indiana territory

Kicking Horse Pass

No, this is not a football play; it is one of the place I found during a little surf on the internet. I can tell I am going to want to look up more information about this area in the Canadian Rockies, but for right now, you can check HERE to read about the other paragraphs that are above and below these two:

Mount Hector and Hector Lake were named for James Hector but Kicking Horse Pass was named for a horse that kicked Dr. Hector. As the party was struggling eastward towards the pass one of the pack horses, in an attempt to escape the fallen timber that made travelling so difficult, plunged into the river. Hector described the events that followed, "...the banks were so steep that we had great difficulty in getting him out. In attempting to recatch my own horse, which had strayed off while we were engaged with the one in the water, he kicked me in the chest, but I had luckily got close to him before he struck out, so that I did not get the full force of the blow."

Peter Erasmus was Hector's guide during this part of his explorations and he later wrote, "We all leapt from our horses and rushed up to him, but all our attempts to help him recover his senses were of no avail... Dr. Hector must have been unconscious for at least two hours when Sutherland yelled for us to come up; he was now conscious but in great pain. He asked for his kit and directed me to prepare some medicine that would ease the pain." Although not recorded in Hector's journal or in "Buffalo Days and Nights" by Peter Erasmus, there is a story that Hector's men gave him up for dead at one point and dug a grave for him. It is said that he regained consciousness within a minute or so of being buried alive and that he managed to wink an eye to show that he was still alive. Hector's men thought it was appropriate to name the river in honour of the "Kicking Horse" and the pass above was assigned the name as well

posted by Jody @ 10:53 AM