What have they to eat?
A few lean horses, perchance a bear; and the stinking flesh of the otter or beaver they may entrap during the season.
"Would they not be too happy to exchange their furs against the corn, the tobacco, and good dried fish of the Shoshones?
Now they sell their furs to the Yankees, but the Yankees bring them no food.

The Flat Heads take the fire-water and blankets from the traders, but they do so because they cannot get anything else, and their packs of furs would spoil if they kept them.
"Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the winter--- to keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom?
"Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would become rich.

They would have the best saddles from Mexico, and the best rifles from the Yankees, the best tomahawks and blankets from the Canadians.

Who then could resist the Shoshones?
When they would go hunting, hundreds of the other natives would clear for them the forest path, or tear with their hands the grass out of their track in the prairie.

I have spoken." All the Indians acknowledged that the talk was good and full of wisdom: but they were too proud to work.