Pierre's Hole - Battle of Pierre's Hole

Battle of Pierre's Hole

About July 17, the 1832 rendezvous began to break up and fur trappers gradually began to separate into smaller groups. Henry Fraeb and Milton Sublette, with a group of some 100 trappers, planned to head for an area north of the Salt Lake desert. Wyeth and his group of ten or eleven men from New England also set out. These and several other groups briefly traveled together for safety from the Blackfeet.

While in their first night's camp, a mere eight miles south of Pierre's Hole, the combined party was approached by a large migratory group of Gros Ventres Amerindians— men, women and children with pack animals, traveling from one camping site to another. A chief in the group came forward, apparently in greeting. Antoine Godin and a Flathead Indian "breed" (i.e. a half-breed) companion, sometimes identified as Baptiste Dorian, rode forward, appearing to greet the chief. As the three met, Godin shouted for the Flathead to shoot, which he did, and grabbed the chief's red blanket. The chief fell dead and Godin and the Flathead quickly retreated to the trappers' camp. Some accounts state that Godin paused to take the man's scalp.

The murder provoked an intense battle between the Gros Ventre, with an estimated 250 warriors, and the party of American trappers aided by their Nez Perce and Flathead Amerindian allies. The badly outnumbered mountain men sent riders to the rendezvous site for aid and prepared the camp for attack. The Gros Ventres took shelter in a swampy thicket of willows and cottonwoods. The Indian women quickly collected fallen trees, throwing them together in a crude fortress.

Aid from the rendezvous camp, under the leadership of William Sublette, including additional Nez Perce and Flatheads, rushed to the scene of the coming battle. In one of five known eye witness accounts, Robert Campbell reported that the newly arrived William Sublette (the founder of Fort William as one resultant career change because of this battle) made a speech to rouse the men, and he and some twenty trappers, including the experienced Campbell, rushed towards the Indian stronghold in the willows. (Carter, p. 301) His brother, Milton Sublette took another group and led them against the rear of the ad-hoc fort the Gros Ventres had erected. The Flathead and Nez Perce closed on the flanks. Other trappers, including Wyeth and his party, held back and did not participate in the attack. Sublette was struck by a bullet during this initial forey. The attackers then backed off for a time before renewing hostilities.

The battle raged all day with little gain on either side. As night fell, someone within the Gros Ventres barricade shouted that they had reinforcements, "many Blackfeet", coming. The trappers somehow understood that Gros Ventres reinforcements were attacking the rendezvous camp ground and goods back at Pierre's Hole, and quickly mounted their horses and raced to Pierre Hole's to save their fellow trappers and wealth. However, no hostile Indians had attacked the remnant of the rendezvous. The following morning, returning trappers found the Gros Ventres fortifications abandoned, and that the amerind force had retired from the area.

Thirty horses found nearby included some that had been previously stolen from Sublette's supply train and two that had been taken from Thomas Fitzpatrick during his earlier escape from the Blackfeet.

In the brief but bloody battle at least twenty-six Gros Ventres were killed, including some women and children, and perhaps a dozen traders and Flatheads. Due to a bullet wound and a broken shoulder, William Sublette returned to the eastern United States under the care of Robert Campbell. The party arrived in St. Louis on October 3, 1832. (Carter, p. 302) After he recovered, he returned to the east slope of the Rockies to found the trading post and fort sitting aside the gateway to South Pass and the Oregon Country on what was (in 1832 already) becoming called the Oregon Trail.