Missouri River Breaks area — John Ordway: May 11, 1805

we Set off eairly. Some of the party caught 2 beaver last night
we proceeded on passed black bluffs & hills on the s. s. low
ceeder on the hills in places & Spots on each Side of the River.
Saw verry large ga(ngs of buffaloe in the bottoms on each Side
of the River, one of the party which had a lame hand was walk-
ing on Shore towards evening he came running and hollowing
to the perogues chased by a brown bair which he had wounded,
bad. Some of the hunters went out with him and killed it.2 it
was nearly of the Same discription as the one killed Some days
1 In Dawson County, four miles above the mouth of Werner’s Creek and
thirteen miles above Big Dry Creek.
2 The hero of this encounter was William Bratton. Lewis describes the
incident in greater detail than does Ordway. Bratton was chased a mile and
a half and reached the boat so much out of breath that for several minutes he
was unable to tell what had happened. Lewis went with seven men in search
of the “monster,” which was found, shot through the lungs by Bratton yet
still full of life. “These bear being so hard to die,” notes Lewis, “reather
intimedates us all. I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had
reather fight two Indians than one bear.” It is interesting to compare Lewis’
estimate of the danger of meeting the grizzly with that of Theodore Roosevelt,
a twentieth-century hunter of some repute. “On the whole,” he says, “the
danger of hunting these great bears has been much exaggerated. At the begin-
ning of the present (nineteenth) century, when white hunters first encountered
the grizzly, he was doubtless an exceedingly savage beast, prone to attack
without provocation, and a redoubtable foe to persons armed with the clumsy,
small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles of the day. But at present bitter experience
lias taught him caution. He has he. mi hunted for sport, and hunted for his
pelt, and hunted for the bounty, and hunted as a dangerous enemy to stock,
until, save in the very wildest (list nets, he has learned to be more wary than
a deer, and to avoid man’s presence almost as carefully as the most timid kind
of game. Except in rare eases he will not attack of his own accord, and, as
a rule, even when wounded his object is escape rather than battle.” The
Wilderness Hunter (New York, L893), 306-7.
1805] SERGEANT ORDWAY’S JOURNAL 211
past, but much fatter, we Camped before night to dress the bair,
after comming 17 miles today. Cap1 Clark who walked on Shore
killed 2 buffaloe 2 deer and one beaver, he went on some broken
hills on the N. S. which was partly covred with pitch pine and
another Sort of pine which resembles the pitch pine only the bark
& leaf Smaller, these hill[s] bair the first pine we have Seen on
this River, the country back from the River is broken, but the
Soil verry rich and good, the River bottoms are Smoth and level
thinly covred with cotton wood timber, and filled with all most all
kinds of Game. Some Smoth plains under the black broken hills
which is covered with wild hysop. passed Several Small runs in
the course of the day.