Take care of your friends and your friends will take care of you.  Friendships between Mountain Men and Native Americans were not easy to start nor to maintain.  Most trappers knew that if they were allowed to live and trap unmolested within the  territory of various Indian tribes it was at the pleasure of those tribes.  Mistrust and rancor were the natural elements in such situations and a hostile climate was normal.  Still, friendships that were born of necessity sometimes bloomed into honest respect and care one for the other.  That lasted for many years until the cultural pressures on both parties exploded with the ceaseless westward migrations and encroachments on Native lands that signaled undeniable change. 

Everything in it's time.