These recitals were listened to with incredulous ears; for there is in human nature such a love of the marvellous, that traditionary deeds, by dint of repetition, become appropriated to the narrator, and the tales that we related as actual experience now mislead the speaker and the audience.
When I recurred to my own adventures, I would smile at the comparison of their sufferings with what myself and other men of the mountains had really endured in former times. The forts that now afford protection to the traveller were built by ourselves at the constant peril of our lives, amid Indian tribes nearly double their present numbers. Without wives and children to comfort us on our lonely way; without well-furnished waggons to resort to when hungry; no roads before us but trails temporarily made; our clothing consisting of the skins of the animals that had fallen before our unerring rifles, and often whole days on insufficient rations, or entirely without food; occasionally our whole party on guard the entire night, and our strength deserting us through unceasing watching and fatigue; these are sufferings that made theirs appear trivial, and ours surpass in magnitude my power of relation.
Without doubt, many emigrants were subjected to considerable hardship, during the early part of the emigration, by the loss of cattle, and the Indians came in for their full share of blame. But it was through extreme carelessness that so many were lost; and those who have charged their losses upon the Indians have frequently found their stock, or a portion of it, harnessed to waggons either far in advance of them, or lagging carelessly in their rear. The morality of the whites I have not found to exceed very much that of the Red man; for there are plenty of the former, belonging to trains on the routes, who would not hesitate to take an ox or two, if any chance offered for getting hold of them.
But to return. At the time when I had concluded to proceed with the party, we were encamped in the prairie, away from any stream (having passed the fork of the Platte), and were again in a starving condition. Except an occasional hare or rabbit, there was no sign of supplying ourselves with any kind of game.
We travelled on till we arrived at Pilot Butte, where two
