Thus it transpired that Lucien Fontenelle, having for so many years braved the dangers of the wilderness, being a veteran of the mountains, now that he had attained the age of about forty-five years, should be relieved of some of the activities and -stress of a hunter, the new fort at Scotts Bluff offered the retreat.

For a time it was called Fort Fontenelle, but the partizan's native modesty, and his friendship for David D. Mitchell, caused him to change its name.

Fontenelle, having an Indian wife, and being well known among the Indians as a fair man, and a man who would fight if need be, was of great value in preventing depredations along the trail and commanders at Fort Laramie found that he prevented friction almost entirely in the country east of one hundred miles.

For a number of years after the establishment of this fort, during the months of May, June and July, there was a ceaseless caravan moving westward through the North Platte valley. It can be stated with comparative certainty of truth that during those months of the first five or six years of the existence of Fort Fontenelle, or Mitchell, there were emigrants within sight at all times. In fact, during daylight hours an average of one emigrant wagon passed each five minutes, for one hundred days of each year. An almost continuous stream of wagons stretched for five hundred miles, along the great highways over the mountains.

Is it any wonder that the Indians who came down to Fort Laramie with Peter DeSmet in 1852, when they looked upon the great wide bare trail, should imagine that there must be a great void in the east, and could not comprehend that this was only a small fragment of the white race? Is it any wonder that the