June 22. 1X.i2, an elkskin boat bearing four Indians came plunging out of the rapids at the lower end of Platte canyon and pulled in upon the shore, making camp at about the present site of Guernsey. < >n the following day they ■ 1 down the river to a grove upon what to be .hi island. To the right of it. the waters rushed with increasing velocity, but on the left were invitingly quiet,

They pulled in for their regular night's rest upon a pretty lagoon, and found that its lower extremity was banked by a beaver dam. These animals had cut the trees and built a substantial structure across what had been a channel of the Platte. This lagoon is now known as Little Moon Lake.

It was nearly nightfall, when they discovered, upon the opposite bank of the river,

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

something that filled them with wonder and amazement. Long horned buffalo were trailing wigwams into a grass plot, where Captain Bonneville and party were about to make camp.

About noon the following day, the swift current of the river carried the four strangers "near the breast of a mountain on which they could plainly see bighorns," and at night they passed "the wigwam," no doubt referring to Chimney rock.

Then there was the long journey through prairies the like of which they had never dreamed, and at the river mouth they were taken on a keel-boat coming down the Missouri.

General Clarke, a brother of the explorer, was then superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, and when these Indians met him and told him their mission, he was dumbfounded.