The Bows were to march west; so
the French joined the warriors, gradually turning northwest toward what
is now Helena.
It was winter. The hills were powdered with snow that obliterated all
traces of the fleeing Snakes. The way became more mountainous and
dangerous. Iced sloughs gave place to swift torrents and cataracts.
On New Year's day, 1743, there rose through the gray haze to the fore
the ragged sky-line of the Bighorn Mountains. Women and children were
now left in a sheltered valley, the warriors advancing unimpeded.
Francois de la Verendrye remained at the camp to guard the baggage.
Pierre went on with the raiders. In two weeks they were at the foot of
the main range of the northern Rockies. Against the sky the snowy
heights rose--an impassable barrier between the plains and the Western
Sea. What lay beyond--the Beyond that had been luring them on and on,
from river to river and land to land, for more than ten years? Surely
on the other side of those lofty summits one might look down on the
long-sought Western Sea. Never suspecting that another thousand miles
of wilderness and mountain fastness lay between him and his quest,
young De la Verendrye wanted to cross the Great Divide. Destiny
decreed otherwise. The raid of the Bows against the Snakes ended in a
fiasco. No Snakes were to be found at their usual winter hunt. Had
they decamped to massacre the Bow women and children left in the valley
to the rear? The Bows fled back to their wives in a panic; so De la
Verendrye could not climb the mountains that barred the way to the sea.
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