"I am sitting on a rock with plain dried buffalo as my entire meal." "I gave the boys some alcohol, more than was good for the peace of the party, and went on a good sized spree myself," etc.

Wyeth raised the American flag over the wilderness of Idaho, when he built Fort Hall, and on the Columbia over the lost Astoria. But in the end he sold his fort on Wappatoo island to the Hudson Bay, and Fort Hall was burned in a Blackfeet Indian raid, in which the hardy mountaineers, Rezner and Robinson lost their lives.

In the later vigorous years of the formation of Oregon territory when Senator Benton of Missouri, was hammer and tongs after Oregon recognition. New England was reluctant to sustain the spirit of enterprise exemplified by Nathaniel J. Wyeth.

Now at the time Fitzpatrick met Su'olette and Wyeth near Morrill, another wagon train

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

was nearing the forks of the Platte river. The party had left Fort Osage, on the first day of May, with twenty wagons drawn by oxen, and further consisted of a large number of horses with one hundred and ten men under the leadership of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, and his able lieutenants, M. S. Cerre and I. R. Walker.

They had followed the Sante Fe trail to White riume's agency, then blazed a new trail in a northwesterly course, which has since been followed by many thousands of emigrants striking the Platte near Grand Island, then called "Great Island."