The worthy captain acted as physician,
prescribing profuse sweatings and copious bleedings, and uniformly with
success, if the patient were subsequently treated with proper care. In
extraordinary cases, the poor savages called in the aid of their own
doctors or conjurors, who officiated with great noise and mummery, but
with little benefit. Those who died during this epidemic were buried in
graves, after the manner of the whites, but without any regard to the
direction of the head. It is a fact worthy of notice that, while this
malady made such ravages among the natives, not a single white man had
the slightest symptom of it.
A familiar intercourse of some standing with the Pierced-nose and
Flathead Indians had now convinced Captain Bonneville of their amicable
and inoffensive character; he began to take a strong interest in them,
and conceived the idea of becoming a pacificator, and healing the deadly
feud between them and the Blackfeet, in which they were so deplorably
the sufferers. He proposed the matter to some of the leaders, and
urged that they should meet the Blackfeet chiefs in a grand pacific
conference, offering to send two of his men to the enemy's camp with
pipe, tobacco and flag of truce, to negotiate the proposed meeting.
The Nez Perces and Flathead sages upon this held a council of war of two
days' duration, in which there was abundance of hard smoking and long
talking, and both eloquence and tobacco were nearly exhausted.
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