About ten miles below the encampment lay the Banneck Indians; numbering
about one hundred and twenty lodges. They are brave and cunning warriors
and deadly foes of the Blackfeet, whom they easily overcome in battles
where their forces are equal. They are not vengeful and enterprising
in warfare, however; seldom sending war parties to attack the Blackfeet
towns, but contenting themselves with defending their own territories
and house. About one third of their warriors are armed with fusees, the
rest with bows and arrows.
As soon as the spring opens they move down the right bank of Snake River
and encamp at the heads of the Boisee and Payette. Here their horses wax
fat on good pasturage, while the tribe revels in plenty upon the flesh
of deer, elk, bear, and beaver. They then descend a little further, and
are met by the Lower Nez Perces, with whom they trade for horses; giving
in exchange beaver, buffalo, and buffalo robes. Hence they strike upon
the tributary streams on the left bank of Snake River, and encamp at the
rise of the Portneuf and Blackfoot streams, in the buffalo range. Their
horses, although of the Nez Perce breed, are inferior to the parent
stock from being ridden at too early an age, being often bought when but
two years old and immediately put to hard work. They have fewer horses,
also, than most of these migratory tribes.
At the time that Captain Bonneville came into the neighborhood of these
Indians, they were all in mourning for their chief, surnamed The
Horse.
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