We may believe his story or not, as we like; but we are bound to believe that these plains Indians antedated the first white men in the discovery of the South Pass and of many other features of the Rocky Mountains. It is doubtful, indeed, whether any party of white men in those early days ever crossed the mountains excepting under the entire or partial guidance of Indians, who took them over country known to themselves.
We may believe, therefore, that the native Indian savages furnished the source of original knowledge to our first explorers. If you be familiar with the Rockies of to-day, you shall now and again see the old Indian trails, overgrown and unused, sinking back into the earth. In the valley of the Two Medicine, on the reservation of those same Blackfeet who once fought the trappers so boldly, the writer once found, high up on the mountain side, a plainly traceable trail that led down to the summit of a high ridge, whence one could look far to the eastward, to where the Sweet Grass hills loomed out of the level sweep of the prairies. There was a hunter with me, a man married among the Blackfeet, of whom I asked regarding this trail. "It is the old Kootenai trail," said he; "and if you follow this back to the West, it will take you through a pass of the Rockies and into the country of the Flatheads."
Here, then, was indeed an ancient and historic pathway, one not used to-day by any rails of iron, nor followed even by the pack trains of the "adventurers" of to-day. Here was a pass discovered, no man may tell when, by Indians who wandered eastward and westward across the upper Rockies. Perhaps the old trappers also know this trail; though there are not wanting those who believe that less than a double decade ago the valleys at the headwaters of the St. Mary's Lake still lay untouched by the foot of white man. Here, along this forgotten mountain trail, came the Kootenais with their war parties against the Blackfeet. Here, perhaps, came, from the upper Pacific coast, the first horses used by the plains Indians in the far North. Be that as it may, my companion and I without doubt stood on one of the original or aboriginal pathways; and he had been dull indeed who did not find an interest in that fact and in the surroundings.[47]