[Clark:]
Wednesday June 4th. 1806
About noon the 3 chiefs left us and returned to their villages.
While they were with us we repeeted the promises
we had formerly made them and envited them to the Missouri
with us, they declined going untill the latter end of the Summer,
and said it was their intention to spend the insuewing
winter on the East Side of the Rocky Mountains, they gave
us no positive answer to a request which we made, that two or
three of their young men should accompany Cap L. to the falls
of Missouri and there wait his return from the upper part of
Maria's river where it was probable he should meet with some
of the bands of the Blackfoot Indians and Minitarres of Fort
dePrarie, that in such case Capst L. would indeavor to bring
about a good understanding between those Indians and themselves,
which when effected they would be informed of it
through the young men thus sent with him. and that on the
contrary should he not be fortunate enough to meet with those
people, nor to provaile on them to be at peace they would
equally be informed through those young men, and they might
still remain on their guard with respect to them, untill the whites
had it more in their power to give them more effectual relief.
I also urged the necessaty of sending one or two of their considerate
men to accompany me by way of the Shoshones on
the head of Jeffersons river and about the three forks of the
Missouri which [with] whome there is most probably some of
the Chiefs of those bands of Shoshones with whome they are
at war, and by which means a message [may be] sent to that
nation & good understanding brought about between the
Shoshones and the Chopunnish Nations which appears to be
the wish of both Nations. The Broken Arm envited us to
his Village and said he wished to speak to us before we set out,
and that he had some roots to give us for journey over the
mountains; I promised to visit him as he wished the day after
tomorrow. Shields returned this evening from the quawmash
grounds with two Deer which he had killed.
