In that
expedition, Smith and Fitzpatrick were robbed of their horses in
Green River valley; the place where the robbery took place still
bears the name of Horse Creek.
We are not informed whether the
horses were stolen through the instigation and management of
Rose; it is not improbable, for such was the perfidy he had
intended to practice on a former occasion toward Mr. Hunt and his
party.
The last anecdote we have of Rose is from an Indian trader. When
General Atkinson made his military expedition up the Missouri, in
1825, to protect the fur trade, he held a conference with the
Crow nation, at which Rose figured as Indian dignitary and Crow
interpreter. The military were stationed at some little distance
from the scene of the "big talk"; while the general and the
chiefs were smoking pipes and making speeches, the officers,
supposing all was friendly, left the troops, and drew near the
scene of ceremonial. Some of the more knowing Crows, perceiving
this, stole quietly to the camp, and, unobserved, contrived to
stop the touch-holes of the field-pieces with dirt. Shortly
after, a misunderstanding occurred in the conference: some of the
Indians, knowing the cannon to be useless, became insolent. A
tumult arose. In the confusion, Colonel O'Fallan snapped a pistol
in the face of a brave, and knocked him down with the butt end.
The Crows were all in a fury. A chance-medley fight was on the
point of taking place, when Rose, his natural sympathies as a
white man suddenly recurring, broke the stock of his fusee over
the head of a Crow warrior, and laid so vigorously about him with
the barrel, that he soon put the whole throng to flight.
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