SNAKE RIVER IN HISTORY

any advantages which were to be derived from the While Thompson was establishing "Kullyspell House" on Lake Pend d' Oreille, selves of

success of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Henry was making his way up the Missouri with all speed. The spring of 1810 found him establishing himself, in the interest of the Missouri Fur Company, at the three forks of the Missouri on almost the identical spot where the explorers had encamped five years before. The ruins of the fort which

they established here were in evidence until 1870. Being driven out of this section by the Blackfoot Indians they traveled the middle prong of the great Southern trail, heretofore men-

and crossed the Continental Divide near Henry's Lake and established themselves on the Snake river at a point, as I conclude after an examination of the country, two miles below the present town of St. Anthony and on the left bank of the

tioned,

The melancholy Drewyer, whose memory

river.

fact

should be noted that George

so closely associated with that of Mr. Lewis, lost his life in the fall of the fort at Three Forks and that his ashes still repose in that vicinity.

The

is

establishment on Snake river, which became

known

as

Fort Henry, and which consisted of some two or three huts, was situated in a small valley of about twenty acres. When the arrived in this section during the early sixties still covered with a growth of large cottonwood the trees, only timber in that section of the country. It is now an alfalfa field, and, doubtless the site of the first house

first

settlers

this valley

was

in all the territory drained

by the Snake

river

and the second

to be erected in the state of Idaho.

In the service of Major of

some importance

Henry

familiar to readers of Irving's Astoria.

Kentucky woodsman then

were three men and whose names are

at this time

to this narrative

Edward Robinson,

a

in his sixty-seventh year, a veteran

Indian fighter in his native state, and who had been scalped in one of the many engagements in which he took part. He still

wore a handkerchief bound round

spirits also

his

head to protect the

him were two congenial from Kentucky, named John Hoback and Jacob

tender reminder.

Associated with