of the continual passing. They conceived a high idea of the countless White Nation, as they express it. They fancied that all had gone over that road, and that an immense void must exist in the land of the rising sun. Their countenances testified evident incredulity when I told them that their exit was in nowise perceived in the lands of the whites. They styled the route the Great Medicine Road of the Whites. The term medicine is applied by them to whatever they find grand, religious, mysterious or incomprehensible. They visited and examined in detail all the forsaken camping-grounds on the way; they brought a great variety of objects to me to have their use and signification explained; they filled their pouches with knives, forks, spoons, basins, coffee-pots and other cooking articles, axes, hammers, etc. With the bits of earthenware which bore any figure or inscription, they fabricated some ornament for their necks and ears. How wonderful will be the accounts given of the Great Medicine Road by our unsophisticated Indians when they go back to their villages, and sit in the midst of an admiring circle of relatives! 11
But these relics collected by our savage friends were not the sole vestiges of the great multitude of emigrants who, in search of gold, had crossed this vast plain with a rare courage and unheard-of fatigues and difficulties. The bleached bones of domestic animals disseminated profusely along the route; the rising mound hastily made over the grave of a parent or a friend deceased during the long jour
11 The Oregon Trail, to which Father De Smet very justly devotes much attention, was first traveled by white men over portions of its course by the Astorians, on their outward and return journeys, in 1811-13. South Pass, the celebrated crossing of the Continental Divide, was discovered about 1824. The route had become well established by the fur travelers before emigration set in. The California Trail, which branched off in the valley of Bear River, did not come prominently into use until after the discovery of gold. The Trail remained the great highway of trans-continental travel down nearly to the advent of the railroads.