MILES CANNON

8

They had ascended the Missouri

Rizner.

in

1809 with Henry,

taken part in the battle of Three Forks, crossed the Continental Divide and, with Fort Henry as a base, had trapped on many of the adjacent streams. After the fort was abandoned, they re-crossed the mountains and descended the Missouri, but Henry, it would appear, stopped at a post which the Missouri Fur Company had established on the river near the mouth of the Cheyenne. The three hunters, in the early spring of 1811,

free from their engagements, continued on down the river determined to forever abandon the pursuit of fortune in the

now

wilderness.

the morning of May 26th, their flotilla, consisting of two log canoes, arrived at a point in the Missouri opposite the mouth of the Niobrara when their attention was attracted by

By

gun which came from the right bank of the The hunters crossed over and landed at the camp of a powerful company of fortune seekers under the command of Wilson Price Hunt, who were then breakfasting around a blazing fire on the green bank of the river. As a result of this

the report of a river.

unexpected meeting we find these three men, on the evening of October 8, 1811, and after a long ride in the face of a westerly wind and flurries of snow, filing into the lonely precincts of Fort Henry accompanied by not

less

than three scores of

traders, trappers and voyagers, mounted, armed and equipped for the struggle which the phantom of hidden riches too often entails.

Our

three Kentucky hunters, together with Joseph Miller, army man, and a man by name of Cass, were left

a retired

Henry and were the first white men to explore the Snake river basin and become acquainted with the Indian roads of the country, which they did as far east as Bear river. When Robert Stuart reached the mouth of the Boise river

at Fort

the following August, enroute to New York with dispatches for Mr. Astor, he, by the merest chance of fortune, discovered

Miller and the three hunters on the verge of starvation. Having appeased their torturing craving for food Stuart conducted the four unfortunates, Cass having in the meantime been un-