fallon to conduct a military expedition into the Indian country to overawe the tribesmen, and impress them with the power of the national govern- ment. The commissioners left St. Louis in the spring of 1825. Organized at Council Bluffs, the expedition, consisting of nearly five hundred enlisted men, embarked on eight keelboats, with a cavalry escort by land. They met with no opposition and advanced a hundred and twenty miles above the Yellowstone, reaching Council Bluffs on the return the nineteenth of September. For the official report, see 19 Cong., i sess.. House Doc. No. 117, in vol. vi. The difficulty with the Crows is described by Washington Irving, Rocky Mountains, i, pp. 216, 217, in which the white renegade Edward Rose figures as the hero who chastised the troublesome chiefs into obedience. — Ed.
