Pinchot Journal: Presumed Drowned?

Submitted by the Upper Swan Valley Historical Society. Reprinted from the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Gifford Pinchot, who later became chief of the U.S. Forest Service, was working for the National Forest Commission in 1896 when he traveled south through the Swan Valley with Jack Monroe, a trapper and guide. In the previous installment of the seven-part series, they had used deer carcasses for bait and shot a bear.

I was using the .30 caliber Government smokeless cartridge in the new model Winchester, with a soft-nosed bullet. The shot which tore this bear’s heart so frightfully went in and out without striking a rib, and made but a little hole at entrance and exit. The tearing effect on the two deer shot the night before was tremendous. In the case of a black tail buck killed later with the same rifle, the bullet, striking the side of the deer almost at a right angle, smashed two ribs in going in, broke into fragments, and never came out at all.

By four the next morning I was on the lookout again. About six, as I glanced across the stream, a large black bear was standing looking down at the carcass of the one I had shot the night before. Once more I dodged behind the tree to get rid of my flour sack, but the motion must have been seen. As I looked out again I got but a glimpse of the animal as it disappeared. The wind was right, there was brush between us, and neither Monroe nor I could understand how its suspicions could have been aroused. But after vainly waiting four weary hours for its return, we were enlightened by finding a part of one of the carcasses lying within seven paces of our bed. The bear had come in during the night, for we found the bloody marks on the fallen cedar which spanned the stream, where the beast had dragged the meat in our direction. It had evidently smelt us, and the next morning was very much on the watch. If the leader of the pack had not been among the lost dogs, we should still have had an excellent chance of getting this second bear; as it was, the opportunity was lost for good and all.

During the day it suddenly dawned upon me that, not improbably, I had been reported to my people at home as drowned. This rather curious piece of news reached me by way of the following train of facts. The trapper whose son’s flour had done us so much good was about to go in to the town of Kalispell, where I was expected to meet the other members of the Forest Commission. The lost dogs, since they had been unable to follow us, would naturally take the back trail to Wood’s cabin. His warnings against the attempt to swim the river would immediately recur to him, and he would be fairly justified in assuming that we had tried it and that of the whole outfit only these two dogs had survived. Such possibilities naturally made me very anxious to reach a telegraph office, so we left Camp Plenty about 6 o’clock that night in search of a place to cross Swan River. By half past seven we found it a swift current leaving our bank and losing its force, to a large degree, as it reached the other side. At once we set about to build a raft large enough to carry our clothes, guns and packs.

At the foot of the crossing place began a series of heavy rapids, to get into which would mean not less than the loss of our whole outfit. Traveling au naturel in that nursery of mosquitoes would have been distinctly undesirable, and there were other reasons for avoiding the swift water. So when the raft was finished, under shelter of a vigorous smudge, we laid out the lines of the crossing with some care. Then, just on the edge of darkness, with a sprinkling of rain in the air and a thunderstorm in the Western sky, we bared our reluctant bodies to the mosquitoes and waded into the icy water.

To be continued...