band of "down-easters"--Yankee enterprise--Fitzpatrick--His
adventure with the Blackfeet--A rendezvous of mountaineers--
The battle of--Pierre's Hole--An Indian ambuscade--
Sublette's return

LEAVING CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE and his band ensconced within their fortified
camp in the Green River valley, we shall step back and accompany a party
of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in its progress, with supplies
from St. Louis, to the annual rendezvous at Pierre's Hole. This
party consisted of sixty men, well mounted, and conducting a line of
packhorses. They were commanded by Captain William Sublette, a partner
in the company, and one of the most active, intrepid, and renowned
leaders in this half military kind of service. He was accompanied by
his associate in business, and tried companion in danger, Mr. Robert
Campbell, one of the pioneers of the trade beyond the mountains, who had
commanded trapping parties there in times of the greatest peril.

As these worthy compeers were on their route to the frontier, they fell
in with another expedition, likewise on its way to the mountains. This
was a party of regular "down-easters," that is to say, people of New
England, who, with the all-penetrating and all-pervading spirit of their
race, were now pushing their way into a new field of enterprise with
which they were totally unacquainted. The party had been fitted out and
was maintained and commanded by Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston. This
gentleman had conceived an idea that a profitable fishery for salmon
might be established on the Columbia River, and connected with the fur
trade. He had, accordingly, invested capital in goods, calculated, as he
supposed, for the Indian trade, and had enlisted a number of eastern men
in his employ, who had never been in the Far West, nor knew anything of
the wilderness. With these, he was bravely steering his way across the