F 594 .T25 Copy 1 Goipght}!^. COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV I Son Ob THE Star.— Chief of tlio Aricarees. SKETCHES FRONTIER ^ INDIAN ."* — ON THE — UPPER MISSOURI & GREAT PLAINS. Embhaoing the Author'^ Fersonai. Recollections of Noted Fron- tier CHARACTERS, AND SOME STUDIES AND OBSERVATIONS OF Wild Indian Life, during a continuous residence IN THE DakOTAS AND ADJOINING STATES AND TeBBITORIES BETWEEN THE YeARS 1863 AND 1889, CORRECTED BP TO 1897. BY JOSEPH HENRY TAYLOR, AUTHOR OF "twenty YEARS ON THE TRAP LINE.' "kaleidoscopic lives," etc- mimiv^UL Third Sdition. ^#*- BISMARCK, N. D. Printed and Publislied by the Author. 1897 ■ 115 THE LiBRARY OF CONGRESS, One Copv Recbiveo MAR. 13 1902 COPVWaHT ENTRV >-WiM / ^ / r ^ ■] OCA&» »«(«. No. 2. {^ ^ 2 S COPY .J, VopyrlBkt, 1889, 1895 and 1897. BY ,rOS£PlI HKNRY TAYrOR, CONTENTS. PIRST GROUP, rAGi INKf'ADlTA AM) SONS - - - ., A KATKI) \VAI{ I'AKTV --.---...._ 24 l?r\[MEK l)A\ - - - - ------...- 80 ■I'HK SCALPLESS VVAKKIOR AND DAUGHTER . - - 35 THE GREAT PLAINS IX 18«4 AND 18G5 43 KORT BERTHOLD AGENCY IN 1869 ----- - . . eo FORT PHIL KEARNEY --------- 72 A MEDICINE SNAKE'S CATASTROrHE . - 76 A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS _...._ gJ A HOUND GRAND RIVKH ACJENCY IN 18SJ 86 A WAR ^V()MAN 9S SECOND GROUP. EARLY DAYS AKOUND FOKT BUFORD 107 A WAR PARTY OF THREE ------- 117 LEGEND OF THK PAINTED WOODS - - - - 128 THE LETTER IN CIPHER ------ 181 BULL BOATING THROUGH THE SIOUX COUNTRY 139 LONESOME CHARLEY --------- 147 EDITOR KELLOGCi 167 INDIAN MOTHKRS - - - 174 PA(iE SOME INCIDENTS OF INDIAN WAKFAKE IST WITH A GIIOS VENTRE WAR TARTY 199 HALF BREED CHARLEY -(>'' THIRD GROUP. MASSACRE ON BURNT CREEK BAR 212 THE RENEGADE CHIEF - - - - 224 BUCKSKIN JOE 2»8 McCALL THE MINER 250 FORT TOTTEN TRAIL 260 POSY 274 CHRONICLE OF THE SPANISH WOODYARD - 276 THE PEACEMAKERS - - - 295 THE Al'THOR. PRSFACS. FEW of the sketches of this work were or- iginally written by the author in a condensed form and published in the Woodstown (N. J.) Register, and the Dakota Herald of Yankton, as early as the year ] 873, under the general title of *'Wild Western Life," — but it was not until the autumn of 1880, in the conservatory of the Hart- rauft mansion, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, with the help of a rotary job pi-ess, that the author of the enclosed pages made his first attempt at book making in the original edition of "Frontier and Indian Life."* As the first edition was exhausted in the neigh- borhood of its publication many years ago, a sec- ond output was published in Washburn, North Dakota, in the winter of 189o-G, when, owing to a few imperfections, and some new light obtained on a part of the subject matter, while on an extended journey of over two thousand miles during the summer of 1806 — visiting some of the principal Sioux Agencies in the two Dakotas and Minnesota, — a new edition is herewith presented containing many changes and ii; a larger form than the two previous editions. Mau}^ sketches of both of the earlier works are omitted and replaced by others more nearly conforming to title of the book, and of more interest to the general reader or seeker after infoi-mation. in following lines during that period on the (Ireat Plains and the Upper Missouri river country, in which our charactej-s lierein chronicled were ))roininpiit actn Imuan Liii:. with their confederates, made the tenor of Hfe so insecure to the Mdawakontons, they gave up that section as permanent residence, and made camp with their brothers along the rivers of what is now western Minnesota. From the southern shore of the Spirit Lake pours out a small stream that forms the Enah- wakpa, or Stone river of the Sioux; the Petite Riviere des Sioux, or Little Sioux river of the early French traders, by which latter appelation it is now known. But a few yards in width as it pours out from the lake, the Little Sioux river meanders along in a southwestern course for one hundred and twenty miles when its waters reach, and mingle with those of the wide and muddy Missouri. This river like its fountain, was once studded with groves of tall cottonwood along the bends of the lowlands, while on the great curved lines of the uplands with a northern exposure, groves of hardwood forests stood facing die outward plain. rhev had defied the widierino and scorchint^ blasts of the annual hres trom the prairies, and stubbornly held their own against every element of destruc lion, even in tardy count by ceiuuries. Notwiths'anding the fact that the .Santees had ceased to permanently occupy the lantl around .Spirit Lake, they still claimed the right of posses- sion and this right was so resj)ected by the gen eral government at Washington, and in a treaty wiili these .Santees, .A.ugust srh, i8si, reco^^nized l.Mvl'ADUIA AM; SuiNS . 4 the claims ot the Mdewakontons and Wapekuta bands, and promised to pay them for their relin- quishment of the country about Spirit Lake, and the entire valley along the Litde Sioux river, as well. Some time previous to this treaty, in a local feud among the Wapekuta Santees, the chief, Tosagi, was slain by some discontents of his tribe. The leader of the chiefs murderers — Inkpaduta, or as interpreted into English— Red Point, a man of some prominence in the tribe, whose friends and relatives gathered about him to share his punishment— banishment and oudawry. Inkpaduia and his litde band betook themselves fearlessly to the Little Sioux river valley, and oc- cupied a seciion of country that the whole Sioux nation had heretofore regarded, at best, a perilous frontier. But with his handful of eleven warriors and their respective families, they moved from their camp on the headwaters of the Des Moines river and pushed southward until the came to the valley of upper Mill creek, a branch of the Little Sioux river, putting in from the west side near the present town of Cherokee. Here they found abundance of elk, deer and water game. Inkpaduiah. at this time was represented as an Indian somewhat deceptive in appearance. He was about hfcy years of age; tall and slim; his -voice soft and undertoned; his eyes weak and near sighted; a nose of Grecian cast; his face ])adiy pTited with small pox, and his whole per- 5 P^KONTIER AND Jn'DIAN LtFE. sonal make-up had the showing- of an htiml)le, ill-used mendicant, and gave little promise or forewarnings of the man whose influence and action in the near future would involve such wide spread ruin on both friend and foe. He had counciled wuth his tribe against the selling or transferring of their tribal lands to the whites and refused to be bound by the treaties made for that purpose. He had doggedly deter- mined to re-occupy the Little Sioux \'alley and hold it. With diplomatic skill and forethought he made a truce with the Omahas, and as an hon- ored guest, became an occasional partaker at their savory feasts. Indeed^ such a favorable impression did the outlawed and beggarly looking chieftain make on the susceptible hearts ot his whilom en- tertainers^ that himself and band were enjoined to make winter camp at or near the mouth of Maple river, a neighboring stream, one of the lower branches of the Little Sioux, and within an eas\' day ride ot the village of the; red Omahas. During the summers of 1S55 and 1856, atten tion of the immigrant 10 Iowa's vacant lands be- came directed to the northwestern part of the State. Sioux City was founded and located on the Iowa slate line at the mouth of P)ig Sioux river, antl the country tor a hundred miles around becanv tributary in scattered settlements. The vallc;y of the Little Sioux river, through its tertil- ity and line groves ot timber that lined its banks and its bluffs, became the homes of many of these ImvPaduta and Sons. 6 pioneers. Isolated families or small settlements were dotted along at various points from its foun- tain at Spirit Lake, to its confluence with the Missouri. Along; the line of these settlement groups in the valley of the Little .Sioux river, was the village of Smithland, located near the break bluffs of the Missouri, and about eighteen miles away from that great inland artery. As the name implies, Smithland settlement was founded by one of the branches of the numerous tamily bearing that name. The homesteaders were located princi- pally on the west branch of the river, and scat- tered for several miles up and down stream. The lands were first staked ofi, and some of the fields turned over by the breaking plow in the spring of 1855, so that by the autumn of 1856, many of the settlers had harvested their second crop. In the spring of 1856, Inkpaduta and his band, who had been alternating camp life on some of the upper branches of the the Little Sioux river, crossed over to the head of the Des Moines, and spent the principal part of the summer months hunting and fishing along that stream. As the autumn days approached and the flocks of geese and ducks that had been nesting among the morasses and sloughs inland, congregated on larger lakes and streams, so, too, these Indians by the law of supply in the pursuit of the hunters' life, followed along in the wake of the fowls. Therefore, as the S**ptember days brought thou- 7 Frontier and Indian Life. sands upon thousands of water fowl to darken the sheenly and placid bayous of the Spirit Lake came down, also, Inkpaduta and his band of red people to feed upon the spread so lavishly set before them by the Giver of all good. Down around the outlet, and ten miles below, where the queer shaped Okaboji protects its for- est reserve, a few hardy and daring white settlers had brought their families with them, — took up claims and built themselves homes. If a feeling of intrusive resentment overspread the counten- ances of these members of the band of Shooting Leaves, they disembled their ieelings by impena- trable masques — and in smiling welcome — put forth their arms in decorious and impressive ges- ture, and clasped the hands of their white brothers with a hearty, good natured grip. About the last days of October, Inkpaduta and hi s band took up their Ime of march frcm the lower Okaboji, and passed along down the valley of the Sioux. In the early days of November, they reached the small settlement of Peterson, above the mouth of Waterman creek, and after spending a few days in an agreeable manner with the settlers thereabout, again trailed along eighteen miles to the new settlement at Cherokee, thence down to the Peary settlement eight miles further along stream. In no case did these Indians misbe- have, but seemed in every way to want to make their presence agreeable to these isolated fron tiersmen an d their families. l]v slow moves Lnktaiiuta AM) Sons, 8 they luiiUed the lou' points unci timbered ravines for elk and deer of which the country then abounded, and put in the stream a few traps which they possessed, for the beaver, mink and otter, whose "sign" were plentiful along the banks and cut bends. By the middle of December Inkpaduta and his band had arrived at the outskirts of the settle- ment at Smithland. Near the house of Farmer Livermore,- three miles above die village proper, the Indians made camp with more than ordinary care, and it was made evident to the members of the Livermore household that these undesirable neighbors had come to stay for some weeks — at least. A few of the Indians formed themselves into a hunting party and scoured the Maple river for elk and returned brincrino- their pame to the permanent camp. A similar trip to the West Fork of the Little Sioux river was made by the red hunters with much success. Inkpaduta, Star- in-Forehead and a few choice spirits, made a trip to the Omahas, and exchanged some tanned elk skins for a little corn and some traders' goods. To their white neighbors about the Smithland neighborhood, and in their intercourse with them, the Indians were neither too fresh or impertinent nor did they become obnoxious by begging. But these San tee outcasts were good hunters and fair trappers, and many of the settlers "put their heads totrether" and concluded that the reds were 9 Frontier and Indian Life. poaching upon forbidden grounds — that the game thereabout ought to be belong to the white people —and that Inkpaduta's band must move on. It was finally concluded among some of the more boisterous that a meeting of the settlers to talk over the situation should be held at the pub- lic stopping place in the village — and the time set would be St. Valentine's day. The members of the settlement were drummed up in all manner of ways — with every variation of stories floating for incentive action — fully thirty white settlers had assembled in Smithland town on that February day. The Smith brothers took the lead and one of them named as captain. The Indians must oro — but what the excuse, and what the course of action? For an excuse one settler said he "belie\'ed" the Indians had stolen about one bushel of corn on cob from his corn crib, while another pioneer 'thinks" they stole some of his hay. Another said he had missed a "critter" some time back, and he "shouldn't wonder if the tarnel red cusses had'nt eat it up." It did not seem to occur to the accuser that through the Indians' ability as hunters, their camp was well supplied with elk and deer mea% while many of his white neighbors were pulling through on -corn straight" ground in coflee mills, through lack of knowledge of the hunter's calling; and that some whice people had been known to steal a little from one another, sometimes, even on die froniier. However, the pronounced judgment of the Smith- Inkpaduta and Sons. io landers was that these Indians were a bad lot. The settlers needed the fur and o^ame on the Sioux river and its tributaries for themselves, and in the frontier vernacular of that day, the Indians would hp.ve to "puk-a-chee." It was further agreed in this council of war of the Smithlandcrs, that they would get together early the day to follow — bring their weapons — pro- ceed in military style up to the reds' camp, make a surround, take away the Indians' guns, and order them to get away as fast as they could ''wade through the crusted snow." At this time the snow was nearly two feet on the level, and is known in Iowa's history as the "hard w^inter." Accordinglv at the time appointed nearly forty well armed men marched up to the Indian camp; made the surround; and under penalty of death to Indians and their families ordered them to give up all guns, riries or pislols in camp. In answer to this request came torih from a tcepe opening, the near!)' sightless and haggard face of Inkpaduta. Through his interpreter. Half Breed Charley, he made a short talk. He declaimed ag^ainst such unwarranted proceedings by his white neighbors. His people or himself had done no wrong to iU^' white folks. He w^as taken by surprise. A surprise at the faithless and heartless request that came from people who boast of magnanimity and pride themselves in their justice to the cruelly wronged. With the deep snow— the cold winter -an ice bound plain; shortage of provisions in the II Frontier and Indian Life. camp, the taking of their *;uns would mean the buriel of their babes — their wives and even the men themselves, in the falling snow. Captain Smith the leader of the Smithland pos see told them to "go to the Omahas." "To go to the Omahas unarmed," the chief replied, "would be going to a speedier death, but none the less a surer one." The Smithlanders were firm. One by one, the Indians' guns were placed in their hands, eleven in all. Another order, and teepes came tumbling- down over the heads of suckling babes, swad- dling tots, and tottering belledames. The march of the last of the red occupants of Liide Sioux Valley to the "land of despair" was begun. As the Indians moved out in their line of travel Inkpaduta loitered tor a moment over the dying embers of his camp hre. He stuck a few short slicks in the ground by the ash heap. It was a meaningless, move to a few loitering SmichlauLlers, but an easy deciphered sign to an absent party of lour reds who, iniaware ot the hostile intentions of their white neiohbors, had q-oug out in the early morning to attend their line of traps, bhev had two guns with them — and the reLention of these riRes would mean much to a\'ert famine in the camp. Ii was the sign of alarm that ihe re tiu'uini^ trappers read in the heap of ashes where the chiefs lodoe had stood. A direction sii>n poinl('d the way lh(*y should go — and an added mark of caution and haste, completed the insu'uc- lions left for hem. I.\K!'.\i)i! TA Ais'D Sons, 12 In the process of disarming, the Indians had noted that four of the guns had been been given to Farmer I Jvermore, and on the first night's camp up stream, after much dehbcration. Half Breed Charley and two companions were sent back to Livermore's tbr a negotiation. Money on an account was due Livermore by the Indians. They owed him five dollars. This would be paid him ii some of their own guns would be returned to them. After a promise th^t they would begone immediately after the exchange, a few gims were given the Indians and they went their way. Laie in the evening ot' the day in which the disarming of Inkpaduta and his band occurred, two s.trange appearing men presented themselves for food and lodging at the Smithland hotel. They listened to the story of the disarming, but no word came from their lips in commendation of this act. In die morning the subject — as uppermost in all minds at the hotel — was resumed. After an interval of marked silence, one of the strangers thus addressed the astonished group of talkers: "You go and bring back those Indians or take their guns to them. If you do not you will have ihe Slain ot innocent l^lood — and plenty of it — upon your hands." With these words the strangers passed out from the house and upon the highway, and never a soul in all the settlement marked their after presence again, or cleared up the mystery of their \isit to .Smithland town. I ^ Frontier and Indian Life. From the 20th of February until the first day of March, 1857, Inkpaduta and his band slowly waded throug^h the packed snow along- the frozen bed of the Litde Sioux river. The events of the night preceding the cheerless rest on the damp and fro- zen o-round, come down to us in borrowed memory from the verbal chronicle of Half Breed Charley. As they passed Cherokee settlement, the weary red trampers gave the first outward sign of inso- lence. At Peterson it developed into cnssedness and audacity, and when they reached the dreary snowbound plain about Lake Okaboji on the yth of March, they had descended still lower and be- came demons and fiends. From the 8di to isdi ot March, ihey destroyed over forty white people about the lakes — young and old, male and female. Four of the most comely of the females were carried into captivity, and but two of these survived the horrors ot the flight with their captors. Our story of Ink- paduta, as herein told, aims only to clear up trom fast disappearing witnesses* the opening scenes that led up to this butchery of th(; lirst western pioneers by Indians of the Sioux nation. Hereupon — the curtain falls. A sur\i\or ot the tragedy has given die details ot the mr.s.-acre — and told her padietic story triiihfuliy and wcll.-j- *David Hawihorne, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. O, Pla- to, Edward Ilawes and Ii-a Waterman. t Mrs. .\l)bie Gardner Sharp. iMsi'ADUTA AND SoNS. 1 4 About the middle of September, 1865, — the writer — after over a year in wandering across the plains of Kansas and Nebraska, and the moun- tainous districts of Colorado and New Mexico, returned to the village of Correctionville, Iowa, located on the banks of the Little Sioux river, and at which point was located Fort White, where as a member of Col. Sawyer's cavalry batallion, I had closed out a term of soldiering by the mus- tering out of the organization, twenty-two months before. The settlements along the river, were compar- atively yet in there infancy, and from Correction- ville to the Spirit Lake the homesteaders were few and far between, and the tributary streams or adjacent prairies were not located upon at all. As a consequence, fur bearing animals were found in considerable numbers thereabout and the market brisk with an upward tendency in fur vab ues. Professional trappers, therefore, were early on the move for choice game preserves — which were governed according to the rules of that craft by the right of possession to limited grounds. "Lime" Conistock, one of the most expert of these trap- pers, made (^arly preparations for a "scoop" of game lerriiory. I accepted a Mattering invitation from Mr. Comstock to accompany him as partner 10 the headwaters of Mill creek, some sixty miles away from our starting point, the creek being 1 :^ l-'koN'rii-.k AM) Indian Lii"i:. represented as teeming with beaver, mink and otter. One bright morning about the 20th of Septem ber, after our preparations were complete, we moved up the river trail. Eight miles from tht; village we made a stop, and became dinner guest of Ed Havves who had a local reputation as a good borderman. and on one occasion some years previous, on the West Eork of the Sioux river, headed a successlul fioht against an In- dian horse stealing party led by three of the sons of old Inkpadtita. The trail after leaving the pioneer's ranch, fol- lowed alono the curved river — here and there passing through cottonwood and oak groves, and with their autumn-tinted leax'es in \ariegated beauty, throuing an apparent halo on everything about them, — a soothing, restful spirit to our dreamy selves as we briskly passed along the en- chanted vale. On entering one of these orchard looking open- ings our team of ponies gave a unexpected aiid sudden snort. A red Indian of commanding ap- pearance, with a melancholly cast of countenance, stood l)y the roadside. We had met before and I knew him. It was Litde Priest, the broken hearted chief of the deported Winne-bagoes. He was wandering along the river with his family and campip.g among the groves, l^'om his direction at greeting — to all appearance, — he. had just walked down from a neiohboring hit-h buttt^ wh(^re he I\K",\i)r)A AM) Sons. i6 could survey the surrountling landscape. From that pinnacle out in th<" far-away blue, he could see the shadowy outlines of his former home on the Blue F^ardi river. From four fintrers of an ex- tended hand he counted the number of enforced removals himself and his pacific tribe had passed froni one reservation to another, in vain attempt of outrunning- or hiding- in virgin lands to escape the clutches of their pale face brothers. Though gi\ ing up their possessions as demanded in rota- tion, governed only by the limited time space given by the advancing hosts of the axe, the shovel and the plow — with a dreamy and vague hope in the equity ot divine justice- that earthly possessions ends with earthly life — "that time rights all thin OS." A few miles further along, we observed a curb ing wreadi of smoke ascending from a heavy clump of willovv^s in a lowland bend of the stream. Comstock touk his gun to reconnoiter leaving the wriier with the team at rest. In about half an hour, partner returned. The smoke, he said, came from the camp fire of Hawthorne and Jack- son two of northern Iowa's most noted trappers, Comstock further remarked that the fur catchers had "strung i)ut a line" and would put in the fall mondis at that place. They had just returned from a "sign up" on Mill creek but were better pleased with the game prospects on the main -Stream. \j Frontier AM) Indian Liff,. In coinnuinicating this information, Comstock left out a very important as well as interesting item that had befallen Hawthorne and Jackson. Just ihe evening before these two trappers had reached the camp where we had found them, after a hard drive of thirty miles or more — twenty miles of which they had been followed on the run, helter skelter, up hill and down dale, by six dismounted Indi- ans, — Inkpadiita's hostile Santees. This, two, from the very place we were then going — the headwaters of Mill creek. But all of this I learned long afterward As we resumed our journey and lined out for the dividing ridges, I could not but notice the ex- treme solicitude of my partner, and the watchful- ness he exhibited at every suspicious looking object or "scare stone" ahead of us as we jolted along, and from these circumstances partially guessed that that he had not told all the news he had learned from the two trappers. We reached the first grove up Mill creek about sundown and went into camp. Rarly the next morning we hitched up and drove to the sec- ond fork of the stream where we made a halt and proceeded to sign up the vicinity. Comstock took his gun and traps, while as novice, I proceeded to make camp. In gazing around, I observed by the bending of the tall grass near the creek bed, the marks left I)y wagon wheels, and of horses feet, and where they had executed a semicircle turn. 1 had also noticed, while watering the ponies at a Inkpaduta and Sons. i8 beaver dam near by, that several moccasin tracks in the soft mud and all leading one way, viz: — the direction the wagon had evidently taken. When Comstock returned, I informed him of my discovery. He thought it was the tracks of the two trappers, "signing up." But when reminded that professionals ot this vocation use high top boots not moccasins in signing up beaver streams, he then suoo;ested that the tracks could have been made by a party ot elk hunters up from the fort at Cherokee. But the mystery was not cleared up to the scribe's satisfaction until several months had passed by. In May, i'~66, the writer again found himself trapping for choice fur bearers on Mill creek. By a twirl of fortune, Hawthorne and Jackson were my camp partners. The story of the chase by the hostile Santees the previous autumn was told me for the first time and the "jump up" occurred at the beav'M- dam already described. As the rapidly changing season commenced to "spot" the furs, my companions pulled out home- ward, leaving me to continue the "clean up" a few days longer. One morning wdiile looking after the trails, with some thought of raising them, I noticed asi odd dressed individual rounding a bluff at mouth of a deep ravine. Being well armed, and seeing the stranger had also a gun, and with- out noting an)-ihing except a trail he seemed to le follovunij, 1 called his attention to my pres- 19 P'kontier AKi) Indian Liik. ence by a "hello." On nearing the man, I dis- covered that he was a half breed Indian. After greeting, he said in fair English: "Did you see some Indians pass here this morn- ing?" "No," I answered. "You were in luck they didn't see you!" "Why so?" "Because Inkpaduta's boys don't often let a chance like that slip." "Inkpaduta's boys." I repeated, mechanically. "Yes — Inkpaduta's sons!" Inkpaduta's sons! I well remember the sudden awakening from a stupid frame of mind when the half breed made mention of those once dreaded names. Trom the bloody trail at Spirit Lake — that reddened the March snows of 1857 — succeeded by the devasta- tion of the western border of Minnesota in 1862. and the several years ot terror following, which beset the pioneers and their families, the names of these outlaws were ever uppermost in the minds ot dwellers of Iowa's northwestern border, especially when sunmier or autumn davs broug^ht that inse- curity which would favor a predatory excursion from arj unforgiving, heartless and homeless foe. In the ten years that followed the massacre at Spirit Lake, Inkpaduta's band scoured the prair- ies with a price upon their heads. Theirs, too, was a vengeance unsatisfied. Ihe outbreak of ihr f^<^o' Gen. (teorge A. Custer. [From a Photograph, 1H74.J Inkpaduta and Sons, 20 Sioux bands at Redwood and Yellow Medicine creeks, gave cover to these marauders to harass settlers of Little Sioux valley and the country ad- jacent, and no lone camper or traveler was safe in un frequent places, from a sudden raid of some of these red outlaws or were the farmer's stables or horse pastures ever secure from their midnight raids. Since General Harmar's command went down to defeat on the Wabash river, in October, 1 790, or General St, Clair's five hundred veterans laid down their lives to the victorious hosts of the Little Turtle confederacy the year succeeding — no victory was so passing complete to the red Indians as was the destrucdon of Custer's command by the Sioux and Cheyennes on the Little Big Horn, river, June 25th, 1876. \''ariou5 chroniclers have ascribed General Cus- ter's death, as the cuhninating episode in this later day fi.^ht, and to clothe the tragedy in the habiliments of the picturesque, have charged his death to die personal prowess oi' Rain-in-the-Face, or the Chief Priest Sitdng Bull. It has long since been proved by the Sioux war- riors themselves tiiat Rain-iii-the-Face, was not on the field of battle that day but miles away in charge of the pony herd. About Sitting Bull's hand in the affair he had expressed himself again thrice over as interpreted from the Sioux in the followino words.: 21 P^KONTIER AND IndIAN Lll'E. "They say to you I murdered Custer. I say to you it is a lie. I am not a war chief. I was not fighting in the battle that day. His eyes were blinded that he could not see. He was a fool and rode to his death. He made the fight — not I. Who ever tells you I killed Custer is a liar." Sitting Bull's defense was but justice to himself. He was the hunted — not the hunter. General Custer rode down on the Indian village on Little Big Horn river, with a ciphered scroll floating high above his feathery-winged guidons. It has bla- zoned over many fields of mortal combat between armies of angry men in die deaa past, and will again appear; — "fiiey rH.\T jakk iiiE sword SHALE PERKSH WITH THE SWORD," and Custer's sword was his life. xA.ny intelligent Yanktonay, Santee. Minnecunju, Brule, Blackfoot or other Sioux warriors who par- ticipated in the fight against the Seventh Cavalry Battalions on the 25th day of June, 1876, will tell you it was difficult to tell just whn killed Cieneral Custer. They believe he was the last to fall among the group with whom he was found; that the last leaden messengers bearin®' swift death hurled upon this same group of falling and dying sol- diers, — were belched tbrth from Winchesters held in the hands of Inkpaduta's sons. Sitting Bull, The Noted Siorx Ciiiee .anj) .AIkdici.ve Ma: A FATED WAR PARTY. WHEN Lewis and Clark, and party of explor- ers ascended the Missouri river in 1804, they encamped for a few days near where the city of Council Bluffs, now stands. While at this en- campment they diligently inquired of the names of the neighboring- Indian nations or tribes, and of their numbers, condition and customs, more espe- cially those wild ones west of the Missouri, and bordering along the river Platte. Their descrip- tion and observations of many of these rovers, of even that comparatively late day, show that in the past as at present, extermination or absorbtion of the Amc^rican aboriginal nations goes gradually on. Aniong other tribes described in Lewis and Clark's Journal, was the Staitans or Flyers, a band at the time numbering not more tlian one hundred men. A i'ew years after that date even these were exterminated, but just what tribe became execu- tioners has never Ijeen clearly established, though iheir rubbing out without much doubt happened along the banks of Lodge Pole creek, a small stream putting into the Platte river, near the forks. Here a large number of human bones were found some little time after the known disappearance of the Flyers from off tht- face of the plains. -D Frontier and Indian Life. Theses Staitaiis wvsc. the; most warlike and fero- cious of all the American Indians of whom we ha\'c any record. They were* the best mounted as well as the best horseman of th(' plains, and moved with the buffalo in their mig^rations ; laying no claim to territory where buffalo were not found and all country within the immediate range of the movdng herds. . Ihey were in truth, the: red Ish- maelites of the interior American wilderness. — Their hands were against every peojjle not of their ow^n, and every tribe on the range regarded the defiant Staitans as an uncompromising and in- veterate foe. The Staitan Indian never yielded in battle To meet an enemy was to fight him, to conc^uer him, or to die. Ihey never spared an enemy on ac- count of age or sex. Their women rode in the ranks at every battle, and fought as her mate fought and was as merciless and unsparing as he. To a people whose chosen virtues are courage and endurance, these bold Staitans were at once the fear and the wonder. Before their extermina- tion even, certain societies or w-ar bands within the government of several of the Indian tribes of the west organized in partial imitation of the fighting codes of these Flyers ot the open pLains. lo have the unwavering courage of a Staitan was the loft- iest ambition a warrior could aspire to, and to be likened unto one, the highest complimcnu his can- ity could reach out for. A Fated Wak Party. 26 Aroum) and about the country where the Riviere Du Lac empties its waters into the Mouse river, there formerly resided and claimed the soil, the "Band of Canoes" one of the three bands of the South Assinaboine. This Band of Canoes, while having nomadic habits in summer days, usually passed the greater part of the winter season in some timbered belt along this river of the lakes. Here the pickeral and other fish swim up from out of Lake Winnepeg in vast shoals, and by cut- ting holes through the ice a plentiful supply could be obtained by them, and with the herds of deer, antelope and buffalo that formerly roamed there, a food supply of unceasing plenty was the happy fortunes of these Band of Canoes. While these Indians were not particularly of a warlike nature, yet like most tribes, they kept a few war parties occasionally out on the skirmish line. To the north they had a sometime enemy in the Cree, while to the south they occasionally ex- changed words and war raids with the Gros Ven- tre.s and the Mandans Like some of the tribes on the plains south of them, this Band of Canoes had exclusive groups or "clubs" with separate totems for adoration en' worship. I\ midwinter, 1S22, Tall Bull, a Band of Canoe war chiei, who with his followers had chosen the valorous Staitans as the objects of imitation, left his comfortable quarters on the Mouse river, at the head of twent)'-two braves, and travelled south- 27 FroMIKR AM) L\J)IA_N LlFK. west over the high dividing ridges between that stream and the headwaters of the Upper or Little Knife river. While here floundering through the snow, one of th(t warriors accidentl)' broke his scalping knife. Now, the breaking ot a knite blade is as much of a sign of ill-omen, and impending disaster to the wild Indian as was the breaking of a sword blade or a lance point to the sturdy knight errant in the days of the Cid, Aben Hassen or El Chico, in the Gothic and Moorish contests of mountainous Spain. What was to be done ? Fhe unchang"eable oath of a Staitan was never turn to the rioht or left on a war raid. Never turn back without hrst striking- the enemy, and never call a halt while the prospect was almost sure for meeting them in the direct line of their pathway. A parry was attempted with Fate. The un- lucky knife breaker was sent home in disgrace, and facing a blinding snow storm, the balance con- tinued forward. That winter is on record as one of the coldest ever experienced in the Upper Missouri country, so say the oldest of its native rt?d inhabitants. During one ot the worst ot the many January storms thereat recorded, the buflalo herds left the high prairie, and sought shelter among the broken hills along the rivt;r, and ext-n crowded upon die bottom lands and among the timbered Lends. In this way thc-y l;ecame an t'asy prey to Indian hunt- A Fated War Party. 28 ers and were slaughtered unmercifully by them. Near the Counted Woods a few miles below Lake Mandan. a large hunting party of Gros Ven- tres and Mandans, while engaged in making a sur- round for killing the helpless brutes, saw strange objects coming down from the high prairies. They were obscured from view at times by drifting snow but on nearer approach proved to be Indians. They were straggling along on foot and seemed bewildered and lost. They were coming too, like the animals, for the shelter of the bottom lands. They dragged along in apparent helplessness, through the snow; their arms hanging stiffly by their sides. The intense cold, seemingly made them oblivious to everything around them. In the meantime the Mandan and Gros Ventre hunters had suspended the buffalo chase and were preparing to surround the intrusive newcomers whom on approaching, had refused to signal the sign of the friend. Seeing escape impossible, even if desired, and their benumbed and helpless condition a bar to resistance ii they would, the apparent leader of the strangers, spoke out in clear tones in the As- siniboine coiigue : "Follow me!" and pushed on forward. They walked ouc upon die frozen ice of the Missouri, pressed on all sides by their bantering and taunting foes, who though many times their numbers, had as yet faikid to close upon their silent, half famished and half-frozen prey. 29 Frontier and Indian Life. In their front was an air hole throug^h the ice, that owing- to the swift circling current of the water, had withstood the severest tests of the cold and remained open. With a defiant tread the hunted leader of the strangers walked up and into the circling waters, and without a struggle disappeared. In turn, and in single file — like the buftalo to his drink, — each followed his chieftain's fatal tracks, and in quick succession made the plunge that took them for- ever from the reach of their baffled and surprised enemies. Thus perished Tall Bull and all of his fated war party of the South Assinaboine Band of Can- oes and last of the imitators of the Staitan or Ply- ing Indians. To THE Land of Deseret. BUMMSR DAN. A FEW miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, on the river road, there nestles on a plain near a low sloping bluff, the pretty little hamlet of Flor- ence. It had been a business town ot some fame before the former city was thought of. It was here on the flats surrounding the village that many hundreds of the Latter Day Saints or Mormons rested and recruited after their expulsion from their temple at Nauvoo, by Illinois milida in 1846, before making final ready for their long journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky range to their future homes in the "Land of Deseret." During the early days of the construction of the Union Facilic railroad, the ordinary quiet of the little village was sometimes rudely disturbed by passing gangs of raftsmen and tie cutters in the railroads employ, who were in permanent cam.p in the forests around the neighboring village of Rockport. On one occasion during the early summer of 1866, the writer belated, had occasion to put up one evening at die jniblic slopping place in the village. Sonu'linie during the night I was awak- ened by loud cries and confused sounds coming from the direction of a camp of lumberman near 31 Frontier and Indian Life. by who had also occasion to pass the night at Florence. By the light of the new moon's pale and unsteady beams, a crowd of men were seen beating and kicking by turns, an apparently friendless man lying upon the ground in the centre of the maddened throng. He was altern- ately groaning in pain or shrieking with fright and calling aloud for mercy. The injured man was finally rescued by the village constable and taken out of harm's way. He had been accused of steal- ing a blanket from one of the party to cover his almost naked body from the crisp night air. He was moneyless and friendless — a conjunction of circumstances by no means unusual to a wander- ing tramp on the public highway. The whole party came before the town justice next morning, and a curiosity born of the spectral scene of the previous night prompted my atten- dance. In the disfigured and swollen-faced form setting in the prisoner's dock before me, I was surprised to see the familiar features of Bummer Dan whom I had often seen on the streets of Denver and other Rocky Mountain towns. The examination proved my surmise correc;. and on the justice being informed who his prisoner was, he discharged him with the injunction to move on his way. Bummer Dan ! What strange thoughts that homely name conjures up in memory's train ! Oh, weary and unfortunate wanderer, how many a BuMMEk Dan. * 32 kick — how man)- a cuff put upon you — your l^lotched countenance and scarred body bear wit- ness ! What curs(;s have been heaped after you and around you old man, as you trudged slowly along life's pathway — a route to you ever dark and ever dreary ! Oh, Goddess Fortuna what pranks ! Are the Fates ever proclaiming : "What is to be, will be ? " In the year 1858, gold was disqoyel-ed in paying (pianlities near Pike's Peak, Colorado, and from ,the far east and south, came swarms of adventur- ers to meet on common ground within the shad- ows of that great snow capped dome, the bronzed gold hunters from California and other Pacific ranges. From these defiles of the mountains of Colo- rado, roving parties branched out and followed the windings of the deep canons or surmounted the barriers of the rocky walls, from the fiery summits of Popocateptl on the .south, to the frozen regions of the arctic. Onti of these determined and reckless prospect- ing parties, after hardships that tested their pow- ers of endurance to the uttermost tension, found themselves inthe early summer of 1862, explor- ing the country about the headwaters of the Mis- souri and Yellowstone rivers, when a lucky find placed them in possession of mines near the fa- mous V'irginia gulch, one of the solid stones in Montana's after prosperity. ^^ Froniikk AM) Indian Like. With this party of prospectors was a vigorous, able bodied and generous hearted Irishman, who had been the Hfe of his party during its sorest trials. He was known by name as Daniel McMa- hon, and at their first streaks of success he staked down a good claim which proved a veritable home- stake, as he soon after found a ready purchaser who allowed him therefor, eighty thousand dollars in good honest gold. "Now, Daniel McMahon," some invisible spirit seemed to whisper softly to him in his moments of ease and quiet, "your fortune has came to you at last and your weary labors are over. Away, then. over the great ocean to the green Island of your childhood. Your old father and your mother there are ever praying and hoping for the return of their wandering son. They are old and careworn now. and the sight of your ruddy face and manly form would give them good cheer. And there is another over there, who has almost counted the hours and days in the long dreary years of your absence: but whose heart is ever true to you— ever lingers in realms of fadeless hope— as on that day you gave her your last farewell. Away, Daniel McMahon. away. A successful mining camp is generally a noisy one. Miners coming in, and miners going out. like an active swarm of bees in a season ot flow- ers. This mining camp near Virginia gulch was no exception. BuM.viEk Dan. 34 After the sale of his mine, Uaniel McMahon bustled around among his comrades and friends, until he had provided himself with a traveling out- fit to hie himself below Boseman's ferry, where he hoped to overtake a party of miners encamped there, and who were preparing to return by flat- boat down the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, on their passage to the States. Two other miners — like himself being home- ward bound, would accompany him on his pro- posed trip. After a leave taking and many "wish * you a safe journey" from their friends at Virginia, the three peacefully and quietly wended their way down the valley and out of the sight of the camps. A day later, and still another party left the gulch for the same destination, and on the same trail. — • At a lonely-looking point on the mountains below Boseman's, this last party came upon a man lying near the roadway, unconscious and breathing in labored moans. Upon examination, the wounded man proved to be McMahon. He had evidently been robbed by his two late companions of all his wealth, and with his head battered out of shape by bludgeon left for dead, and better — far better for hiin — that death had spread around him its dark mantle and closed the egress of his earthly future. But the Fates were not done with him yet.-— There he lay — )'esterday the wealthy and popular miner ; to-day, uncounscious, — a blank ; and to- morrow — Bummer Dan. THK 3CALPLSSS WARRIOR AND DAUGHTER. THERE is an old custom amont^ the wild trih(>s of the northern plains, that when a warrior is struck down in battle by the enemy, scalped and yet survive, he must never allow his kindred or members of his tribe see his face agam. A coward in battle may lose cast for a time, his seat in the council house may become vacant (^r be filled by another — his painted face and form no lontJ^er seen at the war dance — or in extreme cases he may be forced to don a woman's drt;ss ; but with these exceptions his home life goes smoothly and joyfully on. But a warrior though brave as an Achilles or as reckless as an Ajax in bloody combat, who falls in the front of the fighting line and his reeking for- lock torn from his head in the tumult, and yet arise from the ground a living man, — he must for- ever wander, like the coyote or the wolf, among fastnesses of the mountain defiles or the hiding places of the desert, to shun and be shunned by the humans of the earth. Woe, woe then, to the scalpless brave. One summer's day about the year 1845, — so the Aricarees say — an outpost of six of thai tribe while on duty near their village at old b'ort Clark, were attacked by a war party of northern .Sioux, and The ScALi'LESs Warrior and Daughter. 36 most of the guards were struck down, scalped and mutilated. The surviving members of the band fled to their home, spread the alarm, and in company of a wailing concourse of friends returned to care for the dead. Their astonishment was great on coming to the ground where they had witnessed the killing, scalp- fng and mutilation of a comrade, nothing but clots of^'blood, and parts of his hands and leet lying dismembered there. The body proper could not be found. As the place was dangerous from prowling bands of their enemies, the Aricaree mourners, afier making such disposition of the dead as their custom allowed, hastened back to the main village and told their story. The medicine men when appealed to for answer, gave only a gloomy shake of the head. It was about three years after the events here related, that a camp of South Assinaboines came to the Mandan, Gros Ventres and Aricaree villages on a mission of peace. They complained that .some of their people were being mysteriously mur- dered in unlooked for places ; that no sign of an enemy could be seen, save a track that seemed of neither man or beast. The Aricarees, now, also called to mind that strange and unaccountable tracks had been seen around their own village, which invarably led out upon the open plain. These tracks were seen ^^-^ Fkontikr AM) Indian Likk. upon the early morning dew and disappeared with the rising sun. All of these mysteries were in a manner ex- plained sometime later by an adventurous hunting party of Aricarees, who in beating up the game in one of the most inaccessible districts in the Little Missouri bad lands, came unexpectedly upon an opening to a strange looking den, in which were scattered about the bones of horses, elk, deer, antelope and wolves in great heaps, as well as some bones that seemed of the human kind. And what would seem more strange to the now terrified discoverers, was the strange imprints on the soft gumbo soil that seemed very like those that they had seen around their own village. The party concluded that they were at the cave home of some scalpless warrior, and with sudden fear taking possession of them, they hastily lied to their homes to relate a wondrous story. As time passed the mysterious tracks around the Aricaree village continued. They were ofdmes traced within the inclosure, even up to the lodge of the widow of the slain picket, Vvhose body had so unaccountably disappeared at the outpost near b'ort Clark, many yt-ars before. 'Ihis woman had remained unmarri(;d, since that disastrous day when her husband passed into the gauzy and indehnile by that unsatisfying and speculative word, — missing. She had stayed at the home of her parents, caring tor her child, ihe daui'-liLer of the uiifortuiiai«' brave. Thk ScAi.i'LKss Warrior and Dauchter. 38 One night, this child, then nearly seven years of age, was fretting and crying as other children are wont to do, when the impatient mother cried out churlishly, — as interpreted from her native tongue : "i will throw you out of the door for your bug- gaboo father to catch !" An expressive significa- tion from the hauntt-d woman. The little girl not heeding, she was fiung out of the doorway by the irate mother, and after a shrill and piercing shriek, all became silent in the dark- ness, save the usual baying of dogs, or the low sounds of muffled drums in adjoining lodges. The mother, after her Hash of anger was over, called aloud to her child to come inside, but neither child nor answer came to her summons. She then went outside calling aloud through the darkness; and as before, no answering voice. Becoming now thoroughly aroused the woman went from one lodge to another, making eager in- cpiiries about the whereabouts of her daughter, but was uniformly answered by a shake of the head and the negative word "cok-kee." She searched high and low. near and far, but scearched in vain. Days passed, months pas.sed. and years went slowly on. but the thoroughly repentant mother never saw her dear child again. liiK Cree Indians of Lake Winnepeg, Province of Manitoba, during years of scarcity, in days past. 39 Frontier and Indian Life. went hunting the buffalo in the country of the South Assinaboines, on or about the headwaters of Mouse river. In one of these wandering jour- neys by a band of this tribe about the year 1855, they became snow bound on Riviere Du Lac, a tributary stream of the Mouse. On a bitter cold and stormy day when snow was drifLing in wild Hurries about the sheltered camp, two mounted persons suddenly appeared within the line, that the custom of these wild red plainsmen, binds inmates to a hospitable recep- tion of strangers or self-invited guests, coming from what tribe they may. One of these visitors seemed a huge wolf mounted on horseback. The figure was encased from head to heel in the shagg)' coat of the v\ hite buffalo wolf; the fiercest animal of its kind on the plains. The face of this fright had a wolfs mask, and ears stood erect, as from a wolf's head. The other figure was that of an Indian maid of matchless beauty both in face and form. She was wrapped in a mantle of the prime silk otter, with a whitened frock from the tanned skins of the ante- lope, moccasins of a winter pattern from the hide of the buffalo; and drawn around her loosely a tme lig- ured robe; and wiih a gaudy head dress com- pleted her artistic wardrobe. Her fiery and gail)' comparisoned steed chafed discontentedly with his taut rawhide bit. ' Such were the strangers that greeted the wondering Crees. "I am a child of the Aricarees !" said the maid The ScALri.Ess Warrior and Daughter. 40 as she quickly disPxiOLinlcd and archly extended a hand to the advancing Cree chief. "Yes," replied the red gallant, "none but the Aricaree have such handsome women." Need the reader be told that these visitors in the Cree camp, were none other than the cave dweller of the Little Missouri bad lands, and his daughter — Lhe missing child of the Aricaree village. For several long and lonesome years, they had lived on the trackless plain or among the dreary vvasLes of the bad lands. How the man existed in the earlier and hermit part of his career, without other aid than the merest stumps of feet and hands, or how he had bandaged and stopped the blood How without assistance, is one of those unraveled mysteries of wilderness life, that we will pass on to the debatalle and conjectural. The father and daughter received a warm wel- come — v.ere feasted and cared for as the primitive Indian always do to their hungry and tired stranger guests. ihe girl's gayety and beauty soon won her admirers among the susceptible youths, and later on a husband from among the hunters of the tribe, v.hile the Scalpless Warrior, always dressed in his frighlfiil wolf mask, remained around among these hospitable people until the summer days came around again, when one morning the early dew marked a trail on the outward way, and never one amono- die Cree hosts have seen its re- turn — for the strange wolf-man had disappeared forever. 41 Frontier and Indian Life. Ocean Man was a petty Cree chief. He was one of the few Indians of that tribe of the far in- terior who had ever gazed upon the waters of the wide ocean. From some high point where the waters of Hudson's Bay pour out into the mighty deep, he had beheld the Atlantic's vast expanse, and its foamy billows dash themselves on the dripping rocks about him. Hence his name. In September, 1882, this chief, with eight men and their several families of woman and children, left their homes on the Saskatchewan river, south- ward for the plains of North Dakota, to hunt the last band of wild buffalo that was seen or ever will be seen along;- the grass covered vales of the Riviere du Lac. The little party came in forced marches to the plains around White Buffalo lake, without scarcely a halt other than the reo-ular nicrht rests. But now at this place so near their journey's end, and with- in good range of game, they decided to take a few days of ease. At sundown on the day after encamping, while the hunters were gathering in their ponies for the the night, some ot them espied objects 'm the dis- tance, hut owing to the heated and disturbed at- mosphere, seemed like a mass ol buffalo, and a shout of joy passed from one another at the sight, for now feasts of plenty would reign the hour. — Bui, see, the\' come closer now ! How sudden the transitions ot thought ! How sirangelv the heart beats now to these poor people, who saw Thk ScAi.i'i.Kss Warrior and Daughter. 42 the g-limmer of bright sunshine fade, and death's terrible pall throwing' out its inky shades around them. The moving objects are plainly discerned now I Not buffalo, but a large body of horsemen moving down on them with the swiftness of the wind. Now, Cree husbands and fathers be firm ! — Nerve your hearts for duty and for danger as never before been tried. Around you and about you are your all. Poor, frightened Cree mothers and helpless little ones, go hide yourselves quick, and hide yourselves well. The yelling demons bearing down upon you. are a war party of Gros Ventres, Mandans and x\ricarees — they have come to avenge a fallen comrade, and if victorious will kill you all. Swift circling horsemen — deafening yells and rattling reports from their Winchester rifles — desultory replies coming from muzzle loaders in the hands of the terrified Crees from behind their cart beds, feeble from the first but soon ceasing altogether, and then the excited horsemen dis- mount to hack up the wounded and living; muti- late and scalp the dead. Among the victims was a dying woman, with two dead children clasped tightly to her breast. Her last mute appeal — the sign of the Aricaree, had been unheeded or unanswered, and with the last gas[) of tills dying mother — by war's strange and tragic twists — the blood line of the Scalpless Warrior was ended. THE GREAT PLAINS IN 1364 AND 1863. FOR many years previous to the summer o 1864, the wild Indian inhabitants of the grea central plains, had — barring some sporadic ex ceptions — refrained from committing any seriou; depredations upon their white neighbors of th( eastern frontier or the emigrants and freighter.' passing through their territory along the three great highways between the Missouri river anc the Rocky mountains. This, too, with a knowlegc that in the three preceding years, a bloody anc devastating war was raging between the States The outbreak of the Santee Sioux in Minne sota, in 1862, had made no visible impression foi the worse on the several Indian nations, not ever to the southwestern bands of the Sioux whc roamed along the Big Horn, Niobrara and Platte river country. As late as the latter part of July, 1864, while on the overland journey referred to in the open ing sketch, large bands of the Oi^allalla and uppei Brule Sioux, and some Cjheyennes were camping quietly along the Platte river trail, between PTe- mont's Orchard and O'rallons Bluffs, while some of their chiefs were away holding conferences with Colorado's governor and some miiiiary olhcers at Denver, endeavoring to allay the threatened war cloud caused by a difficulty between some emi- The Great Peains tn 1864 ani> 1865. 44 orants in the early spring in which the mihtary al- so look a share. In the fight that followed the soldiers were repulsed with a loss of several killed and wounded. The Cheyennes lost their leader and some others. In the last week in July a raid was made by a small land of Indians along the Little Blue river in southeastern Nebraska. Several settlers were killed and two women carried into captivity. The raiders were Cheyennes. Near about the same time and probably by the same war party, an em- igrant party consisting of eleven persons were killed seven miles west of Fort Kearney at the Plumb creek crossing on the Platte river trail. — An attack was made on the overland stage at O' Fallon's Bluffs and some depredations were committed on the stock of freighters along the two overland trails on the Arkansas and Smoky Hill routes. Basetts division of Majors' train, — to which the writer was assigned — moved along slowly, and all were governed by a discipline of military exact- ness ; placing out trusty night guards at each camping place to avoid surprise and loss of stock by the irresponsible stagglers and outlaws from Indian camps. At Fremont's Orchard, we passed through a large camp of Sioux and Cheyennes. Here, at his best, the untamed North American Indian could be seen. He appeared the haughty savage with a dignified reserve, and acted to a finish its portrayal. He passed our questioning 45 iMvOXfli'-.k AM' Imi.-.X LlFK. with unmoved silence and our proffered taniiliarity with scorn. While trailing through the sands over O' Fallon's Bluffs, we came upon the body of a man just killed. He v/as dressed in an Indiandike costume and other than the loss of his scalp, and several arrows shot in his breast, suffered no mutilation. At the American ranch we remained encamped two days, and hear learned from this undaunted ranchman of the murder of the Hunga'e family at ihe Beaver creek cut-off, and two days later passed their four newly dug graves. We reached Denver about the middle of August and thence passed up Cherry creek for the Arkan- sas. The valley along the creek was deserted by its inhabitants, and catde herds badly scattered. A man and boy had been found murdered, appar- ently by Indians. This was about ihe-.isum total of casualties when a proclamation from- the Gov- ernor of Colorado was received at die principal Indian camps within the boundaries of that Ter- ritory. The proclamation was dated June icth. The Governor ordered all friendly disposed In- dians within the Territorial limjt.s.tq repair forth- with to the military post of Fort d:-aramie on the north, or to Fort Lyons on the south. This order would affect the Ogallalla Sioux, and a part of norlhern' Cheyennes and^ .Arapahoes on the north, while those affected on the southe-rn border would be the. lov/er bands of the Cheyennes, Arapahoes and the Kiowas. The mountain Uies were considered friendly and were not included in the proclamation. Thf. Great Plains in 1864 and 1865. 46 The Cheyenne Indians belong to the great Al- gonquin family, and when first known, to the whi es lived on the Sheyenne river, a branch of the Red Red River of the North. They are termed in Indian sign language "Cut Wrists" from that form of mutilation which they practice on their dead enemies. They are also sometimes called ihe Dog Eaters from their known fondness for the fiesh'df !his animal, which they serve up at all cer- t rnon:al feasts. On account of incessant wars with .'"an ee Sioux, As-nnaboines and Crees, the Chey- ennes moved south by what is now known as the ■ it'le Cheyenne riyer where they encamped for a fevv' years, in 1804, when Lewis and Clark ascend- ed die Missouri, they • were living on the Big Cheyenne, near the Black Hills. In 1832 George Ca'lin found them in about the same place; though hal; traveler speaks of them as sending war parties, on hos'dle foreys as far south as the Mexican bor- der-. While in the Black Hills they were at V, ar against various Sioux bands, and also the • Mandans, and .sometimes against the Aricarees. About these limes owing to the aggessiveness of the Crows north of them, the Cheyennes formed alliance with the Ara.pahoes, an offshoot of the Caddoes of the Texas plains. These Arapahoes were old re.sidents of the North Platte country, and t"Wo or thr(^e generations had passed since they :;eparated from .he parent stock on Brazos river. After the union of the Cheyenne and Arapa- hoe tribe they continued their depredations, to 47 l^^ko.x i-ii.R AM) Indian Likk. some extent, ag^ainst the settlements of New Mex- ico; and some trouble growing; out of these plundering expeditions in their own camps, a general rumpus took place. A part of the Chey- ennes and a part of the Arapahoes moving south- ward and thencforward became know n as the south- ern bands. They occupied the country between the South Platte and the Arkansas rivers. Those who remained north continued to occupy the coun- try between the Platte river forks and along the mountain foothills. In 1851, the government made a general treaty with these tribes who as mutual sharers of the country claimed common ground for both tribal divisions, all lands between Fort Laramie on the north, to the old Santa Pee cross- ing- of the Arkansas river, on the south. The discovery of gold around Pike's Peak in 1858. and the occupation of the country by a large number of prospecters and adventurers made it necessary for the Government to again make a treaty with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Ac- cordingly in May, 1861, a conference was held at Fort Wise by a commission appointed for the pur- pose and some of the principal chiefs of these two tribes in which they aggreed to surren- der certain parts of their territory along the foot- hills and and with a vague wording of the articles permission was granted by the Indians for the building of roads through any part of their lands. When the tt^ms of the treaty was made known to the Indians as a body they vigoroL.*^ly protested The Great Plains tn 1864 and 1865. 48 and the chiefs making- the treaty were terribly scored and ordered to undo the work that their ig- norance had done, especially as to the making of numerous roads through their country. Such were the grievences of the Cheyennes, when Governor Evens' proclamation reached their main camps. The principal part of the Chey- ennes were for obeying without question, though a turbulent minority led by some ambitious young men were for ignoring or defying the Governor's order. Notwithstanding numerous messengers and messages passed between the Governor and the Indians it was noL until September that a con- ferance could be arrang-ed, which was held in Den- ver, between the Governor and Col. Chivington the distric- comnn. ider 0.1 the one side, and some of the principal Cheyenne and Arapahoe chiefs on the other. The two leading chiefs of the Cheyennes were two brothers White Antelope and Black Kettle, both brainy and far-seeing men, who had talked down the turbulent and restless spirits among their own people, and were earnestly desirous of warding off certain ruin and destruction of their trib(; by truce with the Government. The Indians had been, moving too slow to suit the Governor, and he was loth to give audience. He reproached the chiefs for their tardiness in complying with the terms of his proclamation, and plainly told them he now doubted his ability to protect them from the soldiers. The following was a part of 49 Froxiter AM) Indian Lire. the conversation between the Governor, Colonel Chivington, and the Indians at this council relatint^ to "first blood" — the beginning- of the war : Gov. Evans. — "Who took the stock from Fre- mont's Orchard and had the first fight with the sol- diers this spring north of there." White Antelope. — "Before answering this (|ues- tion I would like to know that this was the l)0- ginning of the war and I would like to know what it was for. A soldier fired first." Gov. E. "The Indians had stolen about 40 horses; the soldiers went to recover them and the Indians fired o volley into their ranks." White Antelope. "That is all a mistake; they were coming down the Bijou Basin and found ono horse and one mule. They returned one horse be- fore they got to Gerry's, to a man, then went to the ranch expecting to turn the other over to some one there. Then they heard that the soldiers and In- dians were fighting some where down Platte river, then they took fright and fled." Gov. E. "Who were the Indians that had the fight?" White Antelope. "They were headed by Fool Badger's son, a young man, one of the greatest of the Cheyenne warriors; who was wounded, though still alive, will die." The conned lasted several hours and at its con- clusion Black Kettle and White Antelope agreed to bring m their respective camps under the pro- tection of Fort Lyon, and done so. They w^ere also accompanied by Left Hand and his band of Arapahoes. On the 20th of November our train re-crossed The Great Plains tn 1864 and 1865. 50 the Arkansas at Pueblo, having on our return from Port Union, New Mexico, loaded with corn at Hicklin's on the Greenhorn, for Denver, and consequently moved slowly. On the 21st, while rolling- along the P^ountain Butelle, we were overtaken by a snow storm and at the Garden of the Gods, near the present site of Colorado Springs, we made camp for several days. About the I St of December, while preparing to move for- ward we were overtaken by some of the 3rd Col- orado regiment and from them we learned the per- ticulars of one of the most atrocious acts ever committed by men wearing the uniform of the United States Army, viz: the annihilation of White Antelope and his band of Cheyennes after having obeyed Governor Evans proclamation and placed themselves under protection of the military au- thorities at Fort Lyons. The soldiers account given at that time and afterward corroberated by their companions in arms, and whose statements have never been changed materially, in the light of facts of subsequent history. About the middle of November, Col. John M. Chivington, an ex-minister of the Gospel then commanding the district of Colorado, was mass- ing and outfiting a body of soldiers for a purpose that he kept to himself, though outwardly he was tacitly following the line of orders issued by Gen. Curtis the department commaner. The camp of rendesvous was on Bijou Basin, southeast or Den- ., I P""R()N'riF,u AMI Indian Like. ver. The command as massed consisted ot the 1st and 3rd regiments of Colorado cavah-y, a sec- tion of artillery and transportation wagons. The whole command numbered near one thousand men. The ist regiment were three years men, and had already seen considerable service under its colonel, Chivington, in New Mexico, against Sibley and his Texas rangers. The 3rd regiment a nondescript crowd of emergency, or ninety day men, many of whom had served in both Union and Confederate armies; others had been bush- whackers, bullwhackers and prospectors whose principal find had been hard luck. On the morning of the 23rd of November, this military command packed tents, saddled up and marched southwa.rd. The snow from the late storm lay deep upon the ground, though as che soldiers moved toward the Arkansas, it disap- peared. The nights were raw and cold and the ground damp and uncomfortable for tired and weary men. A night of unrest made the succeed- ing day seem lifeless and time passed cheerless enousfh to Chivinp;ion's soldiers, until the evenino; of the 26th, when the distant breaks of the Ar- kansas river could be outlined; then a halt and a rest was made, the night to be spent in marching. About midnight the march was resumed. A chilly wind laden with dampness surged through the movino- mass and all seemed silent with their own thoughts. Chivington and his two guides rode in advance of the command. One of these guides, Young Crow Warrior and Wife. The Great Peains tn [864 anI) 1865. ^2 was Jim Beckwith, once the noted mulatto war chief of the Mountain Crows of the Big Horn country, and a man with a strange record noted for its varying shifts, even in the unstable life of a rover of the border. It was Jim's general knowl- edge of the plains that the giant commander re- lied on that occasion. It was young John Smith, that the specific knowledge was expected on that night ride across the trackless plains. Smith was the half breed son of John Smith the well known Indian trader, who was at that very time among the Cheyennes. The young fellow had been beguiled, in some shape to accompany the expedition, and was moody and non-communicative by spells. Beckwith guided them without accident to within sight of the section of country they were looking for, and now Smith was to lead them to the object. The boy — for he was under twenty — rode by the side of the gruff commander in silence. He was communing in silent, morbid thought — a presenta- ment, perhaps — of the events of the coming day. Chivington knew that fear alone held his younger guide loyal, and Beckwith was asked to watch his movements closely. After a long spell of silence Smith spoke out in broken P^nglish : "Wolf he howl. Indian dog he hear wolf; he howl too. Indian he hear dog, listen and run off" Chivington took the butt of his revolver in his hand and turned ominously to the speaker, said : "Jack, I havn't had an Indian to eat for a long time. If you fool with me and don't lead to that camp, I'll have you for breakfast." 53 I-^ROXTIER AND IXDTAX LiFK. An hour later a lio'ht streak in the eastern sky. warned the benumbed, stiffened men and jaded horses that another day was at hand. The objects, too, were near by that they had came for. The spreading' twihght revealed a large drove of ponies feeding quietly on die plain below them — and a lit- tle beyond, upward ot a hun.dred yellow Indian lodges — smokeless but not tenantless — the in- mates, even to the restless watchdogs were in the heavy sleep that precedes the dawn. It was in early October that 130 lodges tu ' the expected Cheyennes and Arapahoes undqr;I^giffc ; Hand, Black Kettle and White Antelope appjejaij^^t^ before the gates of F"ort Lyons and delivered up; their guns and equipmenls to Major Wynkoop the commandment of thr.t po;ft, as a token of .suritits-r-"' der. Their arms v^^as accepted ijy th'iu ohicer i^^i.d stored in the post arsenal, and a place pointed p,(it to them to encamp and put up their loages. 'b|iey were given some rations Irom the post commissary though their wants were not extravagant, having considerable dried buffalo meat in camp. They behaved themselves well and were not inclined to intrude or loiter around the post as is usual wiih many Indians on the frontier. Some time in No- vember a chanire was made in' the command of the post. Major Wynkoop was relieved by Major Anthony. The new commander was extremely dictatorial to his prisoners. He lessened their supjily of rations and finally cut them off altogether TiiK Grkat Plalxs tx 1864 An J) 1865. ^4 and advised them on a ne\v location, where the)' mioht havt- a chance to subsist. This new- location was on Sand Creek — forty miles away. The place was near the buffalo range. A few of their pooreSjt,,guns was returned to them for the use of tht^^Tfitinters. There ^\\;^s,.po. reason given' bv. Major Anthony for this chano'e. . Col. Chiving Ton Had, for reasons ot his own. placed Major Anthony in charge of the fort. The Indians moved out to Sand creek and pu'u up their lo.dges. The chiefs felt uneasy. But in this camp were two or- three of the half breed rons of C(7l,J^ent, the noted fur trader, and John .Sniiih rd^.o; a trader on ihe plains, with over thiriy years e>'n race, all magnanimity — all virtue. Sand creek was open and shelterless, the plains about, scarce of game, so that their feastings be- came few and their fasting spanned hours. The Indian child enured to the pangs of hunger, sat in its cheerle.ss nakedness around the smouldering 55 F"R()NTIKk AND InDIAN LiFK. buffalo chip fires — uncomplaining little Spartans. that had been taught that silent suffering was a badge of fortitude. Daybreak on the 27th of November again. Daybreak in that Indian village on Sand creek. Raw and chilly and no one astir. What a comfort a warm robe on an early raw winter morning. A Cheyenne woman gets up to start a fire. She listens and is startled at a rumbling sound. "Buf- falo !" she exclaimed aloud. She threw up the teepe door. Black, indistinct forms are wedging down a ravine and ponies of the village go snort- ing up the hillside. "Buffalo!" yells the woman "Buffalo!" "White Soldiers !" exclaimed a dozen others, for now the snorting tramping and firing of guns had aroused the camp. The soldiers were amongst them. White Antelope rushed out unarmed with extended hands exclaiming in Eng- lish, "Stop! stop!" when he sank down filled with bullets. Smith the trader rushed between the ad- vancing soldiers and camp became muddled, ran back among the lodges and was unharmed. But all was confusion now. Shooting, screaming and crying of woman and children, yelling of soldiers. Black Kettle floated the stars and stripes and a white flag from the top of his lodge, but seeing no heed or respect was given; being unarmed escaped to the hills. Indians that had bows and arrows de- fended their lives as best as they could, and kept up a retreating fight along the creek bed. The TiiK CikKAT Plains tn 1864 and 1865. ^56 demoniac giant ridino- among his men ordered no prisoners taken. Women, children, as well as unarmed men where shot down wherever over- taken. Little children, even to the sucking babes at their mother's breasts were shot like rabbits wherever found. A young Cheyenne girl, the af- fianced bride of George Bent, was hiding in a low swr.il when some soldiers came upon her. She arose and with extended hands and bared breasts rushed toward "the soldiers, thinking that her fem- inity and her beauty would save her; for she was a half breed, with the fair complexion of a Saxon Ivlond, and was reckoned the most beautiful young girl among the Cheyennes. She was met by a blow that crushed her skull, and her body after- ward muiilaled. One woman escaped from the slaughter and was crouching behind some low sage brush. A scared horse came galloping toward her hiding place; its owner m hot pursuit, but some distance away. Seeing she would be discovered, and per- haps thinking, by catching the animal and return- ing it to the owner, that she might save her life — .she caught it and held it until he came up; mean- time unloosening her blanket and baring her breast that he may know she was a woman. He took the bridle in one hand and with the other drew his revolver and shot her dead. An Indian woman and two children in the con- fusion crawled into a wagon unobserved. And only came forth from her hiding when the train 57 - Frontier and Indian Likk. moved toward Lyons. The teamster, more mer- ciful than the rest allowed her to accompany the wa^on after being discovered. A squad of sol- diers coming up she was killed and her babes brained against the tires of the wagon wheel. — The Indian loss was about five hundred, principally woman and children. The soldiers lost seven killed and several wounded. Young Smith the enforced guide, horror struck at the scenes about him attempted to run away but was captured and brought back and placed under guard in his father's trading store. Col. Chivington was told that unless he gave orders to have him spared, that the boy would be killed. He replied : "I have given my orders and I have no more to give." It was taken as a taclict consent by the self appointed guards and they crowded around Smith as he set in his chair and some one shot him through the head. Over four hundred dead bodies lay around most of them women and childeren. The next day after the battle these bodies was disgustingly mutilated and scalps, ears fingers, and other parts of the body carried in the imitative, triumphal march of the savage or the pa- S^an. Garland crowned heroes of a nineteenth century episode — the massacre of the Indian prisoners and their families at Sand creek. The Rocky Mountain News, the Denver newspa- per, gave them a rousing welcome. It said: "The Colorado soldiers acquitted themselves well, and covered themselves with glory." ThI': Great Plains in 1864 and 1865. 58 Many of the best men of Denver, however, denounced the Sand creek massacre as an atro- cious crime. Among others were two of the su- preme court judg-es, who had influence enough with President Lincoln to suspend the brutish Chivington from his command. Of course indig- nation meetings were held by his apologists, and on one occasion a war meeting was held to meet a threatened danger. The meeting was held in one of the theatres. The hall was packed. "Old Chiv" as the butcher was familiarly called was in his element. The crowd of roarers were his own. His self glorification was applauded. "I not only believe in killing every Injun," yelled the excited Colonel "but every one that sympa- thizes with ihem." With the surrender of the Cheyennes and Arap- aho*^s at Fort Lyons, in October, '64, peace and quiet reigned once more along the Arkansas; settlers and ranchmen returned to their homes, and overland travel and freighting was resumed. The ranchmen of the Platte river, though living in exposed and isolated places along that great over- land trail which ran parallel with that wide shal- low river for near five hundred miles, and who made their abode along the thoroughfare, and never considered their position perilous enough to aban- don at any time during the past summer. But the massacre of the hapless beings at Sand creek, warned them that a danger would now 59 P'roniikr AM) Indian Likk. come upon them that would be madness to deny. First, most of the Indian woman who had been living with white husbands, quietly deserted them when an opportunity occurred for them to do so. A quietness prevailed over the Indian coun- try, but it was misinterpreted by Chivino-ton and his friends in Colorado, who saw in this non-activi- ty of the Indians, a fear brought on by what they termed the "chastisement" wrought on ihem by "Old Chiv." But they misconceived. It was the grusome calm that precedes the tornado's fury. About the middle of January 1865. war parties appeared by sections alonp Platte river and for a distance of four hundred miles every white man or woman was killed and every building but tv>'o were destroyed — these being French Canad-ans with Sioux wives. The village of Julesburg was destroyed and its 28 residents put to deadi. In March, I hired out as night guard for Fuck's freight train and proceeded down Platte river for Atchison, Kansas. P^rom the ruins of Julesburg, to jack Morrow's ranch near the present Fort McPherson, was one continuous string of dead, both white men and Indians, — dead stock, burned trains and ranches. Our up trail acqaintance of the American ranch was found widi 60 arrows in his body. The evidence told us that he had died game. At the Wisconsin ranch the inmates had been smothered, but inside of the ranch ruins lay two face-covered Cheyennes. One a middle aged warrior — the other a young brave dressed from head to foot in Confederate grey. The latter, one of the Bent hoys, and both sleeping the long sleep that knew no waking. A PART OF OLD InDIAN ViLLAGE AT FORT BeRTHOLD. I From a phttograpli by MoriYnv in ISTO.] FORT BSRTHQLD AQENCY IN 1869. EARLY in the spring months of. 1869, the rest- less Sioux of the Missouri river agencies, commenced gathering in small war parties for one more general raid against the remnants of the Mandans, Gros Ventres and Aricaree Indians of the Fort Herdiold agency. The almost cease- less struggle that had reached beyond a century of years between these warlike combatants were now to all appearances being settled in favor of I he former nation. The buffalo grass had scarcely put forth its Bow- er, 1 efore SioLi.x sentinels stood like stone mounds and almost as immovable, looking down from high ])oin s of the winding bluffs that encircled the be- leagured village ; and, like watchful falcons, seek- ing opportunities to dart on their unguarded prey. Mounted .squads of Sioux dashed around here and there, to . intercept hunting parties and destroy ihem, thus reducing the inmates of the allied vil- l:.ge 10 gaunt famine and starvation. in one instance a brave band of Aricaree hunt- ers accompanied by some of their women, and led by Son of the Star's eldest son, were waylaid in a deep coulee, Ijy a band of their enemies, led by a son of die Yanktoney Sioux chief Two Bears. .L he Aricaree- hunters were returning from the 6o Frontier ami Indian Life. Painted Woods Lake, with ponies loaded with elk and deer meat, and were attacked in the coulee above the present town of Washburn, in McLean county, and atier a running- hg-ht for several miles the Sioux leader was killed, and his foremost foe moriaClly wounded. An Aricaree woman was also killed and pony supply train captured or dispersed. Signal glasses, rock and smoke signs, were ob- served in ominous frequency by the allied watch- ers from [heir house towers during the day from both sides of the Missouri, and the glare of fire signals lent their aid to multiply the horrors of the night. Women were shot down and scalped while tend- ing their little garden patches within call of the village. Danger stalked in every form around and even widiin iis sombre precincts after nightfall. Horses and ponies disappeared nightly from the pastures — from the pickets, and even from the lodges of the sleeping owners, for in dangerous times a comnion canopy, with a raw hicie partition was all that separated an allied warrior and his steed ; and the family shared the stored food widi the serviceable beast. One night in the early spring, a Aricaree modier was hushing her crying child vviih a song. 1 he door of ihe lodge was secur(^ A stealhy Sioux spy located her voice, and proceeded to cut a hole through the wail with his tomahawk to make a place for his rilie. A passing Aricaree v., ariior interrupLs him and recives the shot ana the deadi ¥(ns upon ruined gardens and desolate, ragged groves. All the woman of the ^ village went out to witness their damaged crops. Half suppressed murmers escaped their lips but articulate w^ords found no voice. About ten o'clock in the morning followincj- the disastrous cloud burst — for such it appeared to have been, — about twenty Indians in sinole file So I*"R( )N 111' k AN I > L\ I >1 A N Ll FE. passed alonq- the trail near where we were chop- ping and sawing, leading off in the direction of our camp. Not knowing to a certainty what tribe they belonged to. we thought it prudent and proper to follow them to our cabin. We arrived in time to witness a very excitable harangue between the Aricaree chief White Shield and Reeder, the latter being proficient in the Aricaree tongue, and also an adept in the Indian sign language. The whole party were squatted on the ground floor in a semi- circle and grunted assent to their chief's fiery flow of ill-tempered language. Among those present sat Medicine Lance, Sharp Horn and Two Crows, the three medicine men of the tribe, with rank in the order named, and Little Fox, the Pawnee Ot- tacoots and Moccasin Carrier. The solemn ver- dict as rendered, was, that the responsibility of the night's catastrophe rested upon those who had destroyed the chief medicine snake, and that w^e must prepare to leave there instanter or die. We knew enough of the character of the w^ild Indian to prepare to go at once and after serving a feast as intertainment to these luckless and gruff lords of the domain, we pulled out for the military post of Fort Stevenson. The Medicine Lance's ex- pression on that occasion that "the slayer of the chief medicine snake will die as it died," was lit- erally fullfilled. The snake shot through the neck had died instantly, and the same fate followed Putney in a Sioux camp a few years later on, and his body carried from the scene of the tragedy, as A Medicine Snare's CAiASTKorHE. 81 was the body of the reptile, and the great thunder bird of the Gros Ventres once more roared, and spit fire, and drenched the lonely valley of the stagnant Hermaphrodite. It had sheltered in am- bush Putney's slayers. Reeder was killed in less than a year after the snake's death, and by fire and fiood, by freezing, by starvation, by sick- ness and by bullet, the arrow and the tomahawk, these Aricaree guardians and avengers of the chief medicine snake, as herein recorded, have long since passed into the realm of the spirit land. MB: m Mf& ^ A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS. JULY 2nd 1869, one of the Durfee & Peck line of steamers landed at Fort Stevenson with Major General Hancock, and staff aboard. Ihe General was makin^^ a tour of inspection amono- the military posts of his department and had just came down from Montana. While the boat was tied up at the landing- pending post inspection, a council was held w^ith the chiefs of the Mandans Gros V'entres and Aricarees, on the one side and that distinguished officer on the other. The im- pressive ceremony took place in the cabin of the boat and all available room was occupied by spec- tators. The writer of these pa^"es embraced the opportunity and was present. White Shields and Son of the Star represented the Aricarees; Croud's Breast and Poor Wolf talked for the Gros \'en- tres, while Red Cow and Bad Gun plead the cause of the Mandans. Two famous interpret ers were present. One of these, Pierrie Gareau, was the son of the half breed Aricaree chief Gareau, w^ho was cruelly murdered by a. party of trappers on the Papallion river, Nebraska, in the sun^iUier of 1832, thereby precipitating a war with the Arica- rees which lasted many years. The otht-r inter- preter was the veteran trader Packineau, a brilli- ant linguist, speaking correctly many different In- dian languages. A Rift in The Clouds. 83 The venerable White Shield opened the coun- cil with a speech. The ready flow of language and perfect gesticulations as this red leader stood up in his chief's robes, gave him a picturesque appearance that was pleasing alike to the General and spectators. The chief was then near seventy years of age, and, among his people had long stood their formest spokesmen and orator. In his younger day he was a famed warrior and duel- ist, and but few battles ever happened around the Aricaree village in his time, that White Shield did not fight in the front rank. The second speaker was Son of the Star, the Indian Daniel Webster. He had an intelligent countenance ; a chief of commanding appear- ance, and though a logical talker did not have the passionate vehemence of White Shield. His good judgment and able presentation of his peo- plt-'s plea, won the admiration of the General. The third speaker was Crow's Breast, the Gros Ventre, a tall raw boned chieftain whose bass voice sounded down to the toes of his moccasins. Next came Poor Wolf a modest speaker without much display of rhetoric but whose appearance com- manded attention until he sit down. Then arose Bad Gun the second chief of the Mandans. This warrior was the surviving son of Four Bears, the most noted chief of his time on the Upper Missouri, who died during the small pox epidem- ic which swept away a whole village of the Man- dans. He talked dreamily and with little force. AROUND GRAND RIYKR AGENCY, 1S89. ABOUT the second week in July, 1869, the writer found himself at the Cheyenne river Indian agency; having accompanied General Hancock's party by steamer to that place. This was one of three Sioux agencies established by General Harney the autumn previous; an- other beinof on Whetstone creek above Fort Randall, and the remaining one being located just above the confluence of the Grand and Missouri rivers. The Cheyenne agency was located about midway betu^een the two others and all three of them contained wild, turbulent Sioux bands, that, had as yet defied the restrictive and coercive mea- sures employed by the Government to bring them within easy reach of its power. To use a trap- per's phrase, a few huge "draw baits" had been put out to bring to bait the wily red man, while in a confidential and unsuspicious mood. But the lured Sioux like the baited fox or coy- ote did not rest his case on simple outside appear- ances. He watched for possible traps and dead- falls, and everywhere he roamed, or wherever he pitched his lodge, his weapons of war was his first care, and his every move was that of the vidette always on duty. They had come in from their hunting ranges at the invitation of the Govern- \A'HITE RFLL. rillEF OK THE S.ANS ARCS SlOFX, AND FAMILY. Around Grand River Agency, 1869. ^"j ment, but their stay and their behaviour was owing to the fickleness of circumstances. The Minneconjous, Sans Arcs and Etasapas, three very unruly bands or divisions of the Sioux nation were the principal recipients of the Govern- ment annuity distribution at the Cheyenne river agency, in 1869. There were a sprinkling of other bands, but these named were more fully represented, being about three thousand in all. About the first of August, there was an almost total eclipse of the sun, and there was here en- acted at that time some strange and exciting hap- penings in the camps of these wild people. When the sun's disk began to darken, the Indians, men, woman and children began howling and screaming like mad people, and v/ere joined in chorus by all the dogs in camp. Indians with a semi-civilized appearance but an hour before, now became the savage pure and simple, outdoing the African Hot- tentot, the Bushman or the Mantabelle, in wild origies and heathenish rites. The firing of guns towards the darkened sun, roarino- like a battle, and amidst the noise cries of "wake him up — wake him up — the sun is sleeping," could be heard above the racket and v/ould be repeated over and over again. The agency interpreter then came up to the camp and reminded us that our presence among them at that time in their frenzied state was dangerous, not only to ourselves but to the balance of the employees of the agency, as the mere presence of a white man amongst the reds 88 Frontier and Indian Likk. at such a time would invite death from the hand of some medicine making fanatic, and when once blood was shed, their curbing would be difficult. Some days after the eclipse, a heavy storm ac- companied by terrific lightening and deafening peals of thunder swept over the camp, and one whole family killed by lightening in one lodge, and a solitary woman in another part of the villap'e. Several medicine men in the tribes laid the disaster to evil spirits superinduced by whites, when some relatives of the stricken families thus sacrificed, armed themselves vvith the intention of shootinor down the first "white face" that crossed their path, and when such word reached the agen- cy, curiosity tours to the Indian village, lacked in- terest among the employees. Toward the latter part of August, I board(>d the little stearn wheeler, Peninah, Captain Hancy, of Pittsburg in command, and steamed up the Missouri, to the Grand river agency, in obedience to a request from Contractor Dillon, to serve as guard, outrider and dispatch bearer between his various camps, then doing business in that end of the Sioux reservation. The rendesvous or head- quarters of the contractor and his partner. Charles McCarthy, vv^as on the east bank oi the Missouri, and nearly opposite the mouth of Grand river. Three divisions of the Sioux were here repre- sented, the Blackfeet, Two Bear's Yanktoney, and the Lower Uncpapas. Considerable trouble had occurred about one month previous at the agency Around Guaxd Rivku A(;en(:v, 1S69. 89 by the aggressive Uncpapas, and the killing- of the white employees and destruction of the agency buildings and stores was only averted by the de- termined will and bravery of a few friendly dis- posed Yanktoney and Blackfeet. After a fev/ days rest at the agency a dispos- ition was made of the various gangs, and it fell to the writer's portion to be of a party of four hay- makers LO commence the s^^ason's cut on the Blue Blanket creek, on the east bank of the Missouri. The first night out we made camp on the river's bank, opposite Blue Blanket island, and about six miles from the agency. We had with us four mule?, a pair of them being just purchased from the Indians, and a remarkable fine team. After making camp and having supper, my companions Y\ent down along- the river bank a few hundred yards, for the purpose of fishing and bathing, while I remained behind to look after the camp and the mules. A hard wind had been blowing all day, and as the great red sun was slowly decending be- lov/ the distant bluffs, the wind slackened into fitful gusts. While taking observations from camp over the plains, my eyes rested on some objects among the high grass in a swail not over tour hundred yards from the grazing" mules. A waft of wind bending' the tall sv/aying grass, had first marked the objects indistinctly, but a heavier draft immediately followed, revealed a lot of painted Indians crawling on their hands and knees heading' toward the stock. Alarming- m\' compan- 90 F"r()NTIER and Indian Li ff. ions who came running- up with their clothes in one hand and o-uns in the other, we rushed out near the mules, and laying on the grass, were prepared to meet the onslaught. But the Indians evidently finding themselves discovered, retreated under cover of darkness, although not knowing it at the time, we kept vigilant guard until daylight. In the early morning, Contractor Dillon and the Government chief Thunder and Liorhtnino- came riding into our camp. Thunder and Lightning- was the accredited chief of a band of Sissetons; yet chief making by the strong arm and good offices of the Government when not supported with the pronounced approved judgir. en! of ihe tril.e. were usually failures. In other words lo i:se die In- dians' figurative and expressive vernacular he had "sat down" as a chief of the Sissetons, and with a following of three lodges had betook himself from the scenes of his earlier ambition and was now roving the plains and at this time was an unpre- tentious guest of the Yanktoneys. Dillon was uneasy on om* account from what had happened at the agency the afternoon before. The agency herder, a younp;' man named Cook, while on duty, and with no weapon but a whip, had been approached by a mounted Uncpapa and several arrows shot in his body. The Indian, who v/as a brother of the chief Long Soldier after com- mitting the deed, rode up to the agency with, a crowd of followers and proclaimed aloud that they would slauehter the first white men who turned a Around Grand River Agency, 1869. 91 furrow with a breaking plow or cut a swath with a mowing machine around the Grand river agency. As considerable excitement followed this episode, Dillon secured the services of the red knight er- rant, Thunder and Lightning and son John, to help guard the hay camp against an attack from their hostile brethren. The acts of the lurking Indians the evening before, confirmed the necessity of vig- ilence, and as evening drew near, plans for our defense were studied out. Thunder and Litjht- ning and myself decided on taking the first watch from the twilight hour until midnight, The old Sisseton took post at the river bank near a point of willows, while my position was flat on the grass near the picketed mules. The moon arose in its full, and only at times lightly obscured by fleecy whiLe clouds, with not even the shrill whistling of an elk, the dull thudding alarms of traveling bea- \'er, or the skurrying through the air of passing wild fowls, so common at that time of the season along the Upper Missouri, So still, indeed, had our surroundings become, that soothing nods of quasi sleep lapped the links of time, as the hours swiftly glided toward midnight. Danger that had stalked in a distorted form to the twilight vision, became the mere substance of shadow, as the chilly air marked passing time. About the time I was thinking of waking up the relief guard, some one came crawling toward me from the direction of the camp. It was the old Sisseton, and he motioned me to follow him. As he drew near the c,?. Frontier ani^ Indian Like. edee of the M'illows, he made the sicrn of silence and then poimed to some objects in the river. At first I was inchned to think it a bull boat war par- ty but as they approached our shore they were c;asily defined, and were six Indians swimming their horses. Not a word ;vas spoken by ihem, and even in swimmincr. the spashing came to iis in muffled sounds. The Sisseton whispered to me in Sioux, that he had first noticed ihem coming out from the shadows of Blue Blanket island. We awaited undl the^' landed on a bar above camp, and from their silent speech and acdons, we became convinced they were on a hostile raid, and so alarmed camp; then the mounted warriors took to the praries on the run. Harmless Kelly, of our parLy, again, as on the alarm the night previous, took the scare crow view of matters, and kept up a shot gun fusilade until daylight upon ever inag- inable thing, even to shadows made by the moon, but possibly help accomplish the main objcc. — scare off the Indians and save our mules. Now an ii;!s;ance of Indian tenacity. C)ne year later at that very place, on the sanie business, these same nuiles were picketed. Harmlesr. Kelly, too, was with this latter party, and had spent the evening telling his ne,v/ comrades the two nights adventures with a war party in August, 1869, on the raise of ground where their tent was then pitched. But watchful Thunder and Lightning was not there to guard camp, and the; yawning haymakers retired to their blankets, while the grazing mules changed masters before the dawn. .^'^ John Grass, Chief Justice of the Sioux Nation. A WAR WOMAN, WITH the increase of population and mining- operations in Montana after the discovery and opening- of the gold mines in 1862, and the construction of additional military posts along the Upper Missouri, came also the increase of the l)oating business between the city of Saint Louis. Missouri, and Fort Benton, Montana, the last named place being the head of navigation on the Missouri river. In the years I867-8 and 1869, the tonnage o( freight transported up this river was enormous, over thirty s:eamers being constantly employed during the season of navigation in its transpor- tation. While the wood along the timbered bends for nearly a thousand miles of the steamer's course, could be had for the chopping and taking;- for steam healing and other necessary purposes, yet the difficulty and loss of time by the boats crew in iinding dry wood within the range of the tie-up, led the owners and captains of these steamers to induce a class of men to establish woodyards at convenient distances apart along the banks border- ing the channel of the stream. Each camp or yard, for the most part acting independent of the odisr, the price of wood being regulnted by its 94 Frontier and Indian Life. particular location, or the kind and quality of the wood in rank. The life led by these isolated wood choppers or owners of the woodyards, was, owing to the hun- dreds of miles of territory roamed over by bands of hostile Indians, likened unto a guard or sen- tinal continually at his post. His life or his prop- erty was ever insecure. Thus it was, that during- the years above mentioned, nearly or quite one- third of these men so employed lost their lives, the wood destroyed and stock run off by Indians. A party of this class of men, together with some professional hunters, wolfers and trappers, having congregated at the Painted Woods — a heavy body of timber on the Missouri, midw^ay between the military posts of Forts Rice and Stevenson — during the autumn of 1869, a band of eleven of them were enlisted by Morris & Gluck, two enterprising- woodyard proprietors, to open up a new yard be- tween that point and Fort Stevenson. The point selected was called Tough Timber, near the present town of Hancock, McLean Coun- ty. Here on the i ith of November of that year, was commenced the second and last fortified stock- ade ever erected within the boundaries of that North Dakota county. The first being Fort Man- dan, erected at Elm Point, in November, 1804, by the Lewis and' Clark expedition, as winter quar- ters The buildings constructed by the wood- choppers at Tough Timber consisted of two large log shacks facing each other, with a horse stable A War Woman. 95 at one side between the main biiildines, the whole enclosed with a picket of sharp pointed logs, placed upright. The stockade was located near the lower end of the timber amonor a scattering bunch of big- old cottonwoods and within one hun- dred yards of the river bank. About the first of December rumors reached the Missouri of an uprising of the half breeds and others in the present British province of Mani- toba, and a provisional government set in motion by the insurgents, with headquarters at Fort Gar- ry, a Hudson Bay fur company post, which they had captured. The insurrection grew out of some injustice done the resident half breeds by the officers of the home government of Ontario. It was charged by the Ontario authorities, however, that the whole trouble originated in the fertile brain of the Hon. Enos Stutsman, a U. S. custom house off.cer at Pembina, and for many years a member of the Dakota Territorial Legislature.^ — How true the charges were is not positively known, the principals now being dead, but it was admitted by those who ought to know, that the talented American drafted the Bill of Riofhts for the Provisional goverement, wrote their Constitu- tion, and was at all times during these s tiring days, an intimate advisor of General Louis Riel, the insurgent leader. With the wafting breeze that brought the first news of the Red River rebellion over to the Up- per Missouri country came also the rumor that 96 Frontier anii Indian Like. John George Brown, of F"ort Steven.son, was commissioned to raise a force of hardy frontiers- men and come over at once to Gen(M*al Reil's assistance. Brown was an Irishman, married to a Crec half breed woman, and it was said he; had formerly been an officer in the British army. At the time of receivino- his commission from the insiiroeat leader, he was post interpretor at Fort Steven- son. An organization for the help of the half- breeds' Republic was attempted at points along the Mis.soLiri, but the vacillating conduct of the leaders in Manitoba, weakened the resolutions of those beyond the border, who wished them ready success. A "medicine lodge" for Reil's cause had been formed at the Tough Timber, where the long nights and isolation, demanded a stimulant for mental exercise, Wheeler, a frontiersman who had considerable experience was elecLed chief of the lodge, and the Deitrich brothers, chief's coun- cellors; Plopping Bill, head soldier, and the hum- ble scribe of these pages "keeper of the records." On New Year's day, 1870, two Aricaree hun- ters came to Tough Timber and asked to encamp within the gates of the stockade, as they claimed to have some fears that hostile Sioux were in the neighborhood. At the break of day next morning the writer was au^akened from sleep by screeches and sounds resembling an owl in distress. I lo- cated the sounds as along the river bank near where a trap was set for a wolf, and concluded A War AWjman. 97 the meat bait had drew his owh^hip to a least, and was caught, so prepared to go and release it. The sounds had also awakened the Indians, who seeing me prepare to sally out, and divining my intentions. Red Shield jumped up excitedly and grasping my arm, said in pigeon English! ^'Hol on, hoi on ! Sioux, Sioux, it's Sioux." And meantime motioning me to remain in doors. The two Indians jumped for their saddles and slinging diem on the poni«\s, asked me to unbar the gates and after passing out advising their instant closing mounted their ponies, passed along the trail through the timber to the prairie bluffs. It was undoubtedly the indistinctness of early dawn that gave the Aricarees the start, for we afterwards learned that a war party of Sioux had envested our stockade the whole night long for these two scalps, but did not discover their successful flight, until the morning light revealed them gliding swiftly along on the whitened prairie. And then commenced a silent chase, the Sioux wisely avoid- ing F"ort Stevenson, and making a detour to the left for this purpose, but crossing the river oppos- ite the bad lands midway between Forts Stevenson and Berthold. Meantime the two Aricaree hunt- ers rode into Fort Stevenson and rested several hours before resuming their journey to the village and Red Shields even then dallied along the trail and on entering the bad lands was confronted by a band of twenty-five Sioux warriors. After the first amazement was over. Red .Shield attempted a 98 Frontier ani> Indian Lifk. a stand; was badly wounded, but tying himself on his pony the faithful beast brought him in safety to his lodge. Behind him like a band of panting wolves tireing down their prey, increasing in num- bers as they came on, until over two hundred Sioiix warriors bore down neck and neck on the surprised village at Fort Berthold. The Sioux had well calculated on the absence of the principal part of the village inhabitants; they being out in their usual hunting quarters several miles further up the river, and but little resistance could be expected to their determination to des- troy the helpless, little town. But Major Wainwright, the gallant and humane commandant of Fort Stevenson, had also made a calculation. A courier from P^ort Rice had alread)- apprised him of the expected war party, and that officer knowing the defenseless condition of the remaining Indians at the agency — being for the most j)art the aged and infirm — had sent up a part of a battery of artillery under charge of a good gunner, and the pieces were masked in an old dirt lodge, meeting the charging Sioux with a belch of grape and canister. This was so unexpected to the over-confident warriors that they were dazed, thrown in a panic, scattered, and fled across the river among the bluffs southeast of the village. On this same afternoon a meeting was held at the Tough Timber, by all that were congregated there at the time, over a deer roast with a big open fire and an animated discussion . concerning A War Woman. 99 the propriety of an early spring expedition to help out General Reil against British domination in the great interior basin ol the Saskatchewan. The sub- ject Ijrought out an abundant display of camp fire rhetoric, but was quickly hushed by the sudden and rapid reverberating sounds of artillery firing that echo(xl and re-echoed along the bends and bluffs of the frozen river. Everybody at the council jumped to their feet, and it was at once surmised by the direction of the sounds, that a fight was going on near Fort Berthold, and that the use of artillery meant that the soldiers were taking a hand. We also concluded that Sioux defeat by soldier interference would prompt them in their hour of humiliation and rage, to attack the first outlying woodyard on their homeward path, and that, of course, would mean ours. All haste was thereupon made for vigorous defense of the stockade. An anxious night followed at the woodyard. — At daybreak I was detailed to take a walk around outside of the stockade, and after an hour's tire- some stalking, returned with the information that nothing unusual could be seen. But the report was hardly made before a vigorous thumping was heard at the outside gate, when everybody in the room jumped for their rifles. Johnny Deitrich, meantime cautiously peering through a porthole, whispered in seeming accents of alarm, ''A war woman." L.ofC. lOO Frontier and Indian Life. A war woman [ Shades of the blood-thirsty Stataans, of the forks of Platte river, where the war woman, hid- eously dressed and painted, rode beside the war- rior in every fray to hack and mutilate the dead ! War woman, long the sacred female of the Paw^- nees and Aricarees of other days — ^who led every forlorn hope or accompanied every enterprise of desperate danger, and stood "medicine" to every calamity ! War woman — the ghoul of the Lipians of the Mexican border, and blood drinking tiend of the Tontas of the desert ! Who amongst us at such a time and such a place wanted to see a war u^oman? Yet the ponderous gate was unbolted and its unwildy frame swung backward and the muffled figure moved within the enclosure. It was sure enough an Indian woman, and to all appearances was alone, though as a precautionary measure the gate was closed and bolted behind her, and she was bidden be seated by a warm fire iu the cook room; which invitation she accepted with a hesita- tino^, modest mien. She w^as ti^^litly wrapped in a long blanket of spotless white. Her age might have been about thirty yeai's, and the blue star tattoed on her forhead and cut of features told us without askinpf that she was of the Sioux nation. Being at this time the only one of the party with any knowledge of the Sioux language, 1 was com- missioned interpreter for the occasion, and asked her whither she was travelinor. A War Woman. ioi "Port Stevenson." she answered crisply. Then after some hesitation she told her story. She was of the Black foot band of the Sioux na- tion, and although nurtured and raised among her people she chose a husband among her tribe's herititary foes. During a temporary truce she visited her relatives at the Grand River agency As she came alone she was treated as a penitent. — restored to the love and confidence of those whom she once abandoned. While at the agency she learned o( the organiza- tion of a war party to revenge the disasters that had befallen Two Bears and his Yanktoneys at Heart river and the coulee of Four Bears, the past summer. The leadership was to be intrusted to young John Grass the oldest son of Chief Grass the honored head of the Blackfoot band. The expedition was being well and secretly planned. Nothing but an accident could save the predeierm.ined destruction of the Indian village at Fort Berthold and the wholesale slaughter of its inhabitants. Plain duty to her kith and kin demanded that she should remain in her lod^e and assist her sis- leis; prepare articles of comfort for the out going braves. But the promptings of her heart willed otherwise. She saw that her husband's people was in danger of annihilation. She would save him and them. To do this she must travel through deep crusted snow afoot and alone for upward of two hundred miles along the frozen bed of the 102 Frontier and Inhtan Life, the Missouri. She had undertaken it and the journey had been a most trying one. The intense cold, the crusted sand bars; the danger at night from mountain lions and wolvt^, while camping in some cheerless willow patch, and a scanty supjjly of pemmican and corn, and even that being finall)'" exhausted and actual starvation averted by the timely find of a frozen buck deer in an air hole near Mandan lake, — were some of the perils with which she had been environed. All for her Aric- aree husband's sake. Her courage and iron in- durance heretofore so bravely kept up, utterly gave way at the mouth of Knife river, but an hour before her arrival at the stockade. Here,, while dragging herself slowly along, John Grass and his defeated war party of two hundred aime suddenly out to view from along the black hne of willows tliat markf^d the outlines of Knife river's icy bed. What could she do ? By Indian law discovery wonld be her death. But death had but. little terror now. Her mission, after all was a failure. It was snowing, and by rare presence of mind she sank quietly in the snow and envel- oped in her white blanket, the whole wai' party passed in review by her but a few hundred yards away without noting her prescence. Her concluding words were sorrowfully ren- dered: "I have but to go on to my husband's lodge now. I ca.n never again return to the Blackfeet." The morning following was intensely cold. The A War Woman. 103 thermometer registering forty degrees below zero, with a fierce cutting wind blowing down from Arctic lands. The Sioux woman, already badly , frost-bitten in face, feet and hands on her misera- ble trip, would again hazard her life to inclement elements, for she determined to resume her jour- ney in search of her Aricaree brave. She had left him doing duty as military scout at Fort Ste- venson. As she neared that post on this January day, the wreathing columns of black smoke beck- ened her hopefully forward. The post sentry from his box hailed her as she passed by, but on recog- nition, was not delayed. Her pace quickened now; her frosted face reddened in feverish glow as she sped on. See, her husband's lodge is still at the old place, and she has sighted it; her heart-beats grow tremulous and fast. The door is reached — reached at last — poor women. With an expectant and joyful bound, she raises the door flaps and stood unannounced within. With one wild look no artist can imitate or imagination portray, she sank down on a mat of skins at the doorway. — Her husband was indeed there — but by his side sat — in seeming happy content, and wreathed in smiles— a younger and fairer female factr. In June, 1876, I took charge of Rhude's Turtle Creek Ranch, while its owner was sight-seeing^ across Minnesota's fair and flowery fields. One foggy morning about the first of the month, and just as the sun was rising, I heard a loud and dis- I04 Frontier and Indian Life. tinct Indian. It came from the high l)liiff just across the creek, and opposite the ranch a hun- dred yards away. On going to the door, to m)' dismay, nearly one hundred and fifty Indians were ranged along- the bluffs, mounted and sitting com- plaisantly in their saddles. One of these, in sten- torian tones, demanded of me in the Sioux tongue to know where the crossing place was and by this sign I kn(?w they were strangers. After passing around to the ford, they crossed and the whole crew came g-alloping" up around the ranch, when an oldish man dismounted, and advancing with arms folded— an unfriendly sign — saitl in the un- mistakable dialect of the Santees: "Do you know Little Mountain ?"" "Yes, I replied, "I know you. Little Moimtain, I mc;t 30U on the ridges of the upper White Karlh two years ago when you were leaving the buOalo grounds for yoiu* home in the lands of )'our white mother." "Land of my white mother," drawk^d out the chief in sarcastic tones, and after helping hin^self to a drink of water, remounted his horse and. with a wave of his hand signalled his command forward. One alone remained — a female — the only one I had noticed in the party. She sat as- tride her pony as motionless and expressionless, as a marbled nymph of the fountain. Her keen black eyes peered out towards me from bet ween the parting folds of her scarlet blanket, and therk after a steady gaze of two or three miuutes, threw^ A War Woman. 105 back the hooded mask, saying as interpreted from her native Sioux: "Do you know me — do you remember me, say?" After a glance at her weather-beaten counten- ance for a minute or so, recognition of her came, though s(n'en years had passed since we last met and then an acquaintance of but a clay. I told her. finally, who I thought she was, and why. "You have nothing to fear from us here," she said quietly, emphasizing the last word and then rode out and rejoined her companions. While watching the war party ascending the l:)luffs, my thoughts again reverted to the chief. His words, "do you know Little Mountain were again recalled. Yes I knew of him, but under another name. I knew of him since that cold December day in 1857, when under the leader- ship of Inkpaduta, they destroyed the town of Spirit Lake, Iowa, and killed its inhabitants. I had heard of his cold hand and stony heart in the Minnesota Sioux outbreak of 1862; and when pressed by avenging troops, he fled with chief Little Six over to Fort Garry and claimed refuge and a home on British soil. But unlike his chief was not enveigled back to the American side to be strangled to death. Had I the eyes of futurity I could have seen more on that June morning. I could have seen this warrior band after leaving the bluffs of Turtle creek, head dirccdy for the Indian crossing at io6 Frontier and Indian Life. Upper Knife river; could have seen them, after crossing the Missouri river, take the high divide for the mouth of Powder river, thence up the Yel- lowstone valley across to the place of gathering hostile clans along the Little Big Horn; could have seen the impetuous charge of Custer and his men and the fierce fight that followed; could have seen in the immediate front of Custer's battalions the refugee Santees — outside of the Northern Cheyennes, or possibly the Ogallalla Tetons — the best deciplined and bravest troops in this In- dian army. I could have seen after the last of Custer's men had fallen — coming out from the ranks of these Santees, and gliding and striking like a hesitating serpent among the dead and dying soldiers, the most dreaded of horrors to the helplessly wounded on an Indian battlefield — an avenging red Nemesis — a war woman. ^ SECOND GRODP. An Incident at Old Fort I'nion. EARLY DAYS AROUND FORT BUFORD. K3RT Buford was for many years the most noted military post along the Upper Missouri. The site was laid out and buildinp- commenced June 15th, 1866, on a high bench of tableland on the Missouri, and nearly opposite the mouth of the Yellowstone river. For a period reaching over thirty years, there had been established and doing a good business for its proprietors, an Indian trading post, located about three miles northwest of the new military post. The trading post was known as Fort Union, and was built from material after the Spanish- American fashion, — a composition of sun dried brick called, adobe. The first resident agent of the fur company at Fort Union, was a Scotch gen- tleman named Mackenzie. The year 1832, the noted painter and writer, George Catlin, made a several weeks' sta)' at this place and was hand- somely entertained by the hospitable Gael. The artist found exciting and romantic situations for pen and pencil. The scenes that he and other venturesome travelers describe around old Fort Union, prove that from the earliest information we have of that section, that it was a central fio-htincr ground for numerous warlike tribes. Being near the centre of the great northern buffalo range, loS Frontier AND Indian Life. the country thereabout was seldom devoid of in- habitants. A lone butte notheast of the present Fort Buford, a few miles, mark the site of the close of the adventurous career of this Scotch trader. He had been in the habit of riding- out for daily exercise, unmindful of the danq-ers that foe- set him. Dne of his favorite points was the butte that now bears his name. From its pinnacle a vast scope of country could be seen, and he took pleasure in watching the great herds of l)iifr;does that grazed upon the plains. His trips became marked by a band of scalp hunting red men. and one day was aml3ushed and slain while in the act of decending from his perch. It was here also, the chronicles of that epic (ell us, that by the frowning mud walls of this old trading post, another agent in charge lost his pretty half breed wife, by the aching heart and deft hands of a sturdy South Assinaboine braxe, who had been loitering around in front of the fort mounted upon a tractable charger. The petted wife was basking in the morning sun near the unguarded gateway, when she was suddenly seized by the brawny arms of the impc^tuous wooer, and lifted up and thrown across his saddle, and plung- ing his heels in his spirited pony's fianks was soon scurrying the prairies. The disconsolate husband and a few retainers followed out a short ways but gave up the chase. Whether the young bride was ever recoved by the trader the chronicles do not inform us, a missing link, as it were, in the old Early Days Around Fort Buford. 109 adobe fort's history, but the most probable end of the romance was that it took prosaic form, that the prairie nurtured bride found congeniaHty in the tented hfe along- the Riviere Du Lac, with so galliant admirer for protector; while the trader's grief was seared over by the plentiful offers that mo\cd the red parents of pretty maids to place themselves in close alliance with the dispenser of bright calicoes, shining beads and other fineries that tempt the cupidity of the savage breast. Fort Buford was constructed for a garrison of four hundred men. The first commander, was Colonel Rankin, of the old Thirty-First regiment, U. S. Infantry, aiLcrward consolidated with the present Twenty-Second regiment, U. S. Infantry. After the massacre of the soldiers at Fort Phil Kearney, in December, 1866, large bodies of Sioux moved down the Yellowstone to the mouth of Powder river, where buffalo were more plenti- ful; and the Uncpapa branch of that nation were particularly hostile to the occupation of that sec- tion by the military. In January, 1067, Sitting Bull, then just rising to note among Black Moon's band of Uncpapas, headed a large war party and made a systematic investment of Fort Buford, encamping opposite the post in the timber at the junction of the two great rivers. On one occasion he sallied out with a force of warriors and captured the saw mill near the landing and vic^orously beat time on the huge circular sav.' as a drum, adding his own sonorious no Frontier AND IxMUAN Life. voice, while his yountr braves danced sprightly around on fast time, to the disgust of the bad gunners at the fort who vainly endeavored to turn a corner on their mirth by dropping around them whistling, fuseless shells. Several soldiers and citizens were killed by these Indians in the immediate vicinity of the post during the winter. In the four following years Fort Buford was virtually in a state of seige, twice losing their beef herds and other stock. During the close of haying season of 1867, the haymakers were undisturbed. Not a hostile In- dian had been seen. The hay parties were well armed and vigilant. But two loads remained to be hauled to close the contract. A young man named Roach and a colored man called Fom were assigned to bring these last hay loads up from the Little Muddy. "We will not bother with our guns this time," said Roach and they started off without them. The next day a search party found the hay loaded, the teams gone and the mangled bodies of the two hay haulers near by. They had been beaten to death with whiffle trees taken from one of their own wagons. Twenty one arrows was sticking in each corpse. In the early part of August, 1868, a war party of about seventy Indians attacked the herd below the fort, killed, two herders. Max Layman and Beal, and bounded Henderson, Cooper and Zook, all soldiers. The military from the fort under Lieutenant Cusickgave chase, captured one Indian and killed one and was himself severely wounded. Early Days Around Fort Buford. hi Onti of the most noted events durintr this period of the investment was the kilhng of Dugan, "Dutch" Adams, McLean, and the Itahan, Ranal- do. This took place about two miles from the fort on the Little Muddy hay trail, August loth, 1869. These men liad just come down from Fort Peck, and were mere sojourners at Fort Buford, and were bound down to the contractor's first hay camp eight miles below. They had been asked by Moffit's party who were then at the post unload- ing their hay to remain and return down with them but ihey prefered not to wait, so pushed on down the trail, riding in a double seated spring wagon and a led horse. The Indians were in hiding in a deep water cut coulee, to the number of two hun- dred, and were completely hidden from view along the trail. The Indians were stripped for a fight, evidently laying in wait for Capt. Bob Mof- fit, and his outgoing hay train, when this party of four men appeared within their circle of am- bush. Over one hundred rifles sent their death messengers among the astounded group in the wagon box. All three horses were killed at the first fire, and some of the men wounded. They all jumped from the wagon and attempted a re- treat for cover. A few hundred yards to the left of the road the hunted men made a stand in a buffalo wallow, and in thirty minutes all four were dead. Renaldo, although dressed conspicuously in a gaudy red shirt was the last to fall, as evinced from his position when found. He died within 112 Frontikr AND Indian Life. sieHt of the Hacr staff. The bodies w("re found an hour later by George Rhude and Isaac Howy, of Moffit's train, and taken to the mihtary post. — About the same time an attack was made on the camp at Painted Woods creek, but the Indians were repulsed without loss to the haymakers. The Indians engaged in this affair were from mixed bands of hostile Sioux, and their loss has never been definitely ascertained. One dead Indian, on- ly, was found on the line of the retreating braves. The summer months of 1870, opened at Fort Buford with the usual demonstrations from hostile Sioux. Yellowstone Kelly, a rt^ckless frontiers- man, and his companion Longhair SmiUi success- fully ran the gauntlet and supplied th(; garrison occasionally with fresh elk and deer mc^at from the Yellowstone. Kelly was reckoned a sort of a bor- der Sphinx, and had earned something of an Adam Poe reputation by killing two Sioux two years be- fore near Upper Knife river. He was carrying the Fort Buford mail; was attacked by these two Indians and he shot back. About the middle of June, a party of wood- haulers in the employ of the Government con- tractor while leasurly whacking their bull teams along the trail about two miles above the adobe walls of old F'ort Union, were horrified to see a body of Indians raise up from among the sage brush and open tire at short range. What made the teamsters situation more trying was that they V "~>f 4 r ^w.^/\ ! ^t<-«**; Yellowstone Kelly. Eart,v Days Around Fort Bttford. 113 anticipatino no danger had foolishl}- shot away their ammunition alono- the road that mornine at prairie grouse, plover and targets, and had but Ht- tle left for a time of need. The startled teamsters broke for cover in a timbered ravine, while some mounted scouts ran back to Buford and alarmed the garrison. Meantime, after killing all the cat- tle in the train, the Indians turned their attention to the terrified bullwhackers holed in the ravine, and making a complete surround the exultant red men commenced to feather them with ar- rows and ivould have soon killed them all had not relief Irom the fort came at the opportune time. A call by the contractor for more citizens to help along the lagging work, found the writer and several others of the Fort Stevenson neighbor- hood, on their way to P'ort Buford, early in July of the same year. At the White Earth river we were joined by a band of disgusted wood choppers from a fortified woodyard at North Bend, and were caught up to by George Kiplin the half breed mail carrier and his rolicking partner, "Scotty" Rich- mond. If presentiment of coming shadows cast their spells over men and chain down their thoughts with impending revelation, such forewarning cer- tainly haunted spectre like the movements of the brave half breed on this trip. He was usually rash and reckless, verging the dare-devil order, but after joining oiu" crowd seemed very nervous and was continually expressing his fears that some- thing awful would overtake us before the journey's 114 Frontier AND Indian Life. end. We run the Fort Buford gauntlet safely, hut Kiplin returned to Fort Berthold a corpse. Among the party of wood-choppers from thc^ North Bend, was a young man named Aldrich, commonly known along the river as "Teck" Aid- rich. He was about twenty years old, clear blue eyes, supple and graceful in his motions, tall and straight as an arrow. He wore his hair long — the conventional frontier style — and otherwise togged himself up in the prev^ailing fashion on the border. He was rather bashful in conversation, and seldom spoke out an opinion unless asked to do so, and yet he was the recognized leader of the party. He was a good marksman, a successful hunter, and although in a dangerous neighborhood usually hunted afoot and alone, packing his game into camp on his shoulders, lie became the uni- versal favorite of the whole party, and was voted the spokesman on our entry into the fort. On our arrival we scattered out to the different sta- tions, Teck becoming day guard for the wood con- tractor's camp at the mouth of the Yellowstone, nearly opposite the fort. Guards in these danger- ous and exposed places, were generally chosen for their good sound ears, quick eyesight, and also some reaard for their hunting qualities, as watch- ing around gives them opportunity to note the whereabouts of, and plentiful leasure the con- venience and time to kill and dress ihc-ir game, and thus keep the camp larder well supj)lied with fresh wild meat. Eart.v Days Around Fort Buford. 115 The morning of the 25th of September, of that year, was clear and cahn; the sun arose serenely over the bluffs of the divide, and after a lingering fog slowly raised from the slow rolling waters of these two majestic streams, its rays sparkled and glistened on the heavy dew drops that covered the low valley and high plain. The heavy-leafed cottonwoods glinted in the sunlight with its au- tumn tinted shades of mixed yellow and green, looked soft and picturesque to an admiring eye. — The light saffron colored bluffs on the high divide, alone gave the mornino- view a sombre cast. It was on such a scene as this that Teck Aldrich looked, after having rolled from his blankets and stood on the river bank, gun in hand for his morn- ing's watch and hunt. The fort opposite, by a kind of mirage, rose high above the banks — its whitened walls and shining windows seeming more to optical illusion and the fantasy of imagination, the abode of disembodied spirits, rather than the unappreciated home of a lot of tough old soldiers in the flesh. Young Aldrich had been barbered of his long hair the day before, seemingly a fatal omen to many frontiermen; but with rifle to his shoulder he strode out through the cottonwood grove to the bullberry openings, adjoining the bluffs. He saw neither deer or elk, where on previous morn- ings he had met them in numbers. This alone should have made him pause and reflect; and he probably did, but the* camp would expect a fresh ii6 Frontier AND Indian Life. deer for breakfast, and one he must bring them. He had now advanced to the outside opening near the bluffs, when from the tall grass, and from the screen of bullberry and choke cherry bushes, rose fully two hundred hideously painted and yell- ing savages, each and all eager for his scalp. He did not run. He did not even turn his back; but sprang forward among his swiftly encircling foes, face to face — and though the odds were two hun- dred against one, commenced to pump his Win- chester, and at every crack of the rifle a painted form washed his face in the morning dew — five shots and five dead Indians; but on the sixth shot the plunger of his rifle became misplaced and with a dispairing cry he sprang forward with his gun as club, but his work was done. He was instantly hacked to pieces with tomahawks and knife point- ed war clubs. "I have helped to kill a great many white peo- ple along this river," said Red Shirt, an Uncpapa chief, while on a visit to Grennell's ranch near Strawberry island, in 1875, "but I never saw one fight so well or die so bravely as that boy at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Crow's Breast and Poor Wolf, Gros Ventre Chiefs. A WAR PARTY OF THREE. SOME time diirii>g- the latter part of July, 1870. while with the hay contractor's camp at Fort Buford, we moved up the river bottom to the springs, some twelve miles northwest of the post. The springs were in a large coulee shut up among the hills; and contained considerable p^rass, which our party soon converted into fine hay. One sul- try afternoon, while busy at work, some of the men were surprised at the sudden appearance of a mounted Indian, and who seemed no less sur- prised than they at coming so unexpectedly on a camp of white men at that place. All hands went and picked up their guns and surrounded the In- dian boy — for a boy he proved to be — and as many of the men already had considerable taste of the bitter of Indian hostility, they were not slow in bringing him to a "talk" concerning his business in these parts. He announced himself a Santee — which tribe by the way was in very bad repute at the time along the Upper Missouri. He said, furthermore his destination was Fort Buford where his band were then encamped. From the fact that the boy when first seen was heading directly away from the fort, and that some of the party who claimed to know, said there were no Santees encamped around the post up to that ii8 Frontier AND Indian Life. very morning rather prejudiced the minds of men who wanted but a small excuse for conscience sake to "rub out the Indian." While this examination was going on, being the regular night guard of the camp. I was awak- ened from my midday slumber by one of the day guards who said I was wanted as interpreter in the matter of a "corraled" hidian. Shaking off the blankets I arose, went out and greeted the confused and somewhat frightened boy kindly. — He was mounted upon a hne pony, though the an- imal was in a lather of sweat and seemed weary. The Indian boy had a Hawkins muzzle-loading rifle slime across in front of him and no clothino- on his person but a single breech cloth. Taken altogether, was a very suspicious looking outfit for a man of peaceful habits. My dialectic knowl- edge convinced me the lad was of some San tee band. Some of the party were for killing him out- right, but were shamed out of it by the calmer judgment of others. He was therefore allowed to depart which he did very quickly. My part- ing admonition to him to bear toward the fort so long as he was in sight of our party, or he might be followed up and killed. I half suspected he belonged to or was making his way to Standing Buffalo's band of San tees, vi'ho were then camped somewhere on Milk river. At any rate the young- warrior — if such he was — put in no appearance at Fort Buford, and except with a chronicle anteda- ting the scene at the spring — his fate is unknown. i\ Wai^l Pari y of Three. 119 Two or three clays after the appearance and dis- appearance of the Santee boy, a paymaster and escort arrived at Fort Biiford from Fort Stevenson, who gave an account of an affair that fully ac- counted for the lost and terrified appearance of the Santee lad. The particulars of the affair was ful- ly discussed on iheir arri\al and from which I memorized die following: The escort was commanded by Major Dickey, of the 22nd U. S. Infantry, of Fort Stevenson. The command consisted of twenty men, and the first day out encamped near the Rising Waters, a small stream some twenty-five miles up the river trail from Ft. Berthold. While here encamped thev werf^ met by two mail riders comino- down from Fort Buford, Keplin and "Scotty" Richmond, two, of the most fearless of the frontier mail car- riers. While the parties were thus encamped at their nooning, three Indians were seen coming over the bluffs from the direction of the Fort Ber- thold agency, mounted and riding at full speed, but on seeing the military campers, shied the road and dashed toward some timbered ravines in the direction of the Slides, near the Missouri. Seeing die Indians making this, if not unfriendly, at least unacountable move. Major Dickey ordered up some soldiers and with Kiplin in the lead went after the fleeing Indians. George Kiplin, was one " of the decendents of the orienal Scotch founders of the famous Selkirk settlement on the Red River of the North. His I20 Fronttf.r AND Indian Life. mother was a Cree woman as were most of ihe Indian wives of the original Selkirk colony. Kip- lin was thoroughly conversant with many of the Indian languages contingent to that section of country. He was considered one of the most trustworthy mail carrier's on the northern plains. On this occasion, and at this critical time the mail carriers had secured possession of some bad whiskey and Kiplin was under influence when he led the charge. He was far in advance of the soldiers, but when the pursued reached the foot of a timbered ravine they reined up their panting ponies and awaited with evident unconcern the coming of Kiplin and the soldiers. "Who are you?" yelled Kiplin in Sioux to the Indians, as he rode up within good call, though he halted for reply and seemed evidently discom- fiied by the sublime nonchalance of the Indians. "I am Bad Hand, the Sisseton/' replied the self possessed warrior, and pointing his hand to his companions, added, "these are my friends. I see you are white soldiers. My people are good friends of the whites. Why do you pursue us?" "I have come to fight you," Kiplin said quickly. "Then fight it is !" cried the swarthy Sisseton, raising his gun to his face; with the word a rifle's report, and Kiplin dropped from his horse with a ball through his heart. The triumphant red then dismounted and rushing up to the dead man taking up his charged needle gun and belt of cartridges ran back to the shelter of the grove. A \\\\!-. PaKIVOL ThREK. 121 About this time a large body of mounted In- dians was seen by the solders riding furiously to- ward them from over the brow of a line of bluffs, and the commander, knowing that his duty was to protect the paymaster, and fearing this incoming mass of men were a body of hostile savages with- drew with all haste toward camp. On closer range the Indians were discovered to be Gros Ventres and Mandans, and were in fren- zied pursuit of the very party holed in the ravine. A surround was at once made of the ^rove in which the fugitives were last seen to enter, and in which the unterrified Sissetons stood defiantly at bay. "We have come to kill you. Bad Hand," said Poor Wolf, the proud leader of the Gros Ventres. "You have been a very bad man; killed our peo- ple; stolen our horses. You do not deserve to live, therefore prepare to die." So saying a vol- ley was fired into the ravine. After a few minutes interval, the Sisseton brave spoke out from his covert, and thus replied to the Gros Ventre chief: 'You will kill us. You are hundreds in number, while I am alone. My com- rade is wounded and dying. But bear in mind my enemy. Bad Hand will not go alone to the Spirit land." With these words the talk ended, and all pre- pared for the close of the tragedy. Some one was needed to draw^ the fire from the Sisseton when the rest would rush in to his hiding place before 122 Frontier ANi) Indian Life. he could reload — a very quick motion. hcM'iio- necessary, when the dead mail carrier's capluredi needle gun is remembered, A youno- Mandan was chosen for the ordeal — a fair faced boy whom the writer had often noticed around the Indian \'il lage at Fort Berthold. He was loaded dotvn with the mysteries of Indian superstition; war chains. were sung and then he was rubbed over b}' the priest of the Mandans. after which the p'oor doomed boy started for the timber covef'KTi"*! ''''■ ." A shot from the brush and the young '"Mrindai'k was dead. Two hundred shots from withofft^'^ncl Bad Hand is in his death throes. ««.ti^ The Santees were then scalped and the h(\nd of the brave Bad Hand was cut off to be aiKFlMi''i''iect in grand triumphal entry into their village. '" '- - ' ' ' "Where is the third Sisseton Santee," exclaimed the Gros Ventre chief, after a thorough search had been made of the premises, "we followed three thieves from our horse pastures!" ■ Where indeed was he ? I will answ^er. The father died that he might save his son. It was. three days after this event tliat the Indian boy had appeared at our hay camp above b^ort Buford, Lake of the Painted Woods in 1SG9. LSGEND OF THE PAINTED WOODS. THERE are two considerable bodies of timber along the connecting strips that follow the Upper Missouri's two thousand mile course, that while not particularly larger than other timber stretches along its devious line, yet were long marked by the red natives as points of hollowed interest in epochs of their tribel history but are were fast disappearing with time's unending evo- lutions. Each of these forests were but the pro- duct of the "made" lands of the ever changing river's course narrowed down to very limited space between two ever attending high walls whose crusts are of adamantine hardness. Each of these disconnected groups of forests had been known as Painted Woods and a space of nearly two hundred miles separted them. The upper line of timbered groves so named stretched for a space of several miles along the Missouri, between the mouths of the lower Little Muddy and the Yellowstone ri\'ers, and it seemed to have been known only by that name within the last hundred years, or thereabout. The lower, or Painted Woods proper, is situated along the Missouri river between the Square Buttes, in the present county of Oliver, and Tur- tle creek, in the county of McLean, North Dakota. 124 Frontier AND Indian Life. The river bottom lands about the woods; die low bench lands of the ascending- plains; the high uplands and the ragged, rough looking buttes, are grouped in fantastic shapes that make the whole landscape pleasing to an artistic eye. To the south, the great domes of the kalcndos- copic Square Buttes stand out like mighty fort- resses, bold and impregnable looking as a Giberal- ter; gloomy and lonely as the Pyramids on Africa's sandy plain. To the west, the high ridged graceful beauty — the Antelope hills meet the vision; while to die north your eyes wander along the ciu'ved lines of the mighty Missouri to the great bend where sits in mirage halo, the showy little town of Washburn. To the east, high above the uneven prairies, and deep defiles — pinnacles and land points covered with stone — towers the frowning- buttes of the Yanktoney, whose exterior garp change readily with the seasons, and like a huge time clock that it is, heed the pas.sing hour if it does not record it. Along the northeastern border of the woods, half hidden among strips of forests of ash. willow and Cottonwood, lies the gourd shaped lake of the Painted Woods — the Broken Axe lake of the Sioux; the Medicine Lodge lake of the early day trapper, and a paradise for wild game. — Here among the thickets, and underneath the shades of spreading trees, the elk and the deer were seen in their wild natural beauty; here along the ever placid shores of th<" lake, the industrious Li CEND OF THE Painted Woods. 125 beaver once bii ikied their houses in fancied security, hut in an evil hour drove to destruction by the rovino trapper, against whose arts the poor indus- trious and harmless dwellers of these shady re- treats, parried in points of sagacity — but parried in vain. Here, too, the brown bear, in his coat of cinna- mon hue, once luxuriated among the grape, the plum, and the toothsome bullberry, and found among the trunks of massive trees, a good pro- tection from hoary frosts and blizzardy blasts in his long winter nap. The wild buffalo of the plain, also, found the cooling shades and limpid waters a resting wallow, where with him and his kind a dozing summer's day was lost in the count of passing time. In the rememberance of the oldest fur trader or trapper of the northern plains, the Painted Woods had been known as the forbidden or neutral ground between the Sioux on the one hand and Mandans, Gros Ventres and Aricarees on the other. There had been exceptional short periods, w4ien by main strength of numbers or boldness, one side then the other occupied the land. But to meet here, was to fight here. The grusome legends about the shock of arms between these warlike savage men, when told by the venerable aboriginal keeper of the tribel records, would take the hypnotic mind of the listening guest through the fumt:;s of an after-supper smoke, to the dr(?amy hours of anoth(T day. 126 Frontier AND Indian Life. The last encounter but one, took place in April, 1869. Although the writer was not a witness of the affair, yet it fell to my lot to attend the last funeral rites of one of the slain. The particulars of the hostile meeting was as follows : A roving party of Mandans was suddenly beset by a war party of Two Kettle Sioux. After a few inter- change of shots, one of the Sioux warriors step- ped out to the front of the line facing his enemies asked in a loud voice, who dare meet him in sin- gle combat? "I," replied a young Mandan' "will meet you ?" and so saying rushed forward and at a twinkling shot down his antagonist. As the Man- dan was in the act of drawing his knife and reach- ing out to grasp his enemy's scalp-lock, the dying Sioux drei\^ his bow and sent its fatal shaft through the heart of his victorious foe. The surviving combatants, after an attempted renewal of strife, went their several ways and so ended the Indian "affair of honor" among the painted trees. One beautiful autumn day in 1872, after a weary morning's jog around the trap line, I lay down upon a grassy knoll near the shore of the beautiful lake, ruminating in silent thought and listlessly watching for the time; being, the myriads of wild fowl skimming lightly over the lake — seeming alike fearless of the hunter and the hawk , when I was startled by the hum of many voices. who on approaching proved to be a hunting parly of Mandans. After the usual fussy salutations that the wild Indians are prone to indulge in when LifiKM^ or HIE Painted W'oods. 127 iheir numbers and humor justify hilariiy. They sat clown in the usual Indian fashion, in semi-circle form and liohtcd up the pipe and started it on its rounds of curling, fragrant smoke and brotherly 00 od will. The leader of the party proved to be Scar Face, the young son of Red Buffalo Cow, head chief of the Mandans. This yf>ung fellow had always cul- tivated a sincere attachment for the whites, and I. on more than one occasion. relie4 on his good will to keep his meddlesome companions from pluck- ino- mv spare baggage on these lone fur hunting excursions. After the pipe had passed the rounds two or three times, and with the tobacco pouch placed by die side of its carrier, I asked my young Mandan friend if he could tell me why the Red people called there neighboring timber points the I'ainted Woods ? "Yes, Trapper replied the young chief, "and if you listen I will tell you." — My ears are open," I replied in Indian fashion, and after a short pause he told the following story: "Many long years ago, when the Mandan vil- lao-es were larpe and numerous, they occupied and were masters of all this section of country. The Sioux lived hundred of miles toward the land of the rising sun, but then as now, — wicked men, — came here to fight and kill our people and drive off our herds. We were strong then, and often brought the horrors of war to their own lodges. Once when the hearts of all sank heavy with the bloody turmoil, and under restless insecurity, 128 Frontier AND Indian Life. a pipe of peace was sent forth unto all the warring bands north, to meet in a great peace council at this lake, then but a mere arm of the river. The Mandans assembled from their neighboring vil- lages. From the far north came the frost eared Assinaboines and their tandem trains of dogs; from the west came the black leg Anahaways, well dressed, haughty and silent. From the northwest came the plumed and painted Gros Ventres, and with them as guests rode the Qaily dressed Crows, with suspicious hearts and prying eyes. And from the south came up the Yank- toney with their cold stare and silent tongue, riding bands of stolen horses. Then last came the hid- den faced Sissetons who spoke only among them- selves. Our fathers as owners of the land were the in- tertainers, and received their guests with extended hands and good hearts. Buftaloes, elks, antelopes and deer were plentiful, and harvests of pump- kins, squashes, melons and corn were bountiful — the season of the tinted leaves had brought them clear balmy days, so that this grand comingling of these northern nations, was but a continuous spread of gormandizing feasts — an assemblage of joy and brotherly good will. Sometime during this happy state of affairs, the jealous eyes of some of the young Mandan war- riors detected the assidious attentions of a gay young Yanktoney, to the daughter of a Mandan chief. She was winsome and beautiful — the belle LiGEXi) OF inK Painted Woods. 129 of all the villages, and many were the wooers who offered her their hearts and their hands only to be refused. And, now, that she seemed to encour- age the proff('red and profuse blandishments of the Yanktoney — a stranger and an enemy, — one who had, perhaps, embued his hands in the blood of their murdered relatives, troubled them sorely. They remonstrated without effect — they plead without favor. The girl quietly and determinedly prepared to quit ihe lodge of her father and the village of her good people, to follow the uncertain fortunes of he who had entranced the confiding h^^art and bewildered her mind. When all devices had failed to separate the lov- ers, the soldiers of the Mandan town of which the maid's father was chief, issued an edict, and exe- cuted it. They assembled at the midnight hour and slew the Yanktoney in his love's embrace. The murder was done. The war-whoop rang out through the darkness and was echoed and re- echoed from lodge to lodge and band to band, un- til all the camps were stirred up in a mighty up- roar. The comrades of the murdered lover were told in loud acclaim by the criers of the camp what had happened. After their inomentary daze was over the Yanktoneys strung their bows, drew their arrows from their quivers and gathered around the dead man's bier, where the mourning maiden kneeling m grief ; in abject woe, was cru- elly filled with arrows, and left her gasping in death. All then dispersed to wait for the light of day. 130 Frontier AND Indian Life. With the licrht of morning came war — the sack of camps and villages — the lonely murders — the burning of forests of timber and the wide ranges of dry grass upon the plains — waste and want and gameless deserts, deep snow; all followed in train. The bodies of the murdered lovers ere the place was forsaken, were in custom of the tribe placed together in the branches of a mighty elm, near where we now sit. The tree withered and died. Its bark pealed from its trunk and became glazed and whitened like the bones o{ its exposed dead. b^or these many years the war has raged. We have no forgiveness to offer.' We ask for none. As years followed in war and we were drove west of yonder big river, the Sioux especially in winter made their war party rendesvous of attack here. They painted up before onslought, and in mere bravado counted their "coup" with artistic flourish in character upon the whitened body of the lover's tree. We in turn retaliated in kind, and carric^d the hieroglyphic art to a bunch of great cotton- woods that stood near by; hence. Painted Woods. "This my friend," he concluded "is the story from our fathers." When the young chief concluded, the war- riers remounted and filed past the old Indian grave yard, the tattered bicTs in numbers then still stand- ing, and near where the famous old elm had once stood. They here paused for a moment then trail- ing out of sight through the high bushes, left me in silent communion over the It^gend and the passing by of the narrator and his 1:>and, like shadows of an imperfect dream. THE LETTER IN CIPHER. FORT Stevenson was established in June, 1867, bcinor the last post built to complete the mil- itar)' chain between the Red River of the North and mouth of Yellowstone river. It was planned and constructed as a military post, there being no especial fears of hostile Indians, as the village of the Mandans, Gros Ventres and Aricarees, was but seventeen miles west of the post, and these were friendly to the Government, thereby making it uncomfortable for small bands of marauding Sioux, that usually infest the neighborhood of a military post built within the limits of their range, llius it was that the post graveyard never contained the name of but one soldier's last rest- ing place marked on the head board "killed by Indians." a familliar enough inscription on the tombstones at the burying grounds of the neigh- boring posts. To men brought up in thickly populated com- munities of the east with the advantages of so much diversity in their every-day life, a small post so isolated from the busy world as Fort Stevenson was, made lixing there very tedious and irksome to such, and consequently when a soldier was dis- charged from service, he usually took himself out of the country as soon thereafter as possible. — 132 Frontier AND Indian Life. The unlucky gambler or the whiskey drinker^ often came out of the service on the wrong side of their final statements, and were therefore often compelled, by their necessitous condiiion, to either re-enlist or hunt work in some neighboring wood camp. Robert E , a good appearing, tidy and trusty soldier, was one of those who had unfort- unately contracted a love of whiskey somewhere in his eastern home, the taste for which, in his case, at least, frontier isolation could not eradicate. He came ou.t of the service at Fort Stevenson, June, 1869, with a good honest discharge, but a small purse, and sought employment in a wood- yard, but after blistering his hands over a small pile of wood for a few days, came back to the post and re-enlisted in his old company to do duty for Uncle Sam for another term of years. On the I ith day of June, 1S70, Carlos Reider, or Charley Reeder, as he was more commonly called, a German, and proprietor of a wo(>dyard at the Painted Woods, was killed at his place by one of his choppers, known by name as Johnny Buck- tail. (3n the same day Bucktail started with some witnesses of the affair, to Fort Stevenson and sur- rendered himself as a prisoner to the miliiary au- thorities at that place. Major Wainwright, tlie officer in command, immediat(;ly started out Dr. Mathews, the post surgeon, and a detail of men. to find Reeder and l)ury him, and take possession of his effects. The soldiers e^thered toijether all The Letter in Cipher. 133 his portable property, including his teams and re- turned to the Fort, reported to the quartermaster and turned over the property to his care. Among the dead man's household trumpery was a small batch of old books and some correspon- dence, and with these the following letter in ci- pher, drafted from memory of original, but be- lieved to be substantially corrct : FoRi' Stevenson, Sep. 18, '69. Friend Charley — Paymaster here soon. Come. Bring big gun of poison. M. at o. p. Shave tails. Don't talk. Money plenty. When— Bob E Bucktail was tried for Reeder's murder before the U. S. court at Yankton the year following, and after a lengthy hearing was convicted of man- slaughter and sentenced to one year's imprison- ment in the Fort Madison, Iowa, penitentiary. The prisoner's side of the case had been ably defended by Bartlett Tripp, afterwards Dakota Territory's chief justice under the first Cleveland admistration, and under the second term, Amer- ica's ambassador to Austra. The prosecution in the case had been opened by the prosecuting at- torney Cowles, but who early turned it over to young Williams, a modest but aspiring bar- rister who here made his first public plea — an elo- quent and forcible one on behalf of justice to the memory of the friendless dead man. Attorney E. A. Williams later on served several terms in the terrttorial legislature; once speaker of the house, 134 Frontter AND Indian Life. and after the northern half came Into the union a?; the State of North r3akota, he was one of the most useful and talented members of the constitutional convention, and was soon thereafter appointed Surveyor General of the new State by President Harrison. Major WainwnVht, of Fort Stevenson beino summoned before the court at Yankton as a wit- ness on the Bucktail trial, the command of that post devolved upon Major Dickey, the second of- ficer in rank. The new commander's first official act of any consequence was the arrest of E and his confinement in the guard house. The nervious officer thought he saw in this ciphered letter a key to a terrible conspiracy that had most providentially miscarried. In his interpretation of the missive, Reeder, with E and possibly others were in a conspiracy to intercept the pay- master on his regular cash distribution visit to the post, and rob him of the plethoric rolls of green- backs that he usually carried around with him on such occasions. The word "poison" he took in its literal sense and saw a narroi\^ escape of him- self and fellow officers and such of the garrison likely to be troublesome. That the conspiracy must have failed or thwarted from some unknown cause, or had been deferred to another time was made evident from the date of the letter, and the arrival and departure of the paymaster at the lime specified without accident or anything of a suspi- cious nature. The Major, as officer of the day. TiiF, Lettek in Cipher. 135 had orievoiis trouble some time before with Ree- der about supplying his soldiers with whiskey, thereby causing- insubornation and trouble, and on one occasion had him arrested and shipped out of the country. E , on his part did not not deny the author- ship of the letter and his explanation was simple enoucrh to all who cared to crive it thought or who were cognizant of the facts, except the doughty Major in question. Reeder had been in the habit of trading with some of the bar keepers of the passing steamers for a cheap kind of whiskey for the soldiers, and E being one of best cus- tomers acted as a kind of a middleman in the transaction, for such of his companions who cared for the liquid and its attendant effects. "M. o. p." meant to meet at the old place, that being on the reservation limit at Snake creek. Newly en- listed soldiers were dubbed in post parlance "shave tails," in humorous take-off to the fact that all newly purchased mules by Government have their tails closely shaved. The two carriers who had brouoht Reeder the letter were new sol- dier recruits and he was so warned — as the sale of whiskey around a military post otherwise than what the regular sutler kept, was interdicted. — "Big gun" answered for a ten gallon keg, and "plenty money" to pay for it would come with the paymaster. Owing to the officers well known antipathy to Reeder, the soldier's arrest was at first looked T36 Frontier AND Indian Life. upon as a mere diversion in fav^or of the prisoner Biicktail's release at Yankton, but after events did not show it. The letter had been placed be- fore his honor Judge Brookings, the presiding functionary before whom the case was being tried, but was considered of no consequence and irrevi- lent to the case, merely showing up the murdered man in the light of a worthless character. Soon after these events the command at F"ort Stevenson was relieved by two other companies and with the prisioner E still confined with- out a hearing, they all moved to quarters else- where. Fort Sully is a handsomely constru.cted and beautifully located post. It was named after a noble old hero of the frontier, who figured so prominently on these northern plains after the Sioux war of Minnesota, in 1S62. The fort was established July 25th, 1866, and intended to be occupied by four companies of soldiers. It is built upon a high bench overlooking the meander- ings of the great river Missouri. From the wavy meadows of the Okabosia on the south to the dis- tant breaks of the bluffs along the Cheyenne rivers on the north and west; the whole landscape is en- chantinpf and weird. The summer breezes a.re ever blowing — gentle airy zephyrs we may call them in fine summer weather — that are ever fan- ning the cheeks of the weak and slrong — the just and the unjust — as indiscriminate in its distribu- TiiH Letier in Cii'iiEK. 137 tion of favors as th(i great fiery orb of day himself. The month of Aug-ust 1872, was passing quiet- ly on at this delightful summer post. Indian troubles had long since ceased, and peace and quiet reigned on every hand. On one of these sdll August days of that year, a tall, gaunt spec- tre — a mere skeleton of a man — came hobblingf out of the south gates, leaning heavily upon his cane. Once outside where he could breathe the free air of heaven, he looked around about him in a vacant abstracted way, as though the bright sun, the clear sky and the hue landscape of the green fringed river had no charms for him — yet they seemed so new and so strange. His eyes were glassy and sunken and the pallor of hurry- ing death was branded on his brow. After staring around for a few moments in a helpless sort of a way, he sank heavily upon the ground in a dazed manner, and in utter languidness, as unable lon- ger to bear up with the burdens of attendant ills to his tired emaciated body. "Good morning Bob, how do you feel this morn- ing" said a pleasant faced soldier passing that way. "Oh, I am dying my dear boy, I am dying," feebly answered the the invalid, as he turned his e;yes in pensive sadness to the ground. This dying man — this physical wreck, — was Robert E who but two years before was the finest looking specimen of the physical soldier 138 Frontier AND Indian Life. to be found in the garrison at Fort Stevenson. — Eighteen long and weary months chained with double irons to the oaken floor of the guard room; a punishment that the horrors of the soli- tary dungeon would be tame to^ or the enforced torture of a vermin infested bastile, commonplace. Eighteen months. I say, lying chained down on the broad of his back, in stress and pain, in hoarse supplications for a trial or for death. Would a kind God in his mercy now grant the one, as the madman in a Major's uniform had so long refused the other. i)ULL iiOA'l'. BULL BOATING THROUGH THE SIOUX COUNTRY, THERE are time*^ that a little foolishness sway our minds into actions which at another time would appear flighty and ridiculous. After the passing of many years, 1 think the inauguration and execution of a bull boat journey in 1871, was conceived at a period when the bump of foolish- ness within the phrenological chart developed into tumor-like proportions on the craniums of the pro- jectors of that voyage. Many of the frontiermens' dull hours or inactive spells, during the taunts and banters and accom- pany the breaks of listless conversation, often re- solve to do things, that they would gladly retract could they be permitted to do so, without subjecting themselves to.the ridicule of their quizzical com- panions — resolved acts of some foolhardy scheme that have neither justification or excuse. When Yellowstone Kelly and Stub Wilson, at their woodyard near Porcupine creek, in the fall of 1 87 1, waked up one morning to find that twenty- five lodges of hostile Uncpapas were encamped uncomfortably near them, and finding their pres- ence undiscovered or unsuspected, discretion and good judgment should have aided these two men to keep quiet and shady for a day or two at least, inasmuch as the band were mere travelers and not seeking trouble. 142 Frontier AND Indian Life. writing his book and courting the Princess Grass. Unfortunately, Belden was not at home, and before we landed, beady black eyes had been peering at us from the bushes and our uncouth "Padonee" appearance, and our bull boats so terrified them that the half breed family ran screaming Indian murder up through the brush, not even stopping at their houses, but evidently made for the Black- foot camp somewhere along the Moreau. Concluding it was best to move on, we drifted down river to the Swan lake bars and taking a narrow shore shoot, were dismayed to see at a point ahead of us what appeared to be about twenty Indians calmly awaiting our approach. We were anticipating something of this kind, believing that the scared half breeds at Martin's had alarmed Grass's camp, and thinking we were the advance of an Aricaree war party, were preparing to round us up. Nor was the illusion speedly dispelled as we drifted lazily along the sluggish eurrant. One of them in our sight made the blanket sig- nal to others, by us unseen. But like the waking from an unpleasant dream some of the dreaded warriors took flight in the air. They were turkey buzzards; had been regaling on a carcass, and the mirage that often occur at this season on the river had magnified them many fold in size. In the neighborhood of Devils island we rested on a beech on the west side of the river where the year previous we had witnessed, if not an unre- corded tragedy at least an unraveled mystery. Bull Boating Through the Sioux Country. 143 A party of eleven of us was descending the river from Fort Buford under deputy marshal Galbrath as witnesses before the U. S. court at Yankton on the Reeder murder trial. While at the Grand river agency, the marshal was advised by the military of the escape of a deserter from that garrison taking with him a large white dog. We were eating dinner at this bar when we es-. pied across the river on the ridge of bluffs a man and dog answering the discription of the deserter. About one-mile below, also on the opposite side of the river and near a small grove of trees were about twenty lodges of Indians. It seemed the In- dians espied the man and dog, as four of them mounted their ponies, and with glistening rifles drawn from their covers started out toward him but owing to his high position, hidden from view. Four other Indians quickly followed in like man- ner. The first four ran up a coulee beyond and the last four up a coulee in front of him, but all as yet were hidden from his sight. The four behinci arose first but he espied them and ran only to be confronted by the other four, when apparently dis- mayed he gave up and was hustled out of our sight in a coulee. The marshal refused to allow us to go to the man's assistance. Some of the Indians' ponies were in sight, unsaddled and grazing, but that was all. An hour later we passed on. The agency people reported these twenty lodges, "bad Indians." The deserter and dog were never again heard from. 144 Frontier AND Indian Life. But to the bull boat journey. Within a few miles of the Cheyenne agency, on the east side of the river we noticed a large party of red people huddled together and evidently engaged in dan- cing. We were out in the river and thought to slip by unnoticed. But that was not our luck. — The dancing stopped and excited appearing In- dians gathered along shore and a fusilade of bullets whistled about our heads. We hoisted a white flag and was called ashore. Our poor boats were unmerciful thumped and kicked and the ominious words "seechee wah-doc-a," (bad to look at) rang in our ears in full some warning. San tee Jim of the party whom I had previously known, interce- ded to save us from further molestation, but give warning that riding in the bull boats meant break- ers ahead for us. When we came near the Cheyenne agency we changed our paddling methods; fixed the boats in line, kept the middle of the river, and so avoided the lynx eyed Indians of that place. Fort Sully we passed in the night, and about midnight land- ed at a hay camp on the Okabosia about ten miles below the military post. A flickering light at the camp had been our beacon for several miles of rough and dangerous riding through a boasterous sea. We found all asleep, so quietly carried our boats up near the fire; turned them bottom side up and went to sleep. At daylight we were awakened by slampinq^ feet and found ourselves and belongings subjects for Bull Boating Through the Sioux Country. 145 inspection, and the inquirers were holding con- versation in an undertone. Presently a lank meat eating Texan drawled out to us, at the same time eyeing suspiciously the war vessles of the fighting Aricarees: "What is these things — a balloon ?" We arose fi'om under our skin canopies and proceded to explain to the unsophisticated young man and his stareing companions that the vessels were of the water not of the air. They could not be made to believe that navigation was possible in a skin covered basket until we went spinning around in the circling currant after launching. Our next stopping point was Tompkin's ranch at Medicine creek. The proprietor was affable and obliging and we do not think he deserved his hard luck a year later, viz: the confiscation and burn- ing of his property, and can but speak a good word for this generous Georgian who gave up his life trying to save another from harm. From Tompkin's place we hired a rig to take us overland to Port Thompson, abandoning the boats; partly owing to the tediousness of this kind of navigation, and partly owing to a false rumor reaching the Two Kettle band at Fort Thompson, that a war party of their old enemies the Aricarees were swooping down upon them in bull boats. We camped near that fort the night follow- ing, and owing to some one informing the Indians that we were the advance of the war party; having cached our boats near Tompkin's ranch, a big well 146 Frontier AND Indian Life. armed party came out to interview us. A half breed questioned adroitly in English and some of the warriors catechised us in Sioux. Finally a lit- tle old black looking Indian asked us some ques- tions in Aricaree and I answered in the same lan- guage. That settled it. Twenty warriors armed with knife pointed war clubs stamped about us while we vainly tried to slumber. Nor was se- curity ours until two days later when we crossed Choteau creek on the south line of the Yanktons. One month later after the events just recorded, being the last day of the month of August — as passengers on the boat Peninah, we steamed up to the landing at Grand river agency about night- fall. Charley and John McCarthy, young Sam Galpin and one other came aboard as was the cus- tom at wood landings. ' They had just returned as pall bearers from the new graveyard, where all that was mortal of the young and talented George P. Belden, had been laid t-o rest. Three days be- fore the * 'White Chief" left the agency astride his mule bearing silks and fineries for his accept- ed bride, the Princess Grass, who resided with her father along the banks of the timber-lined Moreau. He was followed from the agency by a jealous red rival, who watched his opportunity and murdered Belden while in the act of drinking from a spring on the lonely Moreau trail, twelve miles from the agency. These pall bearers have now, also passed away — and two of their graves, will remain to us unknown until Gabriel blows his last and final call. Chaeles Reynolds, [Lonesome Charley] Cus- ter's Chief Scout at the Little Big Horn. LONSSOMS CHARLEY. ONE day m the early siipimer of 1870, there appeared at the lower,; ^.y^inted Woods, of the then Territory of Dakota, a young man about tweniy-four years of age, swinging a Sharp's 44 calibre. So grains charge, rifle over his shoulder and leading a pony in pack. He unostentiously gave his name as Charley Reynolds, and his occu- pation that o( a professional huntsman. This young man was about five feet eight inch- es in sLature; heavy set and somewhat round- shouldered; a pair of keen grey eyes, habituated to a restless penetrating look; with rather unso- ciable, non communicative habit. His voice was soft in mode of expression — almost feminine — and what was very uiuisiial among rovers of the bor- der, used no tobacco in any form; nor was he ever seen by his companions under the influence of in- toxicating drink. Such were the writer's first im- pressions on the personal appearance, and first acquaintance with this noted froqtie^, wanderer. He had passed the previous VYgiter around the okl Grand river agency, and,at Gayton's ranch on the c^ast bank of the MissouritHver, nearly oppos- ite the Standing Rock. Ini!j|,h^^early spring he moved up near Fort Rice and^^^l^ye there first displayed his remarkable gifts as a''''hunter ' that made him so much after notoriety along the Up- per Missouri country. 148 Frontier and Indian Life. He contracted with the post commissary to supply the garrison of F'ort Rice with all fresh wild meat needed at the post. His fame as a success- ful hunter spreading up the river, the officers of Fort Stevenson also requested him to furnish that post in like manner. He associated himself with Joseph Deitrich, afterward a well known business man of North Dakota's capital city. Por about two years these pre-eminently successful hunters made the neutral range between the Sioux and the allied tribes around Fort Berthold, their hunting grounds. It was while hunting in the Painted Woods re- gion that "Reynold's luck" became a word of whispered familiarity among envious hunters, and various studied explanations were indulged in by disappointed nimrods who could — many of them at least— explain their own disappointment, as being game stalkers decidedly out of luck. Reynolds intuitive knowledge of the habits of wild animals such as the elk, antelope and deer, was, indeed marvelous, and could have only been gained by a very close study of these animals habits. In the writer's presence he would often say that he would kill a deer or elk feeding at a certain place on a certain kind of herb or vine at a certain hour of the day, and would almost in- variably return from the hunt with a token of the accomplishment of his promise. The large amount of game killed by the soli- tary rifle of this extraordinary hunter, brought or LoNF.soME Charley. 149 sent to the military forts became a subject of much discussion amr»no the neicrhborinsf Indian tribes, who to a certain extent depended for food upon the very game Reynolds was slaughtering. The feeling particularly grew upon the Indians of the Fort Berthold agency, many of whom were themselves good hunters, but Reynolds so far eclipsed them, that they believed he had as an as- sistant some strange supernatural power they term in a general way "medicine." On one occasion while visiting at the Fort Ber- thold Indian agency, he leasurely and unconcern- edly took his gun on his shoulder and walked down among the willows along the river about one mile from the village. In less than an hour he returned with the carcasses of two deer. This incident, to the wondering Indians savored of the same feel- ing, to their excited imagination, that the strange doings of a Signor Blitz, or Wyman the Wizard of the North, had. with their jugglary tricks im- pressed intelligent, brain-cultured audiences of our own race; the Indians had never seen a deer, or track of a deer even, for years past among the willows where the magic hunter had brought forth these two deer, nor would they believe the thing possible until a party of them went to the spot to see if such deer made tracks in the sand like other deer or were they but ghostly visitations; the pro- duct of the sorcerer. The climax to the Indian's patience and fore- bearance was finally exhausted in the matter during 150 Frontier AND Indian Life. the winter of 1874, when the hunter Reynolds started out from Fort Berthold for an elk hunt along the Little Missouri river, taking as compan- ion for the trip, Peter Buchaump, the Second, a young half breed Aricaree. At the mouth 'of Cherry creek they came upon a herd of eight elk. when as was his wont, Reynolds killed them all without hardly changing his position. After dress- ing them they loaded as much on the wagon as. it would hold, and then cacheing the balance from the depredations of wolves and coyotes, they re- turned to the agency. Now, Buchaump, was a pretty intelligent half breed, and while in many ways as superstitious as a full blood, he at times felt disposed to play on the Indians' credulity. While knowing thes(; In- dians wonderment at Reynolds' strange gifts as a hunter, and himself half believinfr that the hunter carried some ma^ic charm, so when ctihtuIous Pete entered the village he had a wonderful story to tell to the gaping crowd of interested listeners. — He related various strange capers of the White Hunter That Never Goes Out For Nothing, — for such was the name Reynolds had received from the red people of the village. Buchaump detailed to the Indians the story of finding of the tracks of a band of elk at Little Missouri, and that as soon as Reynolds assured himself that the trail was fresh, he took from a hidden pocket a Hack bottle and poured out some of the contents along the trail and then sat down on a loo for an hour LoNFSOME Charley. 151 or so when every elk returned in its own tracks and Reynolds had nothino- further to do but shoot and butcher. As might have been expected Bu- chaumps story roused the jealous, famine-haunted Indians to a pitch of superstitious fury. Reynolds, all unconscious of the gathering storm was quietly taking his ease at his boarding house — Trader Malnorie's place. The veteran trader all at once found his premises surrounded by about two hun dred Gros Ventres, who, as the elk were killed on lands which they laid claim as Gros Ventre terri- tory, and consequently the grievance in question was their own. Cherry-in-the-mouth, the Kidney, and other leaders of the Gros Ventre soldier band led the warriors. Many of the agency employees noting the excitement and fearing the outcome, had hustled themselves over to P^ort Berthold, and barred the gates. Malnorie, terribly excited, attempted to peacify the yelling mob of reds but failed. They demanded that Reynolds give up the black bottle — that source of all mischief — the cause of rapid decimation of the wild game; or in the event of refusal, the alternative was death. — Throueh the intercession of Malnorie and some of the chiefs their demands were modified. They would give the best mule in camp for that black bottle, and again the hunter denied possession. — Once more they became angered, and some of them drew their knives and made a rush for the hunter's team, which was standing hitched near by, with evident intention of cutting the horses throats. 152 Frontier AND Indian Life. Reynolds quickly leveled his gun at the at the formost, saying to Malnorie at the same time: — "Tell them the first one touches a horse dies !" The aim of the dreaded riHe had its effect, though it has been said Cherry-in-the mouth and Kidney pulled Reynolds' mustache in the melee. As the Aricarees had remained passive during the fracas the hunter made them a free gift of two of the elk carcasses, but to the Gros Ventres he gave not a pound. The discomfited reds then gave out that the would "hx" the hunter on his return trip to the cache, and although he started out alone, and was followed the entire day at a safe distance byeight redoubtable warriors, a glimpse of fresh Sioux "sign" saved him from further molestation on that trip. Charles Reynolds was born in Warren County, Illinois, in 1844. His parents were both Kentuck- ians, the father, Dr. Reynolds, was a physician of extensive practice, and was a man of fine menial attainments. The family then consisting of pa- rents and seven children, moved to Coles County of the same State, in the spring of 1854, where Charley remained until he was about sixu^en years of age, when he left home and made; his way to Atchison, Kansas, and joined an emigranl outfit- ting train for California, but ihe party being at- tacked on I'ole creek near the forks of the Platte river, where several of the party were killed by Indians and their stock tiriven off. This misfor- LoMsoME Charley. 153 tune necossitated a return down the trail toward Fort Kearney. In the meantime young Reynolds formed the acquaintance of an old wolfer named Green, who had quarters on one of the islands of Plaue river. One of the boys first experience with the cranky old fellow, and which did not add to his admiration, was on the occasion of a friend- ly visit from a band of Skedee or Wolf Pawnees. Passing that way, they did not forgo their usual custom of calling and asking for something to eat. Nor did the old fellow forgo his usual custom of appearing pleased at their presence when he was not. The genial appearing host ordered young Reynolds to manufacture a corn pome and when worked to its proper consistency, the wolfer then took the dough, and when not observed by the hungry Pawnees seasoned with a full bottle of str)'chnine poison and then put to bake in the "dutch" oven. After the bread was cooked it was spread before the red guests, who ate of it cheerily and heartily, and wh(;n the repast was finished, they all arose, shook hands with their intertainers and departed. The old chap's ignorance alone preventing a cowardly and uncalled for murder of several friendly Indians. The heat in the oven, of course, neutralizing the poisonous effect of the drug. Some time after this affair they pulled freight and moved out to the Middle Park, Colorado, where the wolfer's apprentice was treated to an- other su.rprise. While out hunting one day they 154 Frontier AND Indtan Life. came to where an Indian woman — presumedly a White river Ute — was buried in a tree top. The old reprobate shook her down on the ground and set a line of wolf traps about the corpse. This incident was more than the boy could well stand and thinking that perhaps during another shortage of wolf bait, might find his own body in demand, he took his traps and with a morning twilight lined the direction of Fort Laramie, thence down the Platte river to the towns on the Missouri. At the breaking out of the war young Reynolds enlisted in the i6th Kansas — a noted regiment, and served in the first three years of the war in the various campaigns in which his regiment was engaged along the southwestern border. The greater part of this time the young soldier was de- tailed on scouting service. In the autumn of 1865, in company with a man named Wamsley, Reynolds started out on a tra- ding trip to the plains in southwestern Kansas. — At some place on Rabbits Ear creek, near the old Smoky Hill overland trail, they were jumped by a band of southern Cheyennes. In the fight that followed, Wamsley was killed and the wagon and goods captured. Reynolds saved himself by a de- termined resistance from an old abandoned wolf- ers dug-out until night set in, when with the help of intense darkness he crawled past the cordon of watchers, and taking a westernly direclion made his way to Trinidad, thence down to .Santa Fee, New M(;xico's capital city. Lonesome Ciiaklev. 155 While wintering- at Santa Fee. he fell in love with and marri^^d a Mexican girl. But after a sea- son of wedded bliss, the terror of all dreamy young married men when favored with one — the ever critical mother-in law — who guards her daugh- ter's desdny with the same solicitude and care within the humble walls of a Mexican Greaser's adobe ranch, as well as in the stately homes of the fair Aryan. The old lady harried the young man for his want of thrift, and his matrimonial pros- pects had such an uncertain outlook, that he bid farewell to wife, mother-in-law, and the prolific land of Spanish half breeds, and made his way back across the plains. The autumn of 1866, found Reynolds hunting buffalo on the upper branches of the Republican river. The country about the Republican river, being also the favorite hunting grounds of many of the tribes of the plains particulary those hostile to white occupation of the country, and conse- quently after several "close calls," he concluded the profits would not justify the risk and exposure incident to such lonely camp life, so he crossed over to the noted Jack Morrow's ranch on Platte river. Here he remained for the winter, but in the spring he had some trouble with an officer of the neighboring post. Fort MePherson, which end- ed in a shooting scrap, the military man losing an arm. In the summer of 1S72, an expedition left Fort Rice on the Missouri, to protect the North Pacific 156 Frontier AND Indian Life. railroad surveyors in running their line along the Yellowstone valley. Reynolds accompanied the expedition as scout and hunter. Two English nobleman also accompanied the expedition to see something of wild Indians and buffalo. They saw plenty of both, and when out to the furthermost limit of the summer's survey. General Stanley detailed Reynolds to accompany and guide the English bloods through the Yellowstont; National Park, and thence to Boseman, Montana. Rey- nolds acquitted himself in a creditable and satis- factory manner, and was very favorably mentioned by them in their book, which th(iy published on their return to England. In the early summer of 1874, General Custer received permission from the Government to lead an expedition to the Black Hills of Dakota, and selected Reynolds as his chief scout and guide of the expedition. This was the most important mil- itary reconnossance into the Sioux country yet undertaken. After Custer and his men had entered the Hills and gold was foimd, it became necessary to com- municate the important news swiftly to the world. While the Indians had not attacked the soldiers, it was known they were very watchful and wait- ing a favorable opportunity to strike a blow at a body of invading trespassers that threatened such consequences to the future of the Sioux nation. As the General wished to send the dispatch at once, yet knowing the great danger attending the LoM-soMK Charley. 157 carrying of it, he wished volunteers, rather than be compelled to detail an)^ one on what he him- self believed was to almost certain death. After the miners had made their report, the General stepped out in front of the command and asked who among" them would volunteer to carry the dispatch to Fort Laramie ? As no one among them seemed in a hurry to answer, Reynolds, who was sitting on a log near by said in his quiet way: "General, I will go !" "No, Charley," replied Custer, "I can hardly ask you to go." "Give me the dispatch," Reynolds said in his hrm quiet way, "and I will carry it to Ft. Laramie. Seeing he had decided to go the General offered to detail some scouts or soldiers to accompany him, but the intrepid scout refused any company and after being furnished the best horse in the command for the journey, he waited around camp until dark, when with the guidance of the over- hanging stars he commenced his pathless and per- ilous journey of nearly two hundred miles through a country of vigilant and unsparing foes. After an all nights hard ride he drew into a deep coulee, unsaddled his horse and rested un- til nightfall before resumincr his ride. It seemed he had been resting near a camp of Sioux or Cheyennes, because on starting out in the even- ing he passed two pardes but "played Indian" so successfully, his identity was not discovered. Toward the peep of day on the second night 158 Frontier AND Indian Life. he rode up Laramie's aates, and very soon there- after the civiHzed world was informed by electrical bolts that gold was found among the Black Hills» "even to the grass roots" and with that dispatch came the evening's lengthing shadow that marked the closing of wild Indian life on the great north- western plains. An incident happened in the winter of 1S74-5 which owing to its shaping of after events is well worth noting. This was Reynold's part in the detection of Rain-in-the Face, and his subsequent capture by Captain Tom Custer, and imprison- ment at Fort Abraham Lincoln. General Custer's expedition of 1873, to protect the Northern Pacific railroad surveyors, which Reynolds had also accompanied as scout and hunt- er, was harrassed along their line of march by Sioux war parties, and on one occasion two non- combattants were killed while being temporarily separated from the command. They were Dr. Holzenger, the veterinary surgeon, and Mr. Bal- ran, the sutler of the 7th U. S. cavalry, lliey were elderly gentleman of scientific tastes, and were searching for fossils, in which the country abounded. Just before being attacked, Reynolds, had met them and warned both of them that he had discovered fresh sions of Indians around in that vicinily, and advised them to return to the command at once. They delayed, so lost th(Mr lives. During the early part of the winter f )llowing Lonesome Charley. 159 Reynolds was sent down by General Custer, on a spying trip; and in attending one of the war dances, learned from some educated half breeds also present, that young Rain-in-the-Face, brother of an Uncpapa chief was boasting of killing with his own hands, the two civilians of Custer's expe- dition. On learning further particulars, he sent word to General Custer who at once ordered Cap- tain Tom. Custer with a squadron of cavalry to arrest the red brae^rn-i't and brine him to Fort Lin- con. Rain-in-the-Face, after some trouble was apprehended and taken up to the Fort and con- fined in the guard house until he escaped in April, 1875, v\'hen he made his way to the hostile camps along the Yellowstone river. In the spring of 1S75, our hero acted as chief scout for the protection of the first steamboat that ever ascended the Yellowstone river any distance. This was the fine stern-wheeler, Josephene, of the Coulson line, under command of Captain Grant Marsh, one of the most skilful pilots as well as popular captains that strode the upper deck dur- ing the days of steamboat supremacy along the Missouri. The boat ascended the stream as high up as the mouth of Big Horn river where a large camp of Crow Indians were met with. Rey- nolds had three assistants, one of them being the noted borderman, George Grennell. The whole command was under Col. Forsythe, of General Sheridan's staff. This military reconnoissance by land and water was eminently successful judging by the events that immediately followed. t6o Frontier and Iindian Life. During the winter of 1875-6, Reynolds was s(Mit by General Custer to watch the movements of the Mandans, Gros Ventres and Aricarees, and par- ticularly to keep an eye on the going and coming of Sioux spies from the hostile camps along the Yellowstone and the Big Horn mountain country. Early in the spring of 1876, General Custer tendered Reynolds the position of chief guide for the contemplated expedition to the upper branches of the Yellowstone. The object of this expedi- tion was plainly set forth by the Secretary of the Interior which was to compel all Indians to move upon reservations set apart for them. Through Reynolds influence with Custer, the writer of these sketches was tendered the position of assis- tant guide and Reynolds visited the Turtle Valley Ranch where I was then stopping. Holding some regard for the just rights of the Indians in the premises, and fearing a repetition of Chivington's work at Sand creek, or of Baker's butchery of the Piegan small pox victims in Montana; or that of the General himself in the destruction of Black Kettle's camp of southern Cheyennes, the flatter- ing offer was respectfully declined. In this interview at Turtle valley — which so far as we two were concerned was destined to be our last — he said while Custer and his officers were of the opinion, basing it upon the attitude of these Indians during the invasion of their hunting grounds about the Black Hills and the various taunting military reconnoissances made from time Lonesome Cmarley. i6i to time in the Sioux country, that these refractory Sioux under Sitting- Bull and Crazy Horse would not make much disturbance or resistance when confronted by the military power. Reynolds seemed of a different opinion. He had been makino- observations, he said, and he believed the Sioux would fight, and fight harci. He had noticed them quietly preparing for a long time— supplying themselves with plenty of amu- nition and the best of Winchester rifles, and every move they were making meant fight, and while he did not believe the Sioux had the dashing courage of a Cheyenne or the stubborness of a Modoc, yet there was fight in them, and they would show it at the proper time. They expected to fight and he thought that summer would witness the great- est Indian battle ever fought upon this continent. The event of June 25th, of that year marked the chief guide's prophecy as being nearly correct. While General Custer had been makine some preparation for nearly a year for this expedition, and very active preparations since the month of January, a break occurred between President Grant and the General over other matters, and the Pres- ident carried his resentment so far as to have this eminently qualified officer superseded in command by General Terry commanding the Department. The progran;me or purposes of the expedition remained the l^ame, viz: the forcible removal of all Indians upon their reservations or upon reserva- tions to be assigned them. About three thou- i62 Frontier AND Ijndtan Ltke. sand Sioux and Cheyennes living along- the Yv\. lowstone river and its upper tributaries would be effected by this order of the Interior and War De- partment. To make resistance to removal seem helpless to the Indians, three separate military ex- peditions were started from different quarters and all to convero^e in the neighborhood of the so- called hostile camps. General Crook commenced the march early in the spring from Wyoming, and General Gibbon with another army were marchinor down from Fort Ellis, Montana. General Terry left Fort Abraham Lincoln, in May, for his line of march following up Heart river, thence over and along the Yellowstone until the hostile camps were met with. The command numbered about three thousand soldiers, nearly- one third being mounted. The 7lh cavalry under General Custer took the advance and with hint went the chief guide Reynolds, Girard and the principal part of the Aricaree scouts. Custer and his regiment kept steadily in the lead of the main command until the 25th ot June when the first signs of Indians were discovered. The cavalry leader then divided his command into* four parts with the inteniion of surprising the In- dian village and cut of any hope of escape by the: inmates. No attention or thought was given to the number the village might contain. Cusler did not expect they Vv^ould stand up for a fight, hence the trivial matter about the mmiber of savages would be of no consequence to him. Lonesomf: Charley. i6 J In the order of this cavalry divison, Custer headed five companies, and three companies was placed in charge of Major Reno and three com- panies under Captain Benteen, and one company and the pack train under Captain McDougal formed a reserve. When the cavalry commands separated the Indian village was not yet in sight. Benteen deployed to the left front, and Reno and Custer divided to strike the camp from different quarters, each to support one another in certain emergencies very likely to happen. With Custer rode three citizens — his brother Boston, young Reed a nephew, and Editor Kel- log, die expedition correspondent of the New York Herald and Bismarck Tribune. But Rey- nolds, Girard, the Jackson boys, Bloody Knife, Bob Tailed Bull and the major part of the Arica- ree scouts accompanied Reno. In order to portray the situation of Reno's com- mand in this thrilling encounter, we have his state- ment that at half-past twelve o'clock he received a dispatch from Custer, who was then two miles in advance, to move to the front as rapidly as possible, "as the Indians were running away." Reno says in his report of the action that day, that his orders were to "move forward at as rapid a gait as prudent, to charge afterwards, and the whoh^ outfit would support me." He rode at a fast trot for two miles, crossed the Little Big Horn river at a ford, halted ten minutes to gather his batallion, and moved on down the valley with his 164 Frontier AND Indian Life. men in line of battle. The small number of In- dians who appeared, fled before him for two miles and a half, making scarcely any resistance. "I soon saw," says Reno, "that I was being- drawn in some trap, as they certainly would fight harder, especially as we were nearing their village, which was still standing; besides I could not see Custer or any other support, and at the same time the very earth seemed to grow Indians, and they were running toward me in swarms, and fri >m all directions. I saw I must defend myself, and give up the attack mounted. This I did taking possession of a point of woods, which, furnished near its edo^e a shelter for the horses; dismounted and fought them on foot, making headway on through the wood. I soon found myself in near vicinity of the village; saw that I was fiohting odds of at least five to one, and ihat my only hope was to get out of the wood, where I would soon have been surrounded, and gain some higher ground. I accomplished this by mounting and cliarging the: Indians between me a.nd the bluff, widi the hxss of three officers and twenly-nine enlisted men killed, and seven wounded." It in was the earlier part of this hard fighiing that Reynolds went down to his death. While at the edge of the timber spoken off, and when the Indians were making a flanking assault whh die evident intention of cut'dng Reno's command in two pans, Reynold's — true to his character — un- mindfid of his own danoer when odiers were in LoNFSOME Charley. 165 peril, said to Dr. Porter, who was standing at the edge of the timber, dressed in a linen duster and consequently a conspicuous target for the Indians: ''Look out Doctor, the Indians are shooting at you !" These were Reynolds' last words as far as known. A few minutes later, in attempting to re- join his retreating companions, having vainly tried to check the ferocious savage onslaught, his horse went down under the leaden shower pinning its intrepid rider to the earth, and then he fell- an easy victim though not without first emptying his revolver at his advancing foes. His last words of warning to Dr. Porter proba- bly proved a godsend to the wounded soldiers on the battle field, as the Doctor was at that critical time the only surviving surgeon then?, the other two being already killed. When General Terry's troops took possession of the field several days after the battle, the head- less trunk of Reynolds v.as found; it lay near where he fell. His bones were afterward re- interred by a professor of the Ann Arbor Univer- sity, near the site of that Michigan college. This scholarly friend had made Reynolds acquaintance on the Black Hills expedition of 1874, and we be- lieve was the one who first bestowed upon him the sobriquet "Lonesome Charley." .Such is a short summary of the career of a re- markable frontierman. As a devoted student, and admirer of the botanist and the naturalist, he was i66 Frontier AND IjNDTAN Life. in correspondence with some of the professors of our leading universities; he was oftimes their guide and companion in the search for the curious and rare specimens to be found among the bad lands of the Little Missouri river. While his earlier military career is a subject for contradictory opinions,* the reputation of his closing career is of the best — a brave and reliable scout — a guide of sagacity and precision; as a hunter standing with- out a peer in the wild west; and as a manly man, a prince among his fellows. *In the summer of 1864, when the cause of the Con- federacy was reeling to its final fall, some of its tardy friends in Colorado, thought their lime had come to show their hands and assist in some way to revive hope in ultimate success in thetriumpli of the stars and bars. Among these were three ininei'S by the name of Reynolds — all brothers, who con- trived the scheme of a successful insurrection in the mountains of Colorado, as a diversion strictly in sympathy with the Southern cause. The beautiful valley of the upper Arkansas was the chosen field — amid as wild and pictuesque scen- ery as where John Brown tried his similar plan — though in another cause — among the misty vales of the romantic Shenandoah. The numbers of the in- surgents were identical in each instance, and their fate was nearly the same, though a show of justice at least, marked the treatment of the Virginians to John Brown — a murder most foul recorded the shoot- ing of the manacled, untried prisoners in the rear of the Four Mile House near Denver. The scene at Harper's Ferry marked the beginning of the civil war; the Denver scene, near the end. The two elder of the Reynolds' brothers died thus; the third a mere boy, reprieved, and whom it is now asserted by many, was our hero, "Lonesoine Charley." Capt. Tom Custer. EDITOR KELLOaa. THE haymakers of the Upper Missouri, in the year 1874, had an embarrassing time. It was one of those dry rainless summers that come but too frequently in that country. The hay con- tractors for the military posts put in their bids early, made no calculation for a drouth and con- sequent shortage of the hay crop — so, failed. Stoyall, a noted Bismarck barrister, closed up his law books, took up a pitchfork and proceeded to fill a delinquent contract for P'ort Abraham Lin- coln. He succeeded as good lawyers generally do when figuring is an assistance. In order to secure hay worth the cutting, it be- came necessary to go some distance from the post. The lawyer betook himself to the succulent gras- ses of the Painted Woods, and organized his camp and pitched his tents on the bottoms south of the Painted Woods Lake. The writer, then pursuing a hunter's life, was game provider for the haying camp, supplying it daily with fresh killed elk, deer and antelope, that had fattened among the wild pea vines of the woodland or on the sweet and tender green grass of the adjoining plain. Northward of the hayfield was a dense forest of large cottonwoods, and in the centre of the i68 Frontier AND Indian Life. timber nestled a little lake of crystal water, eternally shaded by a canopy of overhanging branches, and the stagnant weed bed held its surface motionless from the disturbed airy elements that surged without, but never ruffled its placid bosom. All around and about this lake of the woods were great sand dunes, the compilation, perhaps, of centuries of fitful sand laden wind storms. The whole of this heavy forest had been inclu- ded in a large island in Lewis and Clark's day, and is described in the published journal of these explorers as "New Mandan Island." The Painted Woods Lake of to-day, being at that time a part of the river Missouri's watery bed. In summer days when the cottonwood giants are in full leaf, the place wears an umbrageous gloom. One morning at daybreak, while trailing a wounded doe through a particularly dreary part of the woods, I come upon the fleshless skeleton of a large man. The hair of the head alone re- mained intact, which enabled me to recoijnize the remains as those of a harmless wanderer, known along the LIpper Missouri, as Freneh Joe. He became frequently deranged through excessive use of bad whiskey and sorrowing thoughts, and in the last instance of this kind, had disappeared from a newly located ranch bordering the military trail, about two months before, and up to the date of my stumbling on his remains, his last disap- pearance had been a mystery. Editor KF.LLOCfG. 169 The deer's blood spattered trail was at once abandoned and I returned to the hay camp and reported my ghastly find. In the absence of a cor- oner, and being a qualified Justice with a jurisdic- tion covering a great stretch of this thinly peopled region, — I at once summoned a kind of informal jury. While busy with this business, a new fore- man of the hay camp was announced, he having just came up from Bismarck. It proved to be M. M. Kellogg — Editor Kellogg, a casual acquain- tance of an earlier day. While publishing the Dakota Democrat at Yankton, during the Grant and Seymour presidential campaign of 1868, I met Kelloes^ as a co-laborer in the same cause, he be- ing at that time on the editorial force of the Daily Democrat, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, When Mr. Kellogg was informed of the finding of the corpse, he kindly agreed to accompany us, and assist at the inquest and burial. After the identification of the remains had been settled up- on as those of the unfortunate Frenchman, the Editor proceeded to deliver a temperance talk that under the circumstances; the time ancj the place, made an enduring imprint upon the minds and hearts of his few but attentive listeners. The gentleman began by informing us that one day in Bismarck, some months since he saw the deceased reeling through the streets of that town, in a drunken or rather an insane condition, when he causuly learned something of his early history from one who knew him well. He was born and I/O Frontier AND Indian Life. raised near the city of St. Louis, and belonged to one of the old French Creole families there. He inherited a fine farm near the city and married an accomplished lady in the neighborhood, who in time bore him a son, and every prospect of a hap- py and prosperous future open out before them. Tippling around the saloons on every visit to the city, became in time a habit with him, which was habitually taken advantage of by the saloon's hangers-on, and with the tricky methods of cipher- ing up in such cases, and where balance sheets are a superfluity, huge bills of indebtedness were piled up against his property in various ways, so that it was but a matter of a few years when the sheriffs hammer closed the beofinnine of a harrow- ing scene. The family became homeless. Well, to span the details, the wife found an early grave, followed soon after by her neglected child. When the besotted, unhappy man found his all, forever lost to him, boarded an up river bound boat, appar- ently to seek the furthermost depths of an un- friendly and inhospitable land. For ten years he had dl'ifted from place to place, at times hardly con- scious of his existance at all. "This is a hard end," said Kellogg in conclusion; and looking down for a moment upon the skeleton, and then turning his eyes around upon the gloomy woodlands about him, "I hope and pray that my end — and our (.-nds may be different, that we can hope at least for good christian burial." Editor Kellock;. 172 Poor Kellogg' ! The book of fate well hid from him the leaf that bore in character his pre-destined end. How little he. knew — how little we all know what the future has in store for us. Once more to June 25th, 1876; once more to Custer's unlucky field; once more to carnage and death. The tide of battle is turning against the charging batallions of the 7th cavalr3^ Down to the dust amidst tramping and snorting steeds, goes the advance guard with their brave leaders — Crittenden and Calhoun. FoUowinof them and pressed on all sides fights the matchless soldier Keogh and his desperate troopers, who stand like human ten pins and fall — all of them. Now, to the right centre surges the impetuous Tom Cus- ter with his loyal squadron who are cut down as with a sythe in quick death. On, and on, comes the red painted Sioux horde with the fiery fury of hell's Satanic legions. But steadily in advance of them to pit against a common foe, come the north- ern and southern Cheyennes. Are the v;atching ghosts of the murdered four hundred mothers and babes of Sand creek, hovering around about them urging them forward like Mahomet's protecting angels on Bede-r's bloody plains ? Or, are their arms of iron and their hearts of stone, now, that before them are officers and men who stained the winter snows of the Washita red with the blood of the unprotected and helpless of their own people — of Black Kettle's murdered band. i73 FRO^'TIER AND Indian Life. The last group but one, is fighting on yon sharp point of hill. It is General Custer himself and the last cotere of his officers and several of his men. Blanched faces were now peering out in the shadowy realms of death that soon claimed them all; and of all the hundred heroic soldiers that lay stretched about the banks of the Little Big Horn in their shells of cold inanimate clay, two corpse alone pass through the hands of the vengeful victors without mutilation by knife, tom- ahawk, bludgeon or axe — Custer and Editor Kel- logg — the savages' last tribute to the bravest of brave men. INDIAN MOTHERS. THOSE of our readers whose cunosty or duty have led them to visit an Indian village or community, cannot have failed to notice with what gentle demeanor the children behave themselves in the treatment of their parent's wishes, and the civil decorum and unaffected deportment they exhibit in the presence of strangers. Yet the rod is never a part of the dicipline for children in an Indian household. The male child is especially exempt from cor- poral punishment of any kind, the parents be- lieving in the hallowed traditions of their fathers and mothers before them, that the chastisement of a male child for minor offences breaks down his spirit and unfits him for a tuture warrior or leader of men. In observations of wild Indian life, I have noted that much the same causes for conjugal infelicity prevails among the savage as with civilized races of people; that the young Adonis does not al- ways marry his first love, or his second love as the case may be; and that accidental alliances or those for equality of rank do not always turn out (or the best. But, come what may a home of happiness or a home of misery, the Indian female as a rule, obeys the instincts of true motherhood. i74 Frontier AND Indian Life. Her child's confidence is won by her motherly care and devotion, and its studied obedience to her will by an unselfish maternal love. Fort Abraham Lincoln was constructed in the summer of 1872. It was first laid out and built on a high bluff, opposite what was originaly known as the Otter tail ford, and since the Sibley expedition of 1863, known more generally as the Sante.c crossing, which is about one mile below where Heart river joins waters with the Missouri. The fort site was on the mouldering ruins of an old village of the extinct Anahaways, and had a splendid view of the surrounding lands. From this commanding height the country about radically varies its appearances with the changing seasons. In winter the vast stretch of landscape brouorht to easy optical view, is dreary enough, but in the season of green prairies; green leaf covered trees and open river waters the prospect is grand. A few miles southeast of the fort on the river is die heavy timbered Sibley island, so named as an obscure tribute to the memory of a true and merciful soldier whose fame and acts will live in human hearts more for the charity of his deeds, rather than those of a combative and sanguinary man. Beyond this island and to the south of it are the high ridges of Little Heart river, and fur- ther on the uneven but showy bluffs of the Calumet cones are seen that mark the site of old Fort 'Rice. Indian Motiif.ks. 175 To the west of the new fort over abrupt and uneven hills that mark the lines of the sinuous Hart, and to the north rising hia-h above the plain, stands the lone White Buffalo butte, and beyond them to the right the showy Square Buttes, while facing the fort to the east beyond the Missouri, spreads out the fertile valley of Apple creek, and the adjoining rough, grassy uplands. Fort Lincoln thus to view, had originally been christened Fort McKean, in honor of a brave Pennsylvania officer who fell on one of the battle fields of the civil war. The original purpose of the post had been to quarter the troops employed in protecting from hostile Indian raids the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad. When General Guster and his 7th cavalry came up from the Indian Territory, in 1873, he made his cavalry barracks about three quarters of a mile south, and directly under the bluffs of the then re-christianed fort, which, owing to its growing im- portance as a headquarters post, had been given the name of the martyred President. From "cav- alry quarters" the gradations were easy to "Fort Lincoln under the hill," A few years later on "Fort Lincoln on the hill," was abandoned and the post that still bears that honored name, rests quietly on the low bench land beside the great river, where often in the near past, the morning's bugle call had awakened from peaceful slumbers, for the duties of the day, so many of those who afterward found the last bod in their eternal sleep 176 Frontier AND Indian Liik. around and among die broken buUes of tlit^ Litde Big Horn. But it is of Fort McKean or "Lincoln on the hill," during its construction period that I write. The Sioux had as yet shown no pardcular hostility in the country bordering on the Heart river, with- in the limits of the Northern Pacific railroad, un- til Interpreter Girard had been ordered up to Fort Berthold, to enlist and bring down some thirty Aricaree braves to do scouting service around the new post. This was done the latter part of May, 1872. This act was to Sioux comprehension a virtual declaration of war on the part of the com- mandment and the garrison, the Sioux and Aric- arees being still at open war. Two of these Aricaree scouts were killed while escorting the mail to Fort Rice, being waylaid in a coulee near Little Heart river. As the season advanced and the grass grew green for their ponies' feed, the Sioux became bolder and finally made a partial investment of the fort, and every few days the officers and sol- diers standing widiin safe quarters behind the ramparts, would witness in open view, gladiatorial contests between the Aricr.ree and the Sioux, that would have gladdened ihe ston)' heart and excited the dormant nerves of the old Roman in the days long past, of savage coml ats within die walls of the gory-famed Collosseum of the Eternal city. On one of these occasions the Sioux warriors rode up almost within stone throw of the wood(u^ Indian Mothers. 177 walls of the fort, and shot down an old Aricaree. A son of the old man seeing his father fall, made a rush toward him, saying as he ran: "Over my father's dead body, I die !" The Sioux made the boy's word good. He fell across his father's corpse filled with bullets and arrows. The outcome of these many hostile encounters between the beligerent red men was, that when the Aricarees were discharged in Novemb^^r, ot that year, they left nearly one third of their num- ber behind them, the vicdms of Sioux aggressive- ness, persistence and murderous ferocity. One stormy day in December, several weeks after the discharge of the balance of the scouts from Fort Abraham Lincoln they came sauntering through the timber trail to my Painted Woods stockade. They had been traveling leisurely along the freshly, but solidly frozen river, hunting the elk, deer and bear, along the timber bends. While in camp near the Square Buttes, they had observed sign of their Sioux enemies, so de- parted in haste for my place for besides the little loop-holed fort being an emergency rendesvous, the situation of the pomt itself was favorably lo- cated for a successful defense from the assault of an overpowering enemy. Among the party was a middle aged woman. She was one of the newly made widows, her hus- band having died bravely in front of Fort Abra- ham Lincoln. She was cook for the party, while 178 Frontier AND Indian Life. her son, a boy of perhaps fifteen summers, was acting as one of the horse guards. During their stay at the stockade, the mother was continually uneasy lest they had been fol- lowed up by the Sioux, who in an unexpected moment would pounce upon their horses and her boy, whose duty led him out on the watch, and might fall as her husband had fallen and leave her utterly alone. When relieved temporarily from duty, to rest and eat his ever ready and carefully prepared meals — the boy's return to the camp in safety would be moments of joy to the tender hearted woman; her eyes would sparkle and glisten, a re- flection as it were, from the mirror of a happy heart. A mother's careful eye watched his every movement and a mother's love was continually finding endearing expressions and would articulate softly in her feminine way. "I love my boy dearly" she would say, as in- terpreted from her native Aricaree — "he is so good and so kind to me, always." Her actions were so noticeable at the time that this incident of the campers remained strangely and strongly impressed in my memory after these many years. Sometime during the spring of 1S74, the Sioux made one of their last hostile raids against the allied tribes in the village at Fort Berthold. A war party of three hundred eamc in sight on the west side of the Missouri, opposite; the village. Indian Mothers. 179 and sip-nailed their defiance to the Aricarees and their Mandan, and Gros Ventre friends, and bid them in taunting insults to come and meet death. They did not banter in vain. In a few minutes the mud-mixed waters of the river's surface in front of the village was covered with numbers of tub shaped bull boats; the sturdy women deftly paddling against the currant as they faced its ed- dies and swirls, while the warriors enconsed in the boat's bottom, held their guns in one hand and with the other firmly grasped their chargers' lariat, while the noble beasts plunged and snorted wildly as if that gave additional propelling power to reach solid ground. Amidst all this excited throng, there was one calm voice. It was in the little bull boat of a woman and a youthful warrior — the cook and her young son of the Fort Lincoln scouts of 1872. She was encouraging him in the same endearing terms — ^yer dear to her and to him. She bade him be a good true soldier and avenge the death of his father. Upon reaching the hostile shore the boy sprang nimbly from the boat, mounted his dripping , war horse and was soon lost to his mother's sight and found himself amidst hi? encir- cling foes. In a few hours the Sioux were driven from the plain and bluff and scattered like frightened quail far away ,^ until the shadows of the night covered their tr0^. _, The victors-^les.s five — returned to their boats i8o Frontier AND Indian Life. at dusk. The bodies of four of them had been found by their friends, but the fifth, the widow's boy, could nowhere be seen. He had been noticed fighting among his enemies, but it was all that was known of liim. The victors with loud shouts and songs recrossed the river, the widow alone remain- ing to keep silent vigil for her lost boy. Now listening for approaching footsteps — now hearing the vigorous thumping of the drums and the loud shrill cries that accompanies the war song of the victors at the village, as wafted across the water in the still air of the night. To her they were sounds of mingled joy and sadness. Where was her boy? Every strange sound brought her hope — every silence wrecked it. When morning ciame with its str^^aks of gray dawn, the poor wretched mother stood watching in shivering silence by her little round boat on the brrak of the mist-hidden river. Time — that balm which so often soothes the heart of the weary laden, brought no comfort to this Indian mother. The traditions of savage life! had taugbt her that there was a dreaded posabil-" ity for her son of the fate of a scalpless warrior — a life bordering between the living and the dead. To be among the living and yet remain unseen. Of all the cruel fates that an Indian fears, the hor- rors of a scalpless warrior's spreads out its blat^k- est pall. If, by that mysterious law that custom had en- forced for ages, that sight from each other must Indian Mothers, i8i be forever Jiid, she would do all that was left for a mother to do; she would bring him clothes for his back, and moccasins for his feet; she would bring him his food, and light for his fire. Day after day and as month succeeded month this Indian woman could be seen leaving the Agency at Port Berthold with a little bundle on her back, walk down to the river bank, take her dried skin boat, ferry herself over the river, and then wind her way over the h^h chain of bluffs to where her boy was last seen alive by his friends, and depost her bundle on a rising mound and silently return by the same route. When winter came, no storm was too boisterous, no cold too severe, or no snow so deep that could prevent her making the accustomed journey to the high divide. That nothing but the unmistakable sign of the raven, the magpi and the wolf, as they picked and prowled among her careful stores, seemed never for a moment to discourage her. Long after the melting of the snows in the spring time, the little heap of comforts lay untouched, apparently — save by the beasts and the birds. In the month of May, 1875, General Custer, then in command of Fort Abraham Lincoln, de- termined to stop hostilities between the Sioux and the Aricarees. To this end he invited a general council of these of Indians at the fort. They came. The Sioux all splendidly armed and mounted; the Aricarees, though poorer, looking 1 82 Frontier AND Indian Life. their best. The. lonely widow had finally been persuaded by her friends to accompany them to learn from the Sioux some certainty as to the whereabouts of her boy. There was an old custom among these wild tribes of the plains, and to some extent is still a lingering relic with the less advanced ones, that when the warring nations make overtures for peace, and assemble in the interests of its con- sumation, they first flaunt in each others faces, vicious reminders of the bloody past. If they then subdue their ruffled tempers, and dissemble their hates, they are ready to shake the hand of amity and forgiveness. At this meeting of the belligerents, Son of the Stars, the wise and able chief of the Aricarees, told his followers to "bear the insults that they' may shower upon us that the end may be peace. The Sioux may send our hearts to the ground, oh, my people, but nerve yourselves for their taunts, and bear theni bravely and well." These two tribes that had been warring be-times for over a century of years came again together as during intervals in their strife in the past; to sue, to forgive and to forget — to shake the friend- ly hand and 'to smoke in peace the fragrant calu- met. The showy and vaunting Sioux, as was expect- ed, came Haunting up in savage gorgeousness, with the trophies of former wars proudly tied and bore aloft upon their coo sticks. Among their IxDi.w Moriu'ks. t8 J array of dried scalp locks taken from their enemies' heads, was one — a long- glistening braid — a few rings and i)eads. with bits of faded cloth tied about them. "Oh, my boy, my poor boy !" came in hurried words or rather screams from the lips ot the Ar- icaree woman. The poor creature had recognized this last display as the familiar trinkets; the scalp lock and the blood smeared garments of her son; and unable to bear more, uttered a piercing shriek and fell to the ground. Her sorrowing heart had burst in twain. ]^b^^^ years after the first settlement at the Missouri river crossing of the Northern Pacific railroad, more particularly during the time that Ariraree scouts were being employed at Fort Abraham Lincoln, small gangs or parties of this tribe were frequently passing and re-passing along the Fort Stevenson and Bismarck trail for the purposes of barter and trade with the wide awake merchants of the growing town by the crossing. Owing to previous acquaintance, and to some knowledge of the Pawnee tongue, of which many of the Aricarees were also familliar, these red travelers made s. regular rule of way camping at the limber point to which I had made claim. The chief of this tribe had asked as a special re- quest that 1 permit such of his people who came that way to rest themselves in camp there. Some of the white settlers along the trail had regarded 184 Frontier and Indian Life. these wandering reds as intruders, and their mere presence as intrusive, and it was the wish of this fair minded Indian chief, that he would guard against the least semblance of a pretext for un- pleasant thoughts between his people and the aggressive strangers. Among these casual campers at Preparation point was a tall Aricaree called Walkingbull, wife and child. In all my dealings with him, he sus- tained his record of past life, as an upright, hon- est Indian, and passed his days quietly. His wife, younger in years, was cheerful and kind hearted in her primitive way. A little girl with painted cheeks, bundled up in her beady, buckskin robe completed the personal of the family. Known by name as Pawnee Talker, among diis tribe, I found that Mrs. Walkingbull, also laid kinship to one of the Platte river bands and de- liohted to discourse in the Pawnee tono^ue. In this way a friendship began with the Walkingbull household that continued unbroken along the line of passing seasons. About 1882, after an absence of nearly iwo years, Mrs. Walkingbull came into camp widi a party of friends. She had much to say. Her o-ood old husband, ailing these many years had been quietly laid at rest. His tall form would never again be seen bending over the familiar camp fire. Her little pratling daughter had been given over to the missionaries care, to be taught the ways of white people and be educated. Indian Mothers. 185 Two more 3'ears olided by, and again the Widow Walkingbull came to revisit the old scenes of her earher davs. She had good news to tell. Her daughter had been sent to a school in the far east and would come to her some day a fine lady. The intervenincr time to herself would be long- and the absence of her child, trying in its lone- liness. But to know that she would return to her some day. decked out in fine dresses and bearing herself in ladylike, mannerly ways, encouraged her ihn^ugh the ordeal. She remembered the slights put upon herself and daughter by the dressy fair haired girls as they promenaded the streets of the town by the railroad, who sneered at herself and child for their grotesque garb and unconventional ways. And now when her girl re- turned from her stay in sunrise land, she would mingle with her fair haired Aryan sisters with all the grace they themselves possessed. Then in the exuberance of her joy as the fanciful shad- OW.S of th^' imagination flitted gaily by, the widow exacted a promise that when her girl did return I come up to the Aricaree village and behold the transformation — to see the little greasy-faced smoke perfumed Indian girl decked out in her silken finery, rich laces and plumed hat. At last alter an absence of many years — it being then the summer of 1889, I found it conve- nient to take a drive to Fort Berthold. I was preparing for a far eastern trip to be gone a num- ber of years and had come up for a final look at i86 Frontier and Indtan Liff. the old village and say trood bye for the last time to many of its inmates. Naturally enoiioh I en- quired for the Widow Walkingbull's residence, and was shown a little dwelling surrounded by ar- tificial arbors and a neat white pailing inclosed it nicely. The widow, I thought, anticipating her daughter's return endeavored to fix up her place so that when she arrived the young lady need not be ashamed of her mother or her home. Mrs. Walkingbull met me at the gate. .She made no demonstration but asked that I follow her. In a darkened room I was led to where on a bed lay an amaciated girl breathing in short gasps, evidently in the last stages of pulmonary con- sumption. The eye of the mother scanned ni)- face steadily. She seemed in one minute recalling all the hopes and dreams of years. Choking sobs filled her throat as she pointed to the suffering form and said faintly: "See ! My daughter has come home." — A flickering^ flash — a peissing- shadow; An inanimate form — a bed of clay. The twilight dirge ; an Indian mother Craving the light for a better way. Representative Sionx Warriors who took part in the Battle on the Little Bio- Horn. SOME INCIDENTS 0? INDIAN WARFARE. THE merciless and indiscriminate slaughter of the innocent and helpless whom the fortunes of war have placed in the power of the victor, is one of the darkest and most indefensible traits of character of the principal tribes of the American Aborigines. From the day that Christopher Col- umbus and his little band of Spanish adventurers landed on the strands of historic San Salvador, in October, 1492, until within a very few years ago, Indian warfare as conducted between belligerent tribes of the red race, have been a continual war of extermination. Residing so many years within the territory claimed and occupied by some of the most warlike of these nations, many incidents of the ferocious nature of the wild warrior came under my obser- vation and knowledge during that period, and of some acts even in the midst of the excitement of battle there were the glimmering of chivalrous deeds, i hen again there vv ere acts perpretrated in the name of war that sadden our hearts with the memory of the poor victims ol maniacal mad- ness though their once breathing forms have long since commingled widi earthy dust. In spite of our efforts of controlling will to h id(! the horrors of many oi ihes(i iiendish acts in the pan- 1 88 Frontier \nd Indian Likk. arama of savage life from 'memory, yet they recur again and again in the whirl of thought and will remain the actual in spite of all effort to treat them as passing dreams. It is of some of these casual incidents of Indian warfare that came within my observation or of personal] aquaintance with the actors that I will proceed to narrate : One of the oldest of the four traders trying to do business in that line at Fort Berthold in 1869. was lefferson Smith, a resident of the Indian country for over fifty years. He had been horn and spent his boyhood in New Orleans but from early manhood had experienced no change from the hazardous existence incidental to a frontiers- man's life. He was one of the tree trapper's in the Crow country in 1831-3,80 romantically described by Irving in his adventures of Captain Bonneville. After living among the Crows for a number of years Smith joined a partv of Minne- tarees or Gros Ventres who were originally a part of the Crow nation. He married among the Gros Ventres, became a camp trader, and pros- pered for awhile, but some bad partnerships and rascally clerks brought him to the verge of ruin in which condition the writer found him in ihe spring of 1869, during a few weeks sojourn with the venerable trader pendino- the probating events of my "tenderfoot" period. Besides l)eing very poor the old man, then nearing seventy years of age, was almost totally blind; the sight of one eye gone entirely and the other nearly so. Some Incidents oe Indian Warfare. 189 In this condition, Trader Smith made a trip to F"ort Stevenson durinor the closing days of that year. He was accompanied by his son John then a twelve year old lad, and a Gros Ventre "bur- dashe." After loading up with a good jag of bacon and other supplies obtained from the com- missary of the military post, the trio started out on their homeward way on the sec( nd day of the new year, and concluded to follow the river trail as offering the inducement of a shorter route and consequent saving of time over the regular tr-.veled military road. When nearing the bad lands that raise their disordered columns interme- dia':e of the two forts, the burdashe noticed some Indians in their rear riding hard apparently with the idea of overtaking the wagon party. On nearer approach the terrified burdashe discovered the approaching horsemen were Sioux, so ran from the wagon toward a willow thicket some distance ahead. The Sioux gave chase, caught killed and scalped him and threw his body on a drift pile, where in company with a party, I found the remains three months later, unburied and about as the Sioux had left it after mutilation. In the meantime a part of the Sioux started after the occupants of the wagon, surrounded the the team and commenced to unhitch them and at the same time ordering the occcupants to the ground. The boy was terrified into speechless- ness after witnessing the fate of the burda.she and knowing the character of Indian warfare, he could expect only immediate death, I go Frontier \ni) L\dtan Life. "I am old, and blind, as you can see," said the stricken old man to his captors in their own Sioux language, "take my team, take my provisions; take my life and my scalp, but spare my little son." "Do the Gros Ventre warriors spare our child- ren ?" asked a Sioux, at the same time making- ready to shoot the boy, while others were unharnes- ingthe mules or filching eatables from the wagon. "Stay !" exclaimed an old Sioux who came up just then, for nearly fifty grim warriors had gath- ered about, "Stay," repeated the Sioux veteran and the uplifted gun was lowered, and busy hands were quieted. The appearance of the speaker seemed to command their respect, and his tone of voice riveted attention. He then told them that over twenty years before a party of Blackfoot Sioux, himself among the number were encamped on the lower Yellow- stone, when an ice gorge suddenly overwhelmed their camp from effects of melting snow. All they could do was to save their lives, and some were drowned. Horses, teepes, guns and bedding were covered under a mountain of ice. "W'e were hundreds of miles from our people," went on the speaker, "with enemies all about us. With auns, arrows, rob^^s and horses we would not have cared. But without them we were afraid. Near the Missouri's big bend we sneaked into die Gros Venires' winter camp. We were entertained sulkily and half suspected all of us would be killed. SdMi-; Incihents of Indian Warfare. 191 A white trader amongst them, that kind hearted old bhnd man now before you, took us to his store o^ave us robes, gave us blankets, and even loaned us guns. When the Gros Ventres saw this act of the white trader, they became ashamed and then turned in and helped us also, and we made our v^ay to the Blackfoot camp on the Moreau." It is but justice to add. that the mules and pro- visions were restored; the boy and his blind father helped in the wagon, and told to "go," while the Sioux warriors moved rapidly forward to the lasi hostile mid-winter raid ever made against the old Indian \il!age at P^ort Berthold. About ihe miidclle of the month of May, 1872 having an errand to perform, I saddled up a favor- ite steed and rode up along the river to P^ort Ber- thold. On the morning following my arrival at the Agency, the inhabitants of the Indian village were startled from their slumbers at early dawn by the rapid firing of guns and successive war whoops. It was in this way a mounted war party of thirty-five Gros Ventres and Mandans signalled their return from a successful war raid. The party had been absent ten days. In their outward journey they trailed along the headwaters of Turtle, Painted Woods, Burnt, Apple and Bea- ver creeks. While carefully scouring along this latter stream the war party espied two lodges in which people were noticed stirring about. The inmates were Yanktoney Sioux. They were out 192 Frontier j^nd Indian Life. from the main camp near Grand river and were enjoying a spring hunt after antelopes, ducks and geese, with which that stream and valley abound- ed. The two teepes contained five persons when sighted by the war party. In one teepe a woman and child, in the other a woman and two boys. Early that morning a party of white men coming from Grand river agency, and bound for the new railroad town at the Missouri river cross- ing, had passed that way, and the ponies belong- ing to the inmates of the two lodges had strayed after them. The two Indians missing their stock, and not dreaming of any pardcular danger left their families to trail up and bring back the es- trays. This was the situation when the thirty-five Man- dan and Gros Ventre warriors rode down on a gallop with frighful yells and surrounded the two lodges. The woman and children, stupified with fear crouched within doors. The two boys were first dragged out, killed and scalped. The young- er of the two woman was next dragged out and outraged and butchered. Her child clinging to her was taken away by an old Mandan with the intention of taking it home to his village and adopting it, but its cries exasperating~some of the younger members of the party, it was taken from him and the child brained against a huge stone. The mother of the two boys, alone surviving, was ordered l;y some one in authority to cook up provisions enough to (t^cd the entire party. It is So MI:] InCIDKnTS OF InDIAN WaKFAR^. 1 93 almost impossible to conceive the dreadful thoughts that must have been in the mind of this poor creature at this time while m.T.king the en- forced banquet to her own and her childrens' des- troyers, for, no sooner was the feast ended a tom- ahawk was sunk in her brain and her scalp cut and torn from her head. Such were the particulars of the Beaver creek raid, as told by the participants on their return. A war dance was at once arranged by the party and the streaming scalp locks of the unfortunate vic- tims were exhibited by the vaunting dancers in their black faced masks. The blood smeared tro- phies were carried aloft on poles, and placed in the centre of a ring around which members of the war party kicked and chaunted, surrounded by interested groups of both sexes, old and young. The day following, as was custom, the scalps were thrown to the elderly dames who paraded in bands before the various stores, and the homes of the white residents, wn'th a dancing and singing- bout by turns in front of them. As was also cus- tom, these traders who had lived on the patronage of Indians were now expected to set before their guests, well filled pots of cooked meats and ket- tles brimming over with good hot coffee. Thus passed day succeeding the arrival of the raid- ers. First one group of dancers then another tossed the scalp locks of the murdered women and children of Beaver creek. Now dragging them along the ground — now holding them up to 194 Frontier \ni) Lndian Liik. taunts and insults of the motlev crowd that jeered and hooted through the dusty streets of this Indian town. About two months after the massacre of the two Sioux famihes at Beaver creek, the writer, who was then erecdngsome claim cabins in Point Prep- aration, Painted Woods, my attention was arrested by the sounds of Indian war songs, gradually ap- proaching through the by-paths in the timber. It proved to be an Aricaree war party of seven led by a brave who had heretofore enjoyed the reputation of being the best hunter and most suc- cessful warrior among his tribe. His painted robe marked the record of achievements in war raids, and in sinole-handed contests with cinnamon bears that were proud history for the Aricarees, — that one among their number could do such wonders that must terrify their enemies by his boldness. The Indian leader after a few moments rest re- mounted his pony and was iollowed by a compan- ion, bearing alofc on a pole a fresh scalp lock of long flowing hair. The balance of il\e party re- mained seated and on<" of them told a tale of en- counter, in which they bore off in triumph this fileeding scalp lock of die hated Sioux. Vnr my practical sympathy in their cause and a subsiantial recognition of their prowess, they demanded a feast of venison, bread and coffee, as in the good old days of Indian supremacy along the Missouri. About one week after this incident of die war James B. Gayton, One of the Pioneers of Dakota Territory. SoMK I.\(ll)i: NIS Ol- LXDIAN WaRFARK. I95 party, the true story of the scalp lock and the victim of this Aricaree band. The tragedy took place near Gayton's ranch, located at that time on the east bank of the Missouri, not far from the present boundary line between North and South Dakota. Andrew Marsh, who resided with Ranchman Gayton told a pitying account of the fate of his young Sioux wife, a girl of about fifteen years of age. The two were out walking some distance from the ranch when they saw seven Indians all mounted, leisurely coming through the bot- toms from the north. The girl trained from child- hood to close observation of surrounding objects, quickly noticed that the Indians were not of her own people, and looking up appealingly to her husband's face in a trembling voice said :• "O, they are Aricarees ! They will kill me." As Marsh was unarmed, and although trying to reasure the girl, but while doing so, they moved rapidly toward the ranch which they had hoped to reach before being overtaken. But the Aricarees — for such they proved to be — anticipated this move by riding on a run, veering in a half circle, and placed themselves in front of the fugitives. The girl could no longer speak, but clung to her husband's arm; an Indian rode up behind, shot her down, while two or three of the others jumped from their ponies, cut and tore the long flowing locks from the girl's head, while she w'as yet in her dying gasps. Mr. Marsh was not 196 Frontikr \.\1' Im'1.\.\ Li; ' harmed, but was told if he needed another wife !o come up to Fort Berthold and they would hunt him up a maid from among- the Aricarees. But the member's of this Indian war party were made to feel, that this kind of business was not to a warrior's credit. Bob Tailed Bull, before this aftair had been made much of by whi'e acquaintences, was now shunned b\- them and he felt the slights keenly. He went out with Cus- ter on his last expedition and rode bravely to his death on the Little Big Horn. The balance of the party have long since passed from among ihe livino"; the most of them like their leader met vio- lent, tragic ends. Nearly two months p?.ssed away before In- dians from any tribe was to be seen around ihe Painted Woods. One day, by accident, 1 noticed two red men following along up stream under the cut bank on the opposite side ot the river, brom their manner of traveling, it was plain the\- were trying to escape observation. Two or three weeks later, in company wi.h Joe Blanchard and Little Dan, we made camp at ilie Painted Woods Lake, and spread out a trap line around that grreat crame resort. One evenijij/ while there encamped, we were joined by "Hcotty" Richmond, the Forts Rice and Stevenson mail carrier, when a high old time was had around a big' blazinor fire until after midnipfht. A. [he first break of day. we arose and each trapper .ook his So.MK Inc'idknts of Indian Warfare. 197 separate line and the mail carrier resumed his lonesome journey. The rule of the camp was, the first trapper from his line cooked breakfast, and being- the first to return on that morning, I was chagrined and surprised to find that our limited supply of coffee and bacon had disappeared, yet no object could be seen; though the verest bit of a red rag and the soft impression of a moc- asin in the trost suggested a gruesome warrior somewhere about. When the other trappers re- tiu'ned, a further search was made and somebody had been laying in a clump of bushes near camp and from appearances had been in hiding there ior several hours. A replinishment of our "grub" being now a necessity, 1 rode down to Preparation for a fresh supply. While passing along the broken hills be- fore entering the timber in which the stockade was located, 1 noticed |im Andrews, who had been left in charge of the siockade, crouching behind a huge boulder. He rejoiced at my arrival, and proceeded to tell about the antics of two Sioux "who had ihe timber on me," as he tersely expressed it. They were at the edge of the bush and in hiding, but shouted for him to come to diem. i hey were hungry they said and wanted him to take them to the house and furnish some food. Andrews was proficient in the Sioux lan- guaoe, and understood them well. He feared a trap and was on the defensive, as I found him. On my appearance the Sioux moved off slowly 198 Frontier -vnd Indian Like. throiieh the brush, and about the same time we heard a great noise around the stockade, so push- ing through the timber, found a bull boat war party of eighty Aricarees in full possession. I cautioned Andrews to say nothing about the two Sioux, and at once proceeded to fill out the usual war party contribution in provision, besides further cheering them with a present of two eagle tails. After drying their boats for awhile, the whole party re-embarked and floated slowly down the stream until the bending of the river shut them from our view. What were the feelings, mean- time, of the Sioux, I never knew. Such an oppor- tunity to get two scalps, that was lost through my neglecting to tell them at that time — and I was frequently reminded after by members of that Ar- icaree war party, — so rceiveda good many anath- amas for my false fealty to the tribe. But when I was informed after that these two Sioux were re- turning from an unsuccessful raid on Fort Ber- thold, and that they did us no more harm than to take a little provision from our camp, though their opportunity was greater; and furdiermore when I learned that these same two Sioux were the husbands and fathers of the victims of the Beaver creek raid, my conscience never smote me as yet, for savino- their lives at Point Preparation, Crow Flies High. — Gros Ventre Chief. WITH A GROS YSNTRS WAR PARTY. ONE of the peculiar methods of the Mandans, Gros Ventres and Arlcaree Indians, making war upon the confederated Sioux bands that Hved to the south of them was by descending the Mis- souri river, cautiously in a fleet of bull boats, and when nearing their enemies habitations, abandon their boats, make the attack, and depend upon darkness or the thick brush patches of the timber bends to protect them on their homeward retreat. The. bull boat to the wdld red denizens of the Upper Missouri, answer the same purpose as that of the canoe to their brothers around the wilds of the Upper Mississippi or the great northern lakes. The boats were formerly made from the tough hide of a buffalo bull, stretched green over willow frame and shaped out like a tub. The hair side of the skin is turned out to better protect the vessel from snags. An ordinary bull boat will seat from two to five persons. The propelling power is a broad paddle with a short handle held firmly by the two hands, and at each sink of the paddle the person drawing toward themselves. In this way rivers with swift currants are almost as easily ferried over and with as little exertion, as with a row- boat nor skiff, or do they lose much headway by the force? of the moving water. 200 Frontier and Lndtan Life. In the preparations for a raid by river the oldest boats arr selected, as they must be sunk or aban- doned to the enemy at the end of their journey. The danger of navigating in a rotten hide cockel shell ot a boat does not enter a red marine's head although the voyaging into the enemies country is most always done in the night. In October, 1871, "Trapper" Williams, accom- panid by the writer, came up to Fort Berthold, purchased a bull boat, provisions, &c., proposing to "sign" hunt for beaver, along the Missouri and tributary streams as far down as Fort Rice. We drifted out of sight of the picturesque fort at the Indian village in fine style one day, lazily es- consed on blanket seats in our tub-like craft, now and then spinning around like a top, from the force of a sportive breeze as it played about us in fitful gusts. But as usual it kept the centre of the channel and moored along swiftly, — now and again bumping against obstructions as the channel rubbed a cut bank or turned along the main shore. After drifting along several hours in this man- ner, we reached a place known some time after as Chris Weaver's Point, from the fact that this wood- yard proprietor was here killed by a medicine band of Aricarees. W^e concluded to encamp for din- ner there, and while busy gathering faggots for to make a fire, we were dismayed and somewhat alarmed at the merging into view of about twenty bull boats well freighted with Indians, paddling rapidly toward us, singing and yelling in great With a Gros Ventre War Party. 201 L>lee, apparent!)-. ^Although we kept among the bushes hid from their observation, when they came opposite to us (hey espied our unfortunate give- away, the Httle bull boat, and we were soon sur- sounded by a war party of about forty Gros \ entres. The pipe carrier or chief of the party was known to us as "The-man-that-hunts-his enemy." He came forward with the air and demeanor of a military dignitary, and recogizing^ from Trapper Williams' bearing and from the mystic emblems with which he was adorned that he must be "head man" of the firm, advanced toward him and with gracious mein, warmly shook him by the hand. The Gros Ventre leader now plainly told us that they were going to war against the Sioux, and turning to the writer at this juncture, the chief said as interpreted from the. Sioux language : "You talk Sioux. You may be at heart a Sioux. But if not, and you are a friend to the Gros Ventres, you will accompany us, — if you do not we will take you." The deer hunters sent out by the chief on their first arrival at camp returned in about an hour carrying two deer, when a great feast was pre- j)ared with ceremonies as austere as those conven- tional affairs among the Washin<^ton deplomats at their state dinners. Trapper Williams "sate" at the chiefs right, while the reporter of the bccasion -seated himself at the chief's left side. Crow Flies High, a warrior of prominence and repre- 202 FUdXril'k \Mi 1m HAN I.II'l',. sontative of the "Buonn.parte" Taction ol the Gros Ventres, and afterwards chief ot thesr indc^pen- clents who refused for many years to conform to treaties and conditions they had no hand at shape- ing — was at this spread, and a distinguished shar- er in attention from the chief, and given a prom- inent position at the martial feast. Loquatious- ness ruled during the passage of plates. 1 he "taciturn savage" that we read of is no relative of the Gros V^entres, especia,lly during dinner hours. After the feast a pipe well filled with kinnekinik was lighted and a ceremonious smoke at passing the pipe was participateel by all in a circle in which Man-that-hunts-his-enemy was the principal figure as its honored carrier. The smoke over, the Trap- per and I, after a careful canvass of the situation, concluded to join the Ciros V'entres through at least a part of the .Sioux country, and "tak(? chan- ces'" on the final outcome. We passed Fort Stevenson without being dis- covered or interfered with by the military at that post, — passed along under the bluffs at the mouih of Snake creek at sundown; catching, as we drift- ed along" the wild fury of a cyclonic storm in th(^ midst of which, for self preservation, to save the swamping and sinking of our frail \essels wcrr forced to handlock the entire flotilla, making a laroe raft — an invaluable protection to the cut waves ot the short bends or curves of the chan- nel in mid stream, in bad storms. We cooked supper at the Red Lake, long since With a Gkos X'kntkf, War Partv. 203 a part of the main channel of the wide Missouri. A beautiful body of clear water; a marginal rim of wavy willows and tall young cottonwoods mir- roring- their stately forms on the surface of the becamed lake, marked the spot where an evenino- of hilarious mirth and gastronomic feastino- was had by these wild warriors. A deep flowing stream; fitful gusts of sand is now the imprint that time has wrought. The upland plain; the red seamed buttes alone mark the outline — a spoiled picture in a pretty frame. When it become dark we made preparatious to re-embark, for traveling by night and hiding by day would be the established rule, so the chief in- formed us, as we entered the Sioux country. The stillness of the night was broken by some yelpino coyotes, afier which the good humored Gros Ven- tres took up the refrain with thumping of tin pan drums and singing in a hioh pitch the peculiar tribel songs, confused and silenced even these nosy beasts. When nearinp- the Tough Timber a brio-ht camp fire reflected upon the water from the bank but when the voices of the songsters reached the tribulated ears of the camper, the fire was ex- tingished in such a hurry that a general meri- ment went up from the boats at the camper's ex- pense. We afterward learned that the camper was Lonesome Charley, and it was not so much his fear of danger as his dread of a multitude of uninvited, undesirable guests, that caused him to "douce the glim" with such alacrity. 204 Frontier \nd L\dtan Life. After passing the hunter's camp we drifted out into the wide sluggish waters near the mouth of Knife river. Near dayhght the singing ceased and the drowsy men of war lay snoring in the bottoms of their frail hulls unconscious of danger from pointed snag or frowning sawyer. Our own boat had drifted on a sand bar in the middle of the river, and we awoke to feel the chilliness of the early morning air, and hnd that our late joyful comrades in arms were scattered along many miles of misty surface, each separate boat having drifted hither and thither at the caprice of the currant and sport of the breeze. Just as the sun was rising, we drifted under the sharp bluffs that mark the ruins of old Fort Clark, a place sacred and sad to the memory of the Mandans. In rounding the point at the mouth of the creek that empies into the river below the old village, we espied our whilom commander, and carrier of the pipe. He had landed from his boat and was perched upon a large beaver house leaning over with one ear pressed against the roof of the thrifty animals' plastered domicile, as if intently listening. So occupied was his mind that we passed by unnoticed, although only a few yards away. In about an half hour later, he came paddling up to us. He was blandly smiling and in hio-h good humor. In answer to the question about his posidon on the beaver house, the chief replied navely that he was "listening to the beaver talk," a remark that set the writer on a new train With a Gros Ventre War Partv. 205 of thouoht, that led to some interestintr observa- tions on the habits of the beaver family. " At this time the Gros Ventre gave proof of his practical knowledge of the habits of these animals by ex- hibiting a large beaver cascass over which, he said, we would discuss at breakfast. About an hour after sunrise we pulled up oq.ir boats on the strand opposite Lake Mandan. While placing the vessels ashore for drying and harden- ing, the bushes parted above us, and lo, a painted stranger stepped out. His presence though a sur- prise to Williams and myself, did not seem to mystify the Gros Ventres. The stranger beckon- ed partner and myself to follow him which led to a dense thicket, and there stood two dirt covered lodges with three or four squalid inmates. We were strangers no longer. The man before us was Partisan, an Indian politician and an exiled pretender to the chieftainship of the Aricarees. No Roman senator ever poised more haughtily — no high church prelate more circumspect than this fallen brave and chief. He was a man with- out a country and almost without a tribe. The heriditary chief of the Wanderers, a large Aric- aree band when Lewis and Clark came up the river in 1804, but closed out with the small pox in 1842. Aricarees proper, ignored his authority. 'Why do you go war with these bad men?" asked the exiled chief thoughtfully, referring to our gay companions in arms under thr river bank. "They go down the river in boats to stir up the 2o6 Frontier xkd Lndtan Life. Sioux who in their turn come up here and hunt for the scalps for such as I. Go back, Gros Ven- tres, go back !" exclaimed the excited Aricaree. After a good feast from the Partisan's stores — for he was generous to prodigality — we of the war party put our boats in the water and sailed down , to the Counted Woods, where we stopped to kill some antelope, thence drifted several miles further down the river and went into camp. The Gros'^l^entres military decipline became more stringent as we invaded the enemy's country; they came in contact with the frontiersman's well known independent notions. Thus having in view the time honored couplet. — "He who fights and runs away. . Will live to fight another day;" concluded at this juncture to divide honors with our warlike friends, so separated each party to pursue their own course of acdon. It was nearly two weeks after our separation, when one day while paddling our bull boat around Painted Woods lake we glanced toward the prairie to see a large party oi Indians heading for our camp. They were our Gros Ventre ex- comrades returning from war. They came back empty handed, save a pair of extra Government mules. Chief Gall had a large force ot his men on Heart river but were too watchful to be caught in detail and the Gros Ventres did not dare to give battle to such a large camp of Sioux. We gave them a royal feast, and thus closed the last bull boat war raid made by Gros Ventres against their old enemies. HALF BREED CHARLEY. THAT charitable sentiment, — "Blessed be the Peacemakers" — comes down from the dawn of the Christian era, and then perhaps it was but a borrowed expression brought back from the earlier ages — the days before Babylon on the Euphrates, or old Thebes on the Nile, became the seat and centre for lords of earthly greatness formed in human mould. However trite and beau- tiful the precept bearing the stamp of divine ori- ^^in, yet occult manifestations as exhibited in the everyday side of life, would rather impress us that "persecuted are the peacemakers," — if we look beyond a small band of philanthopists who would seem to carry the impress of the Deity in their chosen work — and face the great rabble de- nominated the progressive and enlightened Chris- tian world. To those of our readers familiar with histor- ical writings concerning the American aborigine, they will have noticed the unhappy ending ot so many of those Indians who fell martyrs to their faith in the rightiousness of the peacemakers* role. The Indians converted to the Christian cause, and from among its accepted tenets of faith "blessed be the peacemakers" was an allure- ing call to the well disposed, only to fmd them- selves entrapped in a network of studied decep- tion by these self-satisfied, heaven seeking Chnst- ains. and instead of the promised love and kmd- 2o8 Fkon'mer and Indian Life. ness became the objects of hatred, envy and mah- cious persecution, helpless and hopeless in iheu" endeavors to ward themselves from cruel wrong. Bcginnuig with the avaricious and dispoiic Spain- ards in their dealings with the meek and lowly natives of tropical Hayti, and from thence the the same system among the New England puritans and border colonists, pursuing without mercy In- dians, who would fain stop to change faith and worship the Dcvinity in a common alter on bend- ed knees side by side with th'^ir paie-faced brodi- crs. though in so doing became surer and easier prey to Christains of the Cotton Mather, the Paxon boys, the Col. Jessup and Col. Chivington kind, who were aided, abetted or condoned in their wicked work by reputable Christians — as witness the Pequot extermination, — the massacre of the Christian Indians on the Conestoga — the butchery of the Christian converts at the Mora- vian missions on the Muskingum, to say nothing about the present day rapacity of officers high up in the administration of affairs of the American government — professing Christians — but who have used their official power to the uttermost limit to despoil the remnants of the red Indian race of the remaining^ acres that enxiron their homes. It is useles to attempr the discussion of this subject in these cramped pages. It would take volumes to spread out in detail and illustrate the sickening incidents that have transpired both to the white and red race as the latter turned again and again to resent being jossled S(3 rudely. Half Bkked Charley. 209 In the opening sketch we have told the story of the disarming of Inkpaduta's band by the set- tlers of Smithland ana vicinity, in Iowa state c!urinor the month of February, 1*^57. In all that crew of rough bordermen who had taken leading part in that unjustifiable transaction, namely, Capt. Oran Smith, Lieutenants Will and Abram Turman, the Hone boys, Albert and Martin Livermore, the Meads, Tom Burns, Wellington, Jackson and Ira Price, not one among them had a word to say against the only English talking red in Inkpaduta's band, viz: — Half Breed, or as he was sometimes termed — Indian Charley. During the disarming, he plead for his Indian friends, and when the bad work was over he tried every art of pursusion to moiify the deep feeling of resentment against the white settlers that^the act had engendered in the breast of the savages. Being a good trapper, he redoubled his exertions, as they moved slowly up stream, that as little distress as possible might follow the loss of their guns, But strive how he may to avert it, the storm would come. Night after night he combatted the revengeful Star-in- Forhead, the real leader in the after work of butchery. They had settled upon revenge, and Half Breed Charley and one com- panion who had taken sides with him were told to leave camp and not return. This scene took place at Peterson where the first serious overt act occurred which preceded the massacre of the set- tlers at Okaboji and Spirit Lake. 2IO Frontier and Indian Liff.. To the home of Ira Waterman, on Waterman Creek, the two Indian refugees repaired and told of their troubles. Charley said that Inkpaduta's band had "bad hearts" and he would leave them. Him- self and companion had a few traps, and in a bend above Cherokee where beavers were plenty, they would build themselves a cabin and live. Ira Waterman, recalling the story, after forty years had passed, said not one settler in all that valley doubted the loyalty or peaceful intentions of Half Breed Charley and partner. Settlers often came to their lowly hut, and noted their thrift and a large batch of well handled fnrs. Every guest was in- vited to share their humble cheer of roast deer ribs and beaver tail soup. One day two white men called at the Water- man place. They were strangers there. Tht:y claimed to be trappers yet had only guns to show their insigna of vocation. '*We hear there is some good trapping grounds down this side of Cherokee," said one of the strangers, "and I guess we'll go down and try and make a catch!" A few days later the strangers returned up river with a few traps and a large, well cleaned, nicely stretched lot of dried peltries. They did not tarry. Neither did they talk. A later guest, at Charley's camp, found no one to receive. Some moulded provisions — a few rusted dishes — some stained bed clothing. That was all. But mute as was the settler's reception, and silent his entertainment- -to him the story of a gruesome tragedy had been told. THIRD GROUP. Fred. F. Girard, One of the Most Prominent Indian Traders of Early Days ox the Upper Missouri. MASSACRE ON BURNT CRSEK BAR. ACROSS the mighty arch spanning the River Missouri, on the Northern Pacific line, peo- ple daily pass and repass serenely, hundreds of feet above the- swirling- waters, famed since human kind first settled upon its banks as "the river that never voluntarily gives up its dead." The jarring of the bumpers; grating oi iron wheels and gliding on by the iron knit stanchions, help remove that insecure leeiing which otherwise might possess the passen- ger in the ride across this river, high up in air. To a tourist visiting the lands of the Upper Missouri for the first time, the crossing of this stream is an event of inter:\st, and indeed, it is never mono- tonous, not even to the trainmen whose duty it is lo cross and recross over the huge structure daily. Once upon the bridge seated in the moving car, the passenger whose window will allow a glance up stream, can view about one half mile away, on ihe east bank the southermost point of a grove of limber that extends as far as the eye can see. A low lying sand bar skirts the timber for two or three miles. Straiige is the Missouri's record of chang- ing of water channels; changing of banks and bars; changing even of timbered points that dis- appear as in a day, and the surging current or some bare desert of sand alone mark the site. But 13 Frontier and Indian Like the line of timber we have just described — Burnt Creek Bar — remains much the same that it did in the early days of August, 1863. The bar has widened some since that date — the waters recede- ing. But a little narrow shoot that cut through the bar in i' 63, is closed; tempests of sand had rubbed out its sinuous lines as completely as though it were hgures sponged from a slate. Now we will go back to the beginning of this chronicle — or at least — the beginning of the end. One day in the early part of July, 1863, there elided out from the Fort Benton landing a well built flat bottomed boat containing in all tv, enty men, one woman and baby, and one little girl. They were, for the most part, successful miners^ had made their fortunes among the rich placer mines, known in those days as Bannock. To par- ties at Fort Benton at the time of launching, and who were familiar with some of the miners, said that in addition to what each of these intending voya- gers carried around their bodies in belts, $90,000 in dust was placed in prepared augur holes and tightly plugged in the stanchions of the boat. A small cabin was built as shelter ft)r the woman, her baby and the little girl. As the boat sped swiftly along down the rapid stream, propelled by oars in its intervals of slug- gishness, or pushed forward with the swiftness of a wounded duck in a favoring breeze. The home sick miners and this lone woman had little to oc- cupy their thoughts in their cramped room save 'Wf rt^t^E^ Girard's Trading Post at Old Ft. Berthold. Massacre on Burnt Creek Bar. 14 day dreams of the coming joy and welcome in their first and best homes. They could tell of their long trials and adventures in savage lands; could show heaps of glittering gold, as the price of past denials and purchase of future comforts in the new lile of indolence and ease. No dark shadow, no bony finger; no feverish dream; no knocks of warning as tar as we may know, stayed the hands or lent dismal, uncanny thoughts in the minds of this mountain crew as they rode on towards the realm bordering shadowy lands. On the 8th day of August the boat reached Fort Berthold. They landed to purchase some sup- plies. They were here warned by F. F. Girard, the trader in charge, that it would be dangerous to attempt to pass through the Painted Woods coun- try at the time, as Sibley's army had driven the Sioux to the Missouri at that place, and Aricaree runners reported them encamped among the tim- ber bends on both sides of the river. A consul- tation was held on the boat and it was finally con- cluded this was a trader's ruse to hold them there for extortion purposes. An old grey headed man dressed in black, dissented, though he said but litde. The boat crew drifted out of sight of Fort Berthold on the afternoon of the 9th. They were joined at departure by a Canadian-Frenchman, an ex-employee of the American Fur Company, and familiar with Indian ways. It has been asserted, in this man's possession was the key of a great rays- terv. If so, the key is lost and seal unbroken. 15 Fk().\iii:k \m> Im'Ian Lifk. That evening- they encamped near the ruins of old Fort Clark, one of the first, Indian trading- posts along- the Upper Missouri. The balmy Au- gust breeze played about the sleepers, under the moon's shade at the old ruins. The noisy swirls on the river; the hooting- owls — lone guardians of these decaying habitations where misery and death had so long mutually sat in imperious sway in the fear haunted old homes of the Mandans and Aricarees. The cool grey light of morning bid the boat crew cooks prepare the breakfast, and even before the brioht liaht of the mornino- sun o-fist- ened on their oar blades, they had rounded the hieh bluff and cut banks that mark the creek "where the Crows and Gros Ventres parted," and stood out upon a.n open river lacing- the distant domes ot the Square Buttes, and the eagerly looked for, though dreaded Painted Woods came to their view. During the summer and autuinn of 1868, Avhile publishing the Dakota Democrat, at Yankton ilie old Territorial capital, anci as occasional correspon- dent for the Chicago Times, 1 made frequent trips in the interest of these two publications amoiig the lower Sioux agencies and some of the military posts established in the territory contingent ih're- to. Among the most interesting of the agencies at this time was the Santee Sioux, established on the east bank of the Missouri river, and a few^ miU^s below where the rapid Niobrara cnipiics its Massacre on Burnt Creek Bar. i6 waters in this inland artery. It was this tribe that was responsible for ihe Indian outbreak of 1862, in the northwest prairie region, and commonly known as the "Minnesota massacre." A large majority of the remnants of the tribe here gath- ered were woman and children, the males having principally fallen at the hands ot avenging troops that hunted them down wheresoever they had fled after the destruction of the settlers of western Minnesota. By some chance I became acquainted with a small, middle aged, light complexioned and very intelligent Santee woman, known as Red Blanket. Like many others of that tribe she had passed through a terrible ordeal since the morning of the 1 8th of August, 1.S62. In her verbal chronicle of those days, I became interested in her version of the massacre of the mining crew at the mouth of Burnt creek in the early days of August, 1863. For reasons unnecessairly to explain, I noted the woman's story down with ink and pen which have hertofore remained among my unpublished re- cords. In placing it in English I have endeavored to convey her simple linguistic style from the San- tee. We will now let her tell the story: "When Sibley's soldiers started back up Apple creek, our chiefs and head men commenced to look about them. We had many camps scattered along Heart -river and some on Square Buttes creek. We found no buffalo and but few elk and deer. th<^ Uncpapas, who had been living there, 17 FkcN'hi-k ami Indian Live scared or killed everything. Three da\'.s aher the soldiers disappeared we commenced recrossing" the big river at the foot of the high bluffs. Buf- falo were plenty on the east side and that was why we returned. We made a large camp in a deej> coulee facing the river with some limber and a long sand bar in front of some low willows. Re- side our own (Shockape's) band were many lodges of both Yanktonevs and Sissetons. I think it was six days after our return, that in the company of severa.1 women, we went to the river to ba;he and wash some clothes. There was a narrow, switr running shute near shore, and beyond this a hid- den bar, then deep water again. On this morning at the entrance of the shute from main river, si: an old man — a Sisseton — fishinsJ The morniuLT was calm. I'p the river we could hear voices and the sound of paddles. After some time a large boat full of people came to view and were drift- ing near shore. We saw that they were white people, when we started to run away. At thi \ time they were near rifle shot of the old man. lie arose and made the blanket signal to keep out in the main stream. Next came a pufi of smoke and a rifle report from the boat and then the old man fell over. I'hen we all screamed and ran until we met our husbands and brothers with Av^'w guns, bows and arrows. Then us women hid in the edge ot the bushes. The long boai stopped in shallow water at the entrance ot the narrow Massacre on Burnt Creek Bar. i8 channel. More of our people came swarming out from the timber and the shooting became almost continuous, when the loud report of cannon from the boat scared us all. We were afraid saldiers from Sibley's army njight be coming again upon us, the one loud report sounded over and over so many limes. Then came what we feared — woun- ded and dying men. We woman picked and car- ried many from the bar to the lodges up the cou- lee. One woman was killed in trying to save her husband. I had a brother killed; it sent my heart to the ground. .Several of our fighters procured logs and rolled across the bar toward the boat, firing from behind. Others screened along the cut bank of the shute. It was the middle of the after- noon when some one shouted that the old white man dressed in black had fallen. It was he who had killed so many of our people. He hid in one corner of the boat: He would rise at times and look abo'U him. Our warriors believed he was a priest or medicine man. When the shout went up that the medicine man was killed every one rushed upon the boat. All were not yet dead but we soon killed them. One; woman was found under the ]3ig box; dragged forth and cut to pie- ces with knives. She looked terrified but did not cry. A cryiiig baby was taken from her arms and killed. I dill not see the little girl, though she might have been ihf^re, for all I would know. I help kill the woman. They had killed my brother. T9 FudXllKK \M> I.MIW I.I.E I he boat was halt lilKnl with water. \\\c one shot iViMii [Ur cannon hail caus(\l it to 1 'ak an\v buckskin shirt and pants. We sirippcxl many bodies of their clothes, and in so doin^; founil belts of what we thought was wet or bad powder. It -was thrown away. We lost near thirty men alto o-ether. -Some did not die rioht awav but those who did were placed in thi^ trees beyond the village. The old Sisseton went to his death trying to save troul>le and li\es by warning the boatmen to put out in the main stream, that they might quietly pass by unnoticed. [he while men mistook the mo- tive, perhaps, so killed him and paid torteit by losing their own lives. bhose who know the Sis- seton best, say this was the motive that imp( lied the signal. After many days crying for our tlead, ■we separated and went many ways, (^ur band went to the Devil's Lake." Ilius concluded the Santee woman, as unfold ing the Indian verson o( the massacre of the miners on l.^mnt Creek Bar, and cause that led thereto. Massacfu-: on Burnt Creek Bar. 20 In the autumn of ICS76, while taking;- a few days huntino^ trip w(?st of the Missouri, I was joined at the Square lUittes by two lodges of Aricarees. These consisted of the families and some friends of two brothers — high up in the tribe — known as the Whistling Bear and Sitting Bull. Among the party was a partly educated Aricaree woman called by her white acquaintances, "Long Hair Mary." She had a fair command of English pickfxl up in a Mission. While encamped at the mouth of Deer creek several days, game was so plentiful that but little exertion was required to get all the deer, an- telope or elk meat wanted. During an interval ot leisure, and not being very proficient in the Aricaree tongue, I called on the good offices of Mary to assist in the interpretation of the following statement from the Whistling Bear, concerning the concluding events immediately following the massacre of the miners on Burnt Creek Bar: ''About two weeks after the white men be- longing to the boating party were killed on Burnt Creek Bar, some Uncpapa friends of the Mandans came into our village at b'ort Berthold and told us about it Girard the trader, being my brother-in- law, and to whom I consulted about the Uncpapas' story, advised my g(;tting together a small band of trusty men and go hunt up the place where the fight took place. He explained furth(;r, that un- less some of the Sioux knew gold dust l^y the color, there must be abundant gold dust, either 2 1 ['"koNriKk ANjj 1m HAN Life laying abouL among effects in the boat or in b(;lt.; npon the bodies of the slain and then I was shown a sample so that no mistake would be made. In the early morning of the closing days of the "cherry moon," we left our village at Tort Ber- thold for the perilous trip. There were ten of us in all. We followed the banks of the winding river close, and on the third day we noticed th(i soaring of buzzards on the river near the mouth of Burnt Creek. Not a breeze was blowino^, nor a cloud in all the blue sky. A misty line of fog, that followed the curved line of the channel wa- ters at sunrise, rose high in air as we reached the sand bar at Burnt Creek. The big black appearing boat was seen at last. It was partly sunken. We saw no cannon. The bodies of the dead, partly dismembered were being led upon by buzzards. Upon some of them we found belts filled with gold dust. Other bodies near by, the sacks or belts of buckskin had been cut open and contents spilled upon the sand. At the boat we found a coffee pot which we filled with gold dust. There were no Sioux seen. We visited their deserted carwp in the coulee back from the timber grove. In the trees were many blanketed dead. We then made our way back to our village at Fort Ber- thold. To Girard we gave the gold. He in turn presented me with a large horse, and a few pres- ents and a feast to my companions of the journey." With this close the story of Whistling Bear in Massacre on Burnt Creek Bar. 22 connection with the orold of the ill-fated miners. Big John and the Soldier two worthy Aricarees with a long number of years to their credit in the Government service as scouts, made several hunt- ing trips — in their younger days — along the bot- tom lands of Burnt Creek. Over a year after the tragedy on the sand bar the boat of the murder- ed miners lay embedded in the sand, and to this day far down in its sand covered grave it yet re- mains, and will abide until the Missouri at that point again changes its sand devouring course or the greed of gold raise willing hands to uncover the undisturbed and unclaimed gold secreted in the buried boat's rugged stanchions. m> .# Little Crow. Leader of the Santee. Sioux Outbreak^ 18G2, 1 Aeicaree Hunting Lodge. TH3 RENEGADE CHIEF. AFEVV miU-s soiiih of the old Pawnee Iiidiaii Agency in the State of Nebraska, there is a small winding stream putting into the Loup river, whose sluggish placid waters with its mirrored surface, had suo^o-ested to the Indians, lon^f aero, the name of the Looking Glass. On the Indian trail leadino- between thi'S now abandoned Pawnee villagre and the town of Colum- bus at the junction of the Loup and Platte rivers, and within four miles of the last named town, there resided in the year 1864, and long years be- fore and since — and, for all the narrator knows sull abide there, — an energetic, thrifty and push- inor farmer and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murray. In that year 1864, Mr. Murray had a contract with the Government for putting up the hay for the Pawnee Agency, and as early as the 8th of July, his party was encamped and at work on the meadows at the mouth of Looking Glass creek. Mrs. Murray was in charge of the camp, her hus- band havinor been summoned on a business en- gagement a day or two previous to the then cap- ital city of Omaha. The make up of the hay party besides Mrs. Murray, was her brother, one other young man; a 2 25 Frontier \nd Indian Life. sixteen year old boy and a frontier rambler named Sam. The man Sam had come down the Platte river trail a short time previous, and though o^iven to but little talk, acknowledofed that he had been hunting and trapping with the northern branch of the Arapahoe Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Horn mountains. The man had some notice- able peculiarities that were remembered of him at the Murray farm house. He was a fatalist. He was born in Illinois state, but from as early as he could remember he believed he was marked out to lead an Indian's life. He had simply done what he could not help, he said, in living with the Arapahoes. Fhough at times, communicative he was given much to solitary brooding. About sundown of July 8th, the Looking Glass hay party rested from work to take supper. Paw- nee women from the Agency, who had on previous days been within sight o( the camp gathering plumb blaus or tipsinee, on this afternoon were seen to leave the hills fully two hours earlier than usual, and then in a body, Sam remarked on this movement as something out of the common, and believed they must have had a scare. Those in camp nodced that Sam's demeanor become rest- less, and was frequently raising his hand over his eyes and scanning the hills. All at once Sam's attention was rivited to one spot. A solitary horseman was seen to ride upon the point of a ridge overlooking and in plain view of the camp. Two or three minutes later the horseman was joined by a companion. Then came others in The Renegade Chief. 226 single file until six mounted men stood abreast. In Indian file they slowly approached the camp. Sam watched them intently all the while with- out speaking. The formost horseman started up on a canter followed in like speed by the rest of the band. When within five hundred yards of the hay camp the horsemen now running in curved circles circumventing the camp, set up some blood curdling yells. Sam's face turned livid, and moving excitedly to his companions exclaimed with a choking voice: "They are Arapahoes and I am a dead man !" Another minute, they had contracted the circle in tightening coils, and were upon the terrified and defenseless haymakers. Every Indian war- rior had his bow strung and bent and every death bearing shaft was sent into Sam's body, until he reeled and fell, feebly uttering the words : "I'ts Bob — I thought so — I thought so." After Sam had fallen, the bowmen turned their attention to Murray's brother-in-law and the other man who were also shot until dead. The boy es- caped by hiding under a hay cock at the outset, and Mrs. Murray, thinking on the first rush that the red marauders only wanted the stock was out and endeavoring to hold them, when a stray arrow hit her, and falling in the long grass kept quiet. They rode away after securing the scalps of the murdered men. Several years , later while the writer was residing: with the Murrays, the lady was frequently suffering from effects of this arrow which had without much doubt been poisoned. 227 Frontier wd I.nt»iax Liff. If Sam was corrt'ct, here was a war party of six Arapahoe-s who had come from the main camp six hundred miles away, rode up within sight of thrc;(.' thousand of their enemies — the Pawnees, — and at the risk of almost sure discovery and death, ecame a passenger from the town of Yankton on an up-bound steamer, — the fine side wheeler Henry M. Shrieve, of St. Louis, Missouri. One evening while our boat was puffing along up stream in the neighborhood of old Fort George, we landed at a rather enticing looking wood pile for fuel. Before landing we had noticed from the boat about, perhaps, a mile below, a man and two Indian woman on the sand bar, sitting beside a skiff tied at anchor, all three seemingly busy in the cheerful and necesssary occupation of eating their evening meal. On inquiry at the woodyard, the proprietor 'I~iii: I\i:N'i;(;.\i)i', Ciiikf. 228 averred ihat ihey \V(!re a "([iieer set." Although a smatterinLi;^ linguist of many tribes, he had found these Indian woman could talk a language that he could noi: understand, "and the buck who might have onc(; passed for a white man would not talk at all. " They had come down th(? rivc^r from the nordi. he furthermore said, and were evidently afraid of the Sioux — so much indeed, that they done most of their traveling at night. Plenty of hnsure while the boat crew were packing on wood, and the promptings of an idle curiosity, caused me take a walk back to where these grotesque strangers were sitting. As far as looks go, ihc; man was a hard and tough appear- in^r one. He was dressed in a suit of dirty bleached buckskin; wore a long wig of matted hair and a l(uig busy beard. His dark grey eyes gave forth a cold glassy stare. He deigned not to notice my approach "(iood evening," 1 said, whcMi I stepped up in front of them. ".\ fiiKMivening; traveling down the river 1 suppose?" The man made no reply, Init raising himself up to a standing position, drew fcM'th a huge dag- ger from a heavily beaded scabbard that was tucked under his body belt, and with his eyes now glistening like the star orbed basilisk, pointed the glittering blade with an out stretched arm toward the full faced "empress of the night," then just raising in her full majesty ab()v(; the tree tops, hissed out : 229 . Frontier and Indian Lifk. ''There is the moon !" The elder of the two females then jumped to her feet and without speaking, tapped her finger on the forehead with a rolling motion — the Indian sign o( crazy. With a short mental conflict of ideas, whether the good woman meant the ques- tioner or the questioned, I returned to the steam- boat at the wood landing. The interview was short, it was true., but rhe raising of that dagger toward the moon revealed an idendty he could not well hide. That grue- some weapon was held in a thumbless hand. It was my first and last intervietv with the murder- ous white chief of an outlawed band of the north- ern or Big Horn Arapahoes. Arriving, at the P^ort Berthold Agency in May. — some twenty days after the pithy interview with the thumbless renegade — I learned the trio had wintered in a woodyard about four miles above the Agency. He had a small contract with Gluck the woodyard proprietor to chop some cord wood. The contract was faithfully carried out on the ren- egade's part thanks to thejndustry and muscular development of his oldest wife. One peculiarity of the renegade was very noticable. Wherever he went he carried two long buckskin sacks filled with some heavy material. They were about six inches in circumference and eighteen inches long. He spoke of them as his "medicine." Other riiF, IvKM-c \i)i-: Ciii!:i-. 230 (liohty api)(\irino- actions altracted attention with p(!Ople whom he came in contact with, and while many thought his vag-aries were "put on" there were others who thought the eccentric woodchop- per was httle better than an unbalanced lunatic- Early in the spring an attache came down from Fort Feck, the then leading trading post of the great Durfee & Feck company, who stated that the "crazy" man was no other than Hob North the noted renegade of the Big Horn country. He had been recognized while landing at that post the previous autumn, by some of Crazy Horse's band of Ogallalla's who were on a tradin^j;^ trip at that place. He had been accused of assisting in the destruction of iht- u-.n miner's on the Yellow- stone near thc^ mouth ot Fowder river, in 1863, and was the leader of the Arapahoe contingent of hostiles who assisted at the massacre of the eighty soldiers near b\)rt Fhil Kearney, in 1866, and mention was made at the time by the wife of Com- mander Carrington who afterward wrote a full account of that tragedy in the wilderness, in her book — 'Absaraka or Home ot the Crows." At Baker's stockade lower Fainted Woods, on New Year's day 1872, the thermometer, hanging on the outward gate, registered forty-tive degrees below zero, at sunrise. In company with two companions — Trapper Williams and Charley Grey — we were huddling around a small fire in the cook room, but occasionally taking turns on an 231 Fkontiek 'VND In man Ltik. outside stroll as a kind of a "walkino- delegate," as the time was then up to expect the arrival of fifteen lodges of Yanktonay Sioux under chief Black Eyes, a supposed hostile band coming- down from the: buffalo range. Word had reached us by carrier from the commandment at Fort Stevenson to that effect, with the additional admonition to be on our guard. Our nearest neighbors at that time was nearly forty miles distant, therefore hav- ing no reliance but our rifles and our iuch'ment, a little caution was deemed advisable. Toward noon on that day a warm chinnook wafted its soft warm breath down along the ice- bound and snow covered Missouri. Out then from their hollow snuggeries among the ancient oaks and cottonwoods, came the big eyed, [)ointed eared cat owls, with their dismal hooting — ihe red Indian's danger signal. Sharp reports coming from among the thawing cottonwoods like ihe opening attack of skirmishers in battle; the shrill chirping of the meat-eating magpie, the Hitting of the chickadees, the yelping of the never resting coyotes. Added to these confusion of noises, the effects of the dense air descending through air holes and huge fissures ot the ice along ihe frozen river which produced stranpe moaning sounds like the subdued stress and strains of a hurricane in some dense forest of cedar or pine. Such scenes and sounds in an almost uninhabited wilderness, bring on betimes an indefinable bode- ing of fear and harassed feeling of inky gloom. TiiK Rknkcade Chief. 232 In vain our optics carc^fully scanned everythincr strange or heretofore unnoticed to the north .of us, for a sight of the expected hostiles. A ghmpse of them would have been a reHef — for what fear strains on the imagination Hke a danger in hiding? As the wind grew warmer the snow commenced melting very fast, the air took a hazy hue; snags and drifts on distant bars became to the overstrained imagination, moving objects. Black lines now followed the sand bars under the Square Buttes, and around the river line of the Aragara- hoe. F~rom the south and not from the north as we had expected, moving objects finally came in view. All three ol us as usual on a fresh alarm came to the river bank to watch close the movements of the strangers. Two persons with a pony hitched in travaux were plainly observed, when some one said : "That is Long Feather the peacemaker." But as they came up to us, they proved to be a white man with an Indian woman. They came up to the stockade and the man asked permission to remain a few days as they were tired out, having wandered up from the Indian Territory, and were endeavoring to make their way up to Fort Bel- knap near the British line. He was recognized as a harmless kind of a fellow that formerly re- sided in the kort .Sully neighborhood, while the red woman was readily known at first sight o be the youngest \\\h' of Bob North the renegad?. chiet. 233 * F"rontier \^y) Indian Life. During their several days stay at the stockade, sonie ghmpses of the renegade North's Hfe was gathered from this Indian woman, that explained many happenings on the western frontier that had heretofore been inexplicable to many of the bordermen. The young woman was the daughter of Many Bears, the noted head chief of the Gros Ventres of the Prairies, — kindred of the Arapa- hoes. On one occasion while North and his band were visiting ivith the Gros Ventres, North, in Indian fashion purchased the young girl from her father and made her his second wife. The man Sam, spoken of in the firsu part of this sketch, had come to the Arapahoe village in North's company, but had as a general thing re- fused to accompany North and his band whicli much of their time were raiding the emigrant trail along the North Platte river, or beyond in the Ute coun- Renegade Chief's hand atiacK' a train. Till' Rfnf(;ai)k Chief. 234 try at the head of the Laramie, or abotit the parks of the main range. Sam had been- killed by Bob as already described, by the Arapahoe band but for what special reason she did not know. They were over two weeks on the trail when they came back with Sam's blood matted scalp. Sam had been located by Nordi on a spying trip to the settle- ment while his band was in hiding among the hills. Thompson concluded his wife's story. He had incidently met the outlaw and family a few days after the writer's interesting and pointed interview with him on on the sand bar near old Fort George At meeting, the arrogance of the outlaw was sub- dued and his mental condition took a normal turn. Hundreds of suspicious Sioux were after him, and if caught he would fare badly. To guide him swiftly out of the country and to be his companion, North made Thompson the gen- erous offer of his youngest wife. The tempting prize was accepted and the four pulled out for the Indian Terrritory. It was near the Kansas south line, at the mid- night hour, during a rainy, uncomfortable October storm, 1869, that brought North to the end of his rop(^ The outlaw's party was heading for the camp of the southern Arapahoes, and were rest- ing as best they could from the buffiting of the storm without their tent, when a body o( men — vigilantes or robbers, the survivors could never tell — surrounded them and laid their clinched lists upon the renegade chief with the remark: 235 Frontier and Indian Life. "North you scoundrely renegade we have \-()ii at last." North was "ied, hands and feet, and dragged to a tree and hanged. The Arapahoe wife fought wnth the fury of a hyena, and shared her white husband's merited doom; a pitying tear to wifely loyalty that forced her across the dark river in the company of her pale faced mate. The lynching party secured the "medicine" sacks from the outlaw and made way with them. The pouches undoubtedly contained gold and most probably was taken from the bodies or effects of the murdered miners of Powder river or elsewhere. While the detection of North by the Kanzas lynchers remains a mystery, the most probable theory is that he had been shadowed from the Upper Missouri country. Thompson and his Indian wife were not dis- turbed by the midnight raiders but ordered under threats to return northward at once, to which they readily complied. After a tew days rest at the Baker stockade. Thompson and his w^ife started out on their jour- ney, but came across Charley Reynolds then hunt- ing around Lake Mandan. The pair became, l)y easy persuasion, camp keeper for ihe noted hunt- er and served him faithfully for some months. "Em," as her husband affectionately called her had .the fair complexion of the tribes of the far north. .\t the time of which w^e are writing, she was al)out twenty years of ai>(\ She could talk Thk Renegade Chief. 2^6 J' a little English, and it was pathetically interesting to see the painstaking efforts she made to imitate the civilized waj's of a good housewife. While returning from a trapper's "sign-up" on Grennell creek, above the White Earth river, in the autumn of 1875, I accidently met Charley Rey- nolds in the company of Orvill Grant, brother of President Grant, and Trader Parkin, of the Stand- ing Rock Agency, who were on their way to Fort Belknap, the Agency of the River Crows and Gros Ventres of the Prairie. After their return I again met Reynolds, this time at Fort Berthold where he gave an account of a closing glimpse of the remaining characters of this sketch. After their arrival at Belknap and rested som^nvhat, Reynolds said he naturally in- quired for his quondam campkeepers of the Lake Mandan hunt — "Em" and her husband. He was told that the pair had arrived there all right, but the chief Many Bear, P^m's father, and all his fam- ily and the principal part of his tribe had died durinp; the small pox epidemic of 1869-70. Some Agency employee pointed out a place beyond the Port wJ-ierc Thompson's remains were quietly resting, and that Em was vtny sick at that time in a lodge not far away. While moving among a group of lodges near the place pointed out by the employee, he heard the familiar \oice of the one he was seeking. It was in broken and feeble tones, and before the 237 Frontier ^^nd Indian Life. sympathetic hunter entered the lodge the sufferer repeated planitively : "Oh, Thompson ! Oh, my Thompson, come." When Reynolds looked about him within the lodge, the sick woman lay curled up in a well worn buffolo robe, absolutely alone, and apparently, fast passing away. Without M^ere merry, roystering voices of health and hope; within the rasping- cough; the muffled sobs She made no sign of re- cognition as her former employer and good friend raised the lap oi robe from her face, and bent soothingly over her, but kept on repeating in a pleading way: — "Oh, Thompson ! Oh my Thomp- son, come." Poor dying girl your cry was for naught. Your Thompson's body was already mouldering with the dust. A Trio of I^pper Yanktoney Sioux. BUCKSKIN JOS. THE American wild Indian, in custom, usually bestows some name on his child early in life, but that name is sometimes changed afterward to some peculiarity of character, or habit of the in- dividual, and if a boy, some after achivement in war or hunting. When fame once acquired under a particular name the cognoman so bestowed, be- comes permanent. The average white frontierman, in spite of his oft expressed antipathy to the general character and customs of the red race, has meantime un- consciously copied many of the Indian's habits and peculiarities; among them the custom of bestowing a name on some newcomer in the neighborhood, suited to that stranger's style of action, habits of dress or whatever else impressed the aforesaid self constituted board of critical "old- timers." It was indeed an uninteresting section of the wild west that did not, — sometime in its history — produce a local famed "Buckskin Joe." He ap- pears in various disguises and characteristics in the early annals of I'exas, California, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado. The Buckskin Joe of the Upper Missouri river country, was duly christened by the afore-mention- 239 Frontier ^nd 1m)ia.\ Lifk. ed "old timers" when he appeared among tht^m in 1868, a gaudily and tastefully uniformed "ten- derfoot" in the habilments of the bad man of the border. He was about eighteen years of age, and had come out from his home in far New Eng- land to visit his father who was in the Govern- ment service at one of the military posts in Montana. Youthful Joseph had an impressionable mind. From the forward cabin of an elegant steamer, he saw a new manner of life and in strange contrast with his former surrounding in his eastern natal place. He saw vast tracts of land on either side of him which seemed as trackless as the sandy deserts in the Soudan wastes of Africa. He saw. as the boat plowed the channel waters of endless swirls like the proud crested swan, — wild animals start from their willow coverts and flee in affright from the strange noises of the huge paddle wheels and escaping steam of the boiler. He saw at long intervals along the banks of the wide river, a strange colored race of people living in skin lodges, or in houses shaped like an inverted wooden bowl. He saw at long stretches, log shacks at convenient places, where wood was cut in mea- sured lengths and piled up in long ricks for the passing steamers, the work being done by a class o( men, that appeared to him a cross between these wdld denizens of the skin teepee and his own people. He observed how^ free and untram- meledWere the lives they led, wilhont the con- Buckskin Joe. 240 straints of society and the dubious dodgeings to "keep straight" and avoid the besetting net work of the intracies of the law, as he had seen in places back in a land where high pressure civiliza- tion ruled. He saw the hunter, trapper and the wolfer togged up as fanciful and showy as the red dude of an Indian village, and their mettled steeds that they bestrode in their prairie wanderings were decked out in paint and feathers as was the favorite war ponies of their red rivals. These varying scenes and moods of life were presented to Joseph in an endless turn of kaleid- oscopic views as the steamer puffed and blowed against the stiff June currant that flooded down from the snowy sides of the Rocky mounrains. But his awakening mind settled on the one point, — that a future hunter's career was his destiny. About these times, (1868) steamboating on the Upper Missouri river had reached its zenith. Boats coming up from St. Louis were loaded with passengers for the new gold fields of Montana and Idaho. The steamers were provided with well furnished cabins and state rooms. A good larder being indispensible on so long a journey, induce- ments were held out to the woody ard men of the upper country to furnish fresh meat as well as wood for the passing boats. As the timbered points from Fort Randall to Ft. Benton at that time contained large numbers of deer and elk, and the prairies for the greater part of the same dis- tance ranged numerous herds of antelope, be- 241 FkoN'iiKk \Nr) Indian Lifk. sides occasional droves of buffaloes, the task of plentifully supplying the boats with fresh wild meats was not a difficult one. Almost the first act in his hunting commence- ment Joseph hired out to the boat captains as "meat maker" on their passage through the wild game section. His passage secure, a good table to sit down to at regular intervals to stay a healthy appetite; credit at the bar on the prospective roll of deer and antelope hides, was a self satisfied condition of things that the young hunter thor- oughly enjoyed and had no wish to jeopardise by indiscreet action. As the days went on and young Joseph extended his observations, and profited thereby, he intertained his fellow passengers with a loquacity proas to that manner of life, that would have done credit to one with much more practical experience in the hunter's occupation than he. But somehow the tolerant and good natured captains usually discovered at the end of two or three days, the tact unfolded with suspicious care, that the affable "meat maker" notwithstand- ing the showy insignia of his calling and vaunting pretentions, usually hunted with his tongue. He accustomed himself. to fina ready e.xcu.ses at the non-appearance of fresh wild meat at the boat's table, that in such points that he hunted while the boats crew were wooding up, — the plausible story came to him that he saw the startling .siwn of a bitT war party — and surely no one wanted him to risk (;ven chances on lieing scalped for the sake 1jLck..skia joe. 242 of an elk or a deer. At another wood .stop a short ramble would convince him that "a hunting party of snaky Injuns had driven the point and scared the game out." At another dme he would come out of the timber with a detailed and breezy statement of how he wounded a big- fat buck, and yet another lime it would be a band of antelope, that "Look away a lead mine with them pumped from my telescopic Sharp gun, but got out of sight among the bluffs." The wounded ^^ame story came in handy when the gang planks were pulled in and no chance for a sympathizing passenger to help him out by volunteering to assist in trailing. The I oat could not loose unnecessary time. But, alas for our young friend's free rides, free grub and fr(^e whisky, his star as "meat maker" grew dim. while the tongue hunting star shone out with the radiant glare of a big full-faced har- vest moon, and it was a green captain, indeed, who employed Buckskin Joe as wild meat hunter on a Fort Benton trip. The next heard of Buckskin was around F"ort Buforel. He came into that post one day during a January storm and in a brisk, business-like air, walked up 10 :he commandant's quarters to make a requisition on that officer for the use of two six mule teams to haul up the carcasses of one dozen elk that he had butchered in a timber point below die shute at the mouth of the Lower or Little Muddy river. After Joseph was feasted and fed royally lor two or three days as the hero of a great 243 Frontier vntd 1m)ian Lin.. hunter's coup, puttinor to shame the pretensions ot Yellowstone Kelly and even withering the green laurels that had so long encircled the brow of the prince ' of nimrods — Lonesome Charley Reynolds, the necessary teams, drivers and escorts were furnished by the quartermaster in obediance to the post commandant's orders to assist Buck- skin Joe in the transportation of several ions of wild meat to the fort. The party reached the scene of the great hunt in due time and after diligent search, but one elk could be found. A light snow saved the hunter from immediate and positive humiliation. After a few pantomimic bursts of dispair, Joe condemned a pack of imaginary wolves for depriving the gar- rison of some toothsome feasts. Having run his hunters' reputation to cover, Joseph tried a new vocation — that of whiskey tra- der. A plausible showing ot expectant profits in- duced a bar tender on one of the Montana bound steamers to land our hopeful hero and a five gal- lon keg of bad whiskey near the mouth of Porcu- pine creek, where a band of whisk^'y drinking As- sinaboines were encamped. It took but a few minutes to strike up a trade with these ihirsiy Indians. They brought bales of robes and furs to the point of rendezvous agreed upon and cheer- fully dumped them over the river bank where the tickled trader had a skiff in waiting to receive them. He joyfully passed up the whiskey as fast as^he could" measure the liquid out. But the firey Buckskin Joe, 244 stuff went to the poor Indians' heads at once and they commenced a furious fusilade with their guns. The result was, that Joe took to the willows and woods and was glad to exchange fur, robes, skiff and even his gun for safety from a tragic death prospect among drunk crazed savages. He related a pitiful story to the bar tender of the disastrous outcome of his trading trip. Undaunted, he was again staked with a five gallon keg of "hre water" with all the name implied. This time he would try the Indians around Fort Berthold, where he hoped for better results for old acquaintance sake. He succeded in getting three ponies, which success in the sanguinity of his na- ture he imparted to a friend that "it will put me foot foreniost." He had, however, hardly made his trade and satisfied himself of its happy termination when a young Gros Ventre, who had once been Joe's partner on an unlucky hunt, came up while the new owner still h*>ld his acquisition firmly by the lariats, and cast admiring glances upon them. "My friend," said the young Gros Ventre, "you are now rich, while I am poor; you have three fine ponies while 1 have none. Take pity on me." Here was an old partner ii^ distress. Joe's heart swelled, and the lariat holding his best pony was then placed in the Gros Ventre's hands, and the happy recipient went off rejoicing. Then came along an old Aricaree. "My young friend," said the red brother smiling blandly, "you 245 FkoxTiKk wn Indiax Lifk. have two handsome ponies — you are rich. 1 have a nice daughter. Give me your best pony and my daughter is your wife." Buckskin joe assent- ed and thus by custom of the Aricarees, he had become entwined in the Hymenial coil. He had had hardly taken possession of his bronzed bride, before he heard an Agency em- ployee cry out lustily : "Run for your life foe, the police are after you !" The discomfited bridegroom rushed toward the willow palch but being pressed ior time hid under an overturned bull boat. l)Ut he was discovered, dragged from his hidirg place, and sent down to Fort Stevenson in irons. A few days later the steamer Nellie Peck, Captain Grant Marsh in command, came down from the mountains and the prisoner was placed in the captain's charge with instructions to have him safely delivered to the civil authorities at Yankton for trial. It so happened that partner Mercer and my- self having lost some ponies and mules, and learn- ing they were on the bottoms opposite bort Rice, hailed die steamer Nellie Peck from the Painted Woods landing and took passage tor the neigh- borhood of ihat place. On 1 eing put ashore ihe captain requested one of us to take an e.Ktra gun ar.d the other a roll of blankets to be left on th(^ river bank "until called for." Meantime the en- gineer of the boat in "l)lowing oft " enveloj^ed the vessel in a steam cloutl as it sIowIn- receded from Buckskin Joe. 246 the l)ank. C^ut trom the steam cloud on the shore after the steamer Q;lidecl on down stream — came forth Buckskin foe, buoyant in spirits and claimed the property that was to be "called for." These events happened in fune, 1871. The lessons of June, 1871, were heeded, and at the age of twenty-one years, Buckskin Joe be- came a changed young man. He was done with foolish pranks. He became a good hunter and trapper, and in the hostile neighborhood of Fort Peck, killed several Indian warriors in fair fights. He became the most proficient Indian sign talker among white men to found along the Upper Mis- souri river, il not in the entire West. He was a good trailer and plainsman, and his services were held in high estimation by the managers of the great Durfee & Peck company, who had tempor- ary trading houses established at convenient places throughout the northern buffalo range. To keep up communication between these isolated posts in a hostile Indian country required the ser- vices of experienced frontiersman. A record of the closing days of Joe's career come to us while he was emplo\e(-i in this kind of service. Fort Belknap on the upper branches of Milk river, near the P)ear Paw motmtains, was in the range of several Indian tribes who were contin- ually in a stale of open hostility with each other and making it dangerous at all times on the prair- ies outside ot the immediate protection of the 247 Frontikk AM) 1m)ia.\ Lin-,. protection of the fortified bastions. In such a state of affairs on these ranges the Indian "sign talker" was a welcome and valuable addition to the help about a trading post. Buckskin Joe was everywhere recognized in that art as fully equal to the red men that he imitated. His education in this line had been received in a peculiar school. He had early made the sign language a special study, and while at Belknap he hit upon the novel idea of finishing up this study by marrying a deaf and dumb woman of the tribe of River Crows. Besides educating her husband she brought into the world a young son who was almost idolized by the white father. Joe's affec- tion for the his boy ''Billy" is one of the reveries of pleasant memories of the employees of Fort Belknap during the years 1873-4 5. Joe was given a dispatch to carry from Fort Belknap to F~"ort Benton, some time in December 1877. The first night out he encamped in a sparsely timbered coulee with a surrounding of high and broken hills. A little Hurry of snow during the night, and the weather being cold and blustry, he~Jkept up a large blazing fire and had evidently passed a cheerless night. When morn- ing came he roused himselt and took a glance in the direction where his pony had been picketed but found that the animal had disappeared. Hast- ily walking to the place where he had driven the pin in the earth, he found it raised, the lariat gone, and all the appearance of a scare. Negk-ct- Buckskin Joe. 248 ing- his gun he started off in the direction the an- imal had taken, and a clue from hoof imprints led him to watching- along until he sighted his pony quietly feeding at the edge of a ravine nearly one mile from his camping place. Without the usual suspicion that had saved him from traps heretofore, he walked briskly toward his pony, when at a sharp angle of the ravine he was startled by the loud report of a rifle followed quickly by two or three others, and then a ball went crashing into Joe's thigh bone, and he fell to the ground. The long black hair and red painted faces of half a dozen Indians now peered above a depression in the curve of a coulee, and one of them shouted out to the wounded dispatch carrier, as interpreted from the language of the Sioux : "Hog face white man your time has come!" loe saw himself helplessly in a trap and entirely at the mercy of his murderers. But his coolness and nerve did not desert him, even as he knew his impending doom in the glistening, snaky eyes of his adversaries. Ke partly raised himself by his hands and thus addressed the Indians in Sioux as they approached him : "Why do you kill me ? ^'ou are Medicine Bear's Yanktoneys. I have harmed none of you." "White men have too many tongues," replied the savage spokesman, and fired another volley from iheir rilles, when Buckskin Joe fell backward to join the unending list of the great plains' oraveless dead. 249 Frontier ant) Indian Life. A tear to foe's memory say you. A tear for poor boy "Billy " say we. In the year 1884, R. H. Allen, who took charge of the Agency of the Blackfeet, Gros V^entres and River Crows, on April ist, of that year reported the condition of the Indians at Fort Belknap and the reservation as follows : "When I entered upon the duties oi' ag(MU I found the Indians in a deplorable condition. Their supplies had been limited, and many of them were gradually dying of starvation. I visited a large number of tents and cabins the second day after they had received their weekly rations, look- ed through them carefully and found no provisions, except in two instances. All bore marks of suf- fering from lack of food, but the little children seemed to have suffered most; they were so ema- ciated that it did not seem possible for them to live lono- and many of them have since passed away." Chief Gall, J.KADKH OF THK iNoRTUKKX SlOlX AT TIIK Katti,E(»x the Ljttle Hi(i Horn. McCALL THE MINER. ON the east bank of the Missouri, just across from the mouth of lower or Big Knife river, a ridge of high bkiffs come up abruptly to the waters edge. Fhe general view from these lofty over-topping ridges, along the far winding valley of this mighty waterway, is one of the most artistic grouping of nature's suburb handiwork, that can anywhere be seen in that section of the country. The valley of the Big Knife river, with its short serpentine windings and its inner bends thickly studded with groves of ash, elm and box elder, is, to the eye ot the lover of the beautiful in nature, always pleasant to look upon. On the south bank of this clear water stream, — near where its waters mingle with the muddy swirls of the swift and wide Missouri — now stands the skeleton town of Stanton, and on die same sight where eighty years ago, the last village of the extinct tribe of Anah- aways or Black Shoes had run their life race to a finish. Further up the Knife river on both banks, near the hioh or second bench land can be seen the round eardi circles, with h(;re and there a raised mound, that mark the spot where the historic Gros Ventre town of Meiaharta stood through centur- ies of wild Indian life; where the cruel head chief 2^1 Frontier and Indian Life Horned Weasel set sulkino- in his tent when visit- ed by Captain. Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark ex- pedition of 1804, and as noted down in their jour- nal at the time, this morose chieftain availed him- self of the "civilized indecorum of refusing to le seen." It was here too, in the closing- days of Metaharta's history, it give up the llower of its youth in disastrous war and the towns stength faded away by recurring visits of small pox and cholera. Twelve miles below on the same side of the Missouri, yet in plain view from these high bluffs on the east bank can be seen the plain where once stood the famous frontier trading post of early day history — old Fort Clark, and near by the low lying mounds that marked the spot where, also, the principal part of the Mandan nation laid down their lives to a deaih-dealing pestilence. A few miles further down along the banks of the big river, passing juts of broken hills and bad lands until Lake Mandan — "In all her length far winding- lay, With promitory creek and bay, And islands that empurpled bright. Floated amid the livelier liglit, And mountains that like giants stand, To gentinal enchanted land." Underneath these bluffs of the east and nordi side of the Missouri, described in the first part of this sketch, lignite coal indications were noticed by early travelers, and efforts had been made by the steamboat companies toward their opening antl development; but little came of it, except for a fresh subject in a dull conversation. McCall THE Miner. 252 Memory recalls a little grass plot, lying between these rugged precipitous bluffs, and the steep, high bank at the river's brink. It recalls a neat little cabin built of small cottonwood locrs in the centre of the oases. It recalls a little iron grey pony picketed on choice spots where the nutritious buffalo grass kept him in a pleasant mood. Poor faithful old "Jim" pony, we revere you for your good master's sake. But memory is not done yet. Events and sight come again. We see up against the side of a high bluff a large round opening, with the deadening sound of a miner's pick coming out of the interior. VVe see the fig- ure of an old grey headed grey bearded man with pick in hand toiling faithfully among a pile of coal. Is he alone ? Does he talk to the shelved walls around him that gave back answers in his own voice ? "My fortune ! my fortune ! Here is my fi-rtune. Out of your shelves, oh, deadened sound and repeat once more if never again : "My fortune ! my fortune ! Here is my fortune." During ihe years 1872—3, one of the most wel- come visiors to my Painted Woods old stockade home, was McCall the Miner. The veteran mineralogist was at tiial time about sixty years of age, though his physical carriage was erect and his step as firm as one twenty years younger. He had left his home, which, if we remember aright was in the .Stale of Illinois, and joined a I'old hunter's caxalcade to the mines of California 253 Frontier and Indian Lif-e. in 1849. For twenty years thereafter he roamed in prospectino- tours through the mountain ranges ot the Pacific coast. He had followed every mining "stampede" of any consequence that had — during- a space of twenty years — occurred within the gold belt. Had experienced a disappointment at Pike's Peak; felt the burning sands of the Nevada desert; went hungry at Salmon river; suffered hardships at Frazer river; and suffered everything but death in that wild midwinter rush to the bleak, desolate plains of upper Sun river, where so many of his prospecting companions by open plain and moun- tain gulch, lay down in their snowy mantels and were put to their last long sleep by the whistling- requiems of stern, hard-faced Boreas. In all my personal experience among men, I have no recollection of knowing of one who had seen so much disappointment, yet carry the bright beacon of hope ever in front of him — ever casting reflective rays in advance, — to lighten the gloom, to bid him push on — as McCall the Miner, Every visit to the Painted Woods by the old man, left the impression of unquenchable hope. Dispair, so somebre-hued to otliers, was to him unknown. His last visit marked the same prolile and his voice sounded in the same phonographic repeatlno- sound that I first heard at the ¥Am point coal mine, when in that dark cavern, with my ])res ence unknown to him — repeating to himself: "My fortune ! mv fortune! Here is mv fortune. " McCali, the Miner. 254 McCall's coal mine project like so many of his previous ventures, ended in failure. Outside markets for his product there were none, and the few inhabitants that then resided on the Missouri slope, found the outcroppinos of good coal in abundance at their own doors. It was, therefore, with considerable satisfaction that the veteran prospector received the appoint- ment of special mineralogical expert from General Custer on behalf of the Government for the Black Hills expedition of the summer of 1874, which that dashing officer commanded in person. It is from statements of some of the nif^n who accompanied the military opening of that treasure trove, that give us a glimpse of McCall during that trip. He had long been an earnest advocate of its occupation and utalization by the white race. Now that his hopes were at last realized, his spirits took a cheerful turn. Up on the side of a sloping hill in a deep cut ravine that faces the Belle F'ourche river, stands McCall. It is a warm June day and Custer and his soldiers have unsaddled their horses, and while some have sought die breezy pine tree shades for an after dinner nap, others are admiring the showy clusters of wild ilowers that were in wide bloom down the valley. Near McCall stand two other miners, and each like himself, with pick in hand. McCall strikes his pick into the earth — good ir other earUi she is now and gives up her rich 255 Frontier and Indian Life treasure with unsparing- hand. "W hy. here is gold in the grass roots !" exclaimed the old miner. Custer was sent for, and a dispatch as embodied in McCall's words, was written out and handed to Charley Reynolds, who, within two days there- after, placed it on the wires at Fort Laramie and thence by lightening's speed sent to the uttermost parts of the civilized earth. Meantime the news of the gold tind spread through the camp of Custer's men, and an ex- citing and happy feeling seemed to prevail among them all — no, not all. McCall stood by in musing, pensive silence, though here his live dream brought forth a realistic and joyful awakening. Those standing near him hear in soft whispers coming from his lips his fateful dream words: "My fortune ! my fortune. Here is my iortune." After the return of the Black Hills expedition to Fort Lincoln, McCall the Miner, now released from his oblioation to the Government, set about organizing a private expedition to the Flills, though well knowing it was uncedeci Sioux land, being the most valuable part of their reserxation. A party of about twenty men enlisted with McCall in this gold-hunting enterprise, and under his guidance made their way to the foot hills on Rapid creek, sometime in October. They were soon joined by other parties tiniil the lilack Hills coimtry became literally over-run with prospect- ino- miners and adventurers. McC All. rifi; M iNKR. 256 Vp to this time the Sioux had not disttirbed any of the intriidino- whites. But this could not be expected to coniinue. Protests against the un- lawful occupation by Indian representatives, and a feeble attempt had been made to accede to their wishes by Government agents, but were futile. Popular clamer among westerners who were inter- ested one way or another in the opening, created a strong feeling, and th? old cry that "the Indians must go" as they had went so many times before. The military authorities made some attempt to stay the tide, but were powerless to enforce any edict however just, against trespassers who were backed by public sympathy and clamor. Emigrants commenced gathering at the various outfitting points leading to the new Eldorado. Impromptu songs of an inspiring nature were sung on the march or at the evening camp fires, with a general chorus like the following : — '•Hurrah, hurrah, we're marching west to-day, Move on, move on and give the right of way; So we'll sing the chorus for we're going out to staj. In the golden Black Hills." "Where is McCall ?" Such was the question often asked by the campers in the Black Hills, during the winter of 1874-5. No one had seen him since November, when he had left his party in a "cranky" spell, and had saddled up Jim pony and leading another one as pack animal, hied him- self over the hills and away in high dudgeon at some fancied grievance, and was seen no more by his friends and acquaintances. 257 Frontier and Indian Lifk. To the Indian, then, we turn again, as we have many times previous, for the last chapter in a fron- tiersmans life. One March day, 1876, I found myself at Mal- norie's place, at Fort Berthold. Lonesome Char- ley Reynolds was stopping there, having come up from the new agency in the interest of the Gov- ernment, watching the movements of the hostile Sioux on the Yellowstone, through their runners to the camps of the Fort Berthold bands. Two Uncpapas among the Gros Ventres, were kept in line'of observation. Reynolds noticed them take their seat in the snow by the river bank and keep their eyes on the west side of the Missouri. "Let us watch the watchers," said Reynolds to the writer as we were basking in the bright, but heatless rays of this March day sun. After about an hour, the Indians exhibited signs of interest. A line of black objects were seen hieing down into the timber from the Beaver creek ridges. They there encamped. They proved to be a small band of Uncpapa Sioux. Among their stock, jaded and tired, some Aricaree visitors to that camp rcc(jg- nized poor old Jim, Miner McCalTs faithful pony. It was from an Aricaree interpreter, we gathered the following, though the stictures are the writers : A chilly, windy, April day on a small creek north- west of the Black Hills, a band of six Indians are jogging along on their tired ponies. They were of Black Moon's camp of Uncpapas, who were en- McCall the Miner. 258 camped on Powder river. These six were picked men, sent out by their chiefs on a reconnoisance to observe the movements of the white trespassers among the Black Hills. While taking close observations along the creek the Indians observed a white man mounted upon a pony and leading another bearing a pack. The movements of the man were leasurely; the ponies nipping at bunches of grass as they walked along. This convinced the Indians that the white man was not making any point in particular, so watched his movements without fear. McCall, finally, saw the Indians, but their bear- ing was such that he thought he had not been seen, and quickly retrograded, to a clump of bushes, and entered them with his animals to escape ob- servadon. He had hardly time to congratulate himself on his timely warning and fortunate es- cape, when his startled ears heard the ominous words: "How." The white man, old feeble looking, repeated in a faint, tremulous voice, "How, " meantime peer- ing out through the branches at six stalwart sav- ages, hideously painted in red and yellow, sitting in their saddles, wnih a languid, nonchalant man- ner, but with gun covers drawn. "Come here !" shouted one of the Indians in good English, Now old man, where are your wits ? Do you not notice the peculiar paint on their faces ? Do you not see those naked gun barrels ? True, 259 Frontier and Indian Lifk. the^re had been no white man killed by Indians around the Black Hills country yet. You have a good true gun in your hand, and a splendid six shooter in your belt — all loaded. You have the shelter of the brush, and there are but six of them. Strike for your life — old man — strike. "Come here." Once more musty old proverb, — once more: "He who hesitates is lost." Weak, confused, unguarded man. You have left your covert to shake the proffered hands of hostile men. Many weeks after the events herein recorded, a party of prospecdng miners, wandering among the orulches and creeks northwest of the Black Hills came upon the partly, decomposed corpse of a white headed, white bearded old man. The body had been badly muiilated, and the contents of a large sack of gold dust had evidently been taken from the dead man's effects, cut open, and scat- tered in deep gashes, cut in the corpse. Here, then was fortune's ending as far as McCall the Miner was concerned. While a shallow grave was being prepared for the mutilated remains, the bendinfy, sawing, wind swept trees above them, seemed endlessly repeating in soft requiem: "My fortune ! My fortune. Here is my fortune." Charles IVIalnorik. Sk. Last of tlic Indian Traders at (dd Kort Mcrtlidld. FORT TOTTEN TRAIL THE old military post of Fort Totten, located on the southeast shore nf Devil's Lake, was established in 1867, and became the second post in the Northwestern chain between Fort Aber- crombia on the Red River of North and Fort Bu- ford at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The construction was commenced under Lieut. Col. G. A. Williams, of the 20th U. S. Infantry. The Devil's Lake, or as originally called by the Sioux, Mde Wakonda or sometimes Minnewakon, is the largest body of water in North Dakota, and aronnd its timbered shores for many years prior to the military occupation, had been the chosen homes of the Sisseton branch of the Santee Sioux. At the time of the military occupation of the Devil's Lake country in 1867, many of the Sisse- tons were unfriendly to the establishment of the post there, but further than waylaying a soldier or mail carrier occasionally, or stampeding the beef herd no particular harm came from their hostility. Fort Stevenson the third post or link in the chain was one hundred and twenty miles away — a little south of west — on the Missouri river. To keep up communication between these two forts, a semi monthly mail line was established that re- mained in service f(jr a number of years, and with, the yearly pilgrimages of the hay contractors out 26r Fro.ntier anh L^l)lA^• Liik. fit from St. Paul, and now and then a military re- connoisance, a pretty well defined road was being- made that in time became known as the "Fort Totten Trail." The country through which the trail is located is a high and treeless plain. Within forty miles of the breaks of the Missouri the trail crosses over the Dog Den range, a spur of the Coteau du Prairie, the great divide or grass covered mountains that cross the two Dakotas beginning at Bijou Hills in South Dakoka, extending northwestward until lost in the surface depressions of the lower Saskatche- wan valley. The Dog Den had long been a sa- cred q-round and place of mystery to the Indian tribes who lived within the northern buffalo range. It was here — in the long ago — many of the lucky Gros Ventres sat and shared with their prophetic chief, the wisdom of heedino a dreamers warnino-. A sea of waters freighted with mighty ice floes swept down from the cold north and submerged the occupants of the great Gros Ventre village that nestled in the big bend of Mouse river. Over among the deep ravines and canons on the north side where the mysterious ghost dogs snarled and growled at the cavern's mouth that led deep down through earthy crust to that under- ground land with evergreen pastures, but whose crowded condition led the beasts to seek outlet to the wide land above when the drowsy watch dogs snored in restless sleep, and thus the Great Spirit sent forth the fattened herds from the grassy sides Fort Toi tkn Trail, 262 of the IJog Den range that the Aricarees and other faithful devotees might Hve in plenty and be glad. Around these elevated plains of the Dog Den country the buftalo continued in large numbers until about the year 1868, when they disappeared, and only now and then after that year that a herd could be seen th?re. In 1874, a band of sixty buf- falo v/ere discovered near Prophet's Mountain, a butte ten miles south of the Dog Den, and a few miles west of that place, by a hunting party of Sissetons. The buffalo were surrounded and slain by the red hunters. The destruction of this band ended the buffalo among the lakes and buttes of the Coteau du Praire, with a very few straggling exceptions. Alter the flight of the Indians following the mas- sacre of Minnesota settlers in 1862, the noted red outlaw Inkpaduta and his faithful band made their hiding camps among the spreading oaks of the deep and secluded ravines, and when a squadron of cavalry was sent from General Sibley's com- mand in August 1864, to search after this red Roderick Dhu, the mysterious caves hid him from the sight of Sibley's soldiers who returned to the command in camp on the Missouri, saying the wiley savage and his brood had fled without trail — flew in air or swallowed up by signless earth clifts. A very few years after, the Fort Totten trail be- came a thoroughfare, the country bordering the Doa Den range became known in a gruesome 263 Frontier and Lxdian Likk. way as "the land of strange disappearances." While Time in its own mysterious way eventually uncovers the hidden skeleton for all to view, and points its bony finger to the blood-smeared sleep- haunted assassin; yet several unaccountable disap- pearances of thirty-five, twenty or even twelve years ago, are as yet a strong box to the curious. The military mail on the Fort Totten trail at the first start-out had been carried by soldiers, but many were killed at some point on the road; and what was of equal importance to the military, the mail sacks were burned or otherwise destroyed. It finally became so risky that some of the best versed frontiersmen were employed to carry the mails throuofh the hostile Indian lines, which for safety sake was accomplished by traveling at night and lying in some secure place during the day. In winter during the stormy periods the mail car- rier would then change his two saddle ponies for a team of dogs in tandem, hitched to a carryall. With such a rig the snow filled coulees could be crossed without much difficulty, and besides a stormy head wind could be faced with more com- fort and greater speed with dogs than by ponies. Probably no mail carrier on that hazardous trail ever acquitted himself in his duties so satisfactorily to the post officers at either Fort Totten or Fort Stevenson, as a small wiry young Highlander called by his follows, "Scotty Richmond. On one occasion he was caught out in a fierce, sweeping blizzard in December 1867, while attempting a trip Fort Totten Trail. 264 from Fort Totten west and reached a ravine in the neighborhood of Big Hollow where he was compelled to kill his faithful horse, rip his bowels open and crawl in their place, where he remained the greater part of three days, or until the furious storm had passed by, when after hiding^ the mail sack he returned to the post for a fresh mount and a new start. The February following, he was again caught out on the trail in a bad storm. This time the wild and tempestuous winds kept up incessantly for nine days. He had started out from Fort Totten with a team of three dogs in tandem con. veying himself and mail on a light constructed carryall. His traveling rations giving entirely out on account of the enforced delay, he was compelled to kill and eat two of his dogs, and it was two weeks after starting, that the indomit- able Scotsman was seen by the post sentry at Fort Stevenson coming in from the overland trail, leading a solitary dog attached to a carryall. With all their hardships and dangers these mail carriers were poorly compensated, and what litde they received were easily euchred out of, by the post trader or other hangers on around these mili- tary posts, for the hardy carrier half expected each trip to be his last, and consequently did not propose to leave any thrifty looking bundles be- hind for other people to fight over, if by chance these aforesaid people awoke some fine morning to to discuss th(^ non appearance of the letter sack's 265 F'rONTIKR and ImHAN LiI'K. traveling- guardian in an indifferent way with tlie plilosophical conchision tenderly expressed, that it was a case of another mail carrier "out of luck." But dangerous as the country was in those days, fool -hardy wanderers were continually roaming over the plains, seeking for the most part some imaginary place ahead where "there were good times reported." Sometimes these men were alone and unarmed, depending in such cases when hostiles were met, on the Indian's well known an- tipathy to shedding the blood of an unfortunate lunatic. At other times parties of two or three, leading an old sore-backed pack pony, or enjoying the noteless strains of music produced by the wooden-wheeled Red river cart in moiion as they plodded patiently along the dreary trail, following the hopeful packer in his eager search for the land of "better times" — a will-o-the-wist that usually kep^ conveniently, a little way beyond. It was in the early summer of 1868, that one of these odd looking wanderers above described came driving into Fort Buford from bV)rt I'eck^ with a sorry looking old cay use attached lo a de- lapidated, springless wagon as "outfit." He was of German nationality, though he had considera- ble knowledge of English speech. His appear- ance indicated a man about sixty years of age He gave himself no name; told no one of his destina- tion nor from whence. Poverty was his i)lf"a, when, as was customery with the military posts at that period, he expected a little help from the post Fort Totten Trail. 266 commander to reach the next military fort, which in the hne the old man was following would be Fort Stevenson nearly two hundred miles down along the Missouri river. He turned up at the latter post in due time, and as at Fort Buford, played successfully the role of the mendicant, and drew upon the commis- sary for another supply of provisons to enable him to pass over the trail to Fort Totten. His slow moving rig winding around near the base of the group of red buttes, a few miles below the fort and there the curtain dropped that screened the old man in preparation for his last stage act in life's versatile drama, from the searching eyes of the Fort Stevenson soldiers. At this time the post mails between the four forts on this Northwestern line had been let out by contract and Charles Ruffee, a well known Minnesota contractor had charge of the line. The Ruffee mail carriers were of the best possible ma- terial for this kind of business. Among the mail carriers awaiting their turn when the old German arrived at Fort Stevenson was a light complex- ioned Scotch Indian named MacDonald. Though somewhat unsocial, he was a fearless carrier and would never flinch (rom an assigned task in riding the danoer line. He left the fort on the arrival of ihe upper mail, f(;r Fort Totten, the day after the old (jerman's departure, and with no apparent change in his rotine at departure for the trip. When MacDonald's mail lime was overdue at 26/ Frontier and Indian Life. Fort Totten, his non-appearance was commented upon, but it was not until three or tour days had passed that the officer in command deemed it necessary to send out a mounted detatchmcnt to learn some ddings of the missing carrier and his mail. As the mounted reconnoiterers passed west ward along the trail, the whole country seemed a vast wilderness in repose. The very birds of the air appeared to have abandoned the land. From a spur of the Dog Den range they looked down on either hand upon lonely valleys. Even the antelope and buffalo left no recent trace and for auo-ht these soldiers knew, had retreated again to their underground abode. Again the party pro- ceed carefully westward. Upper Strawberry Lake is reached. Its green waters in strange contrast with the blackened plain — for though but summer days, a dense blue smoke that hung low in air told the story of the fires' destructive work among the the cured grasses of the plains. The sun .?.s it hung low in the western sky — the intervening blue smoke made the day giver seem a big fire ball to the optics. Saffron colored shadows, lengthening with the sitting sun. and awful stillness about, had permeated the spirits of both horses and men as they o-rouped along the dim trail in silence. A neck of land to the left of the trail was reached that divided the two lakes. Here a small wagon was discovered but nothing moving about it. A patch of grass that had escaped the general con- flao-radon encircled the abandoned vehicle. At Fort Tutten Trail. 268 the burned line the soldiers were horrified to see the dead body ot an old man laying face down, scalped, and his hands and feet dismembered. The wagon bed had been hacked and splintered as if in wanton sport. The fire had burned every trace of sign. As darkness set in the party went into camp at the shore of the lake. At daylight on re- suming investigation, about one mile east of the lake, near where the trail passed down into Horseshoe valley, where a partly burned mail sack was discovered with some crisp bits of paper lay ing scattered about, and a few yards further on, a buckskin coat also partly burned, and two or three holes through it, apparantly made by bullet, and blotches of unmistakable blood stains, The coat was readily recognized by the soldiers as the property of MacDonald. A thoroug^h search was then made for the mail carrier's body, or for other links connecting the mystery, but no further discovery rewarded the searchers, yet the conclusions were, that a band of hostile Indians had raided the trail making MacDonald and the old German victims. Another tragedy on the Trail later in the sea- son seemed to confirm this theory. A party of eight men — five soldiers and two noted mail car-. ners, — Bill Smith the slayer of two Mexicans at old Fort Union the year before, and Frank Palm- er afterwards State Senator. The affair happened between the Dog Dens and Fort Totten at a place called the Big Hollow. The party had made a 269 [''rontier and Imhan Life. noon camp; the sergeant and four soldiers were huddled together examining a watch, when six Indians secreted near by opened hre and killed all four. Bill Smith was laying under the shade of the wagon, was shot at, but managed to mount his horse bare back and escaped on the prairies. Snyder the teamster was watering his mules at a spring, with Palmer near by leadiig his unsaddled pony, when upon hearing the firing above him, looked around in time to see two In- dians making a sneak on Snyder, and shot one of them in the arm which enabled both Parmer and the teamster to escape by mounting their horses bareback and lighting out, the Indians being afoot. It was asserted at the time by some, that these soldiers were killed by Sissetons in revenge for the murder of an old man of that tribe by some mail- carriers and soldiers at the Dog Den. This old Indian in order to avert trouble for his tribe had betrayed the plans of some turbulent spirits to General DeTrobriand the commander at Port Ste- venson. For this he was expelled from a camp of Sissetons at the head of Snake creek, and in re- turning alone on the trail toward the main village at Devils Lake, and was met. and his life taken by those whom he had risked so much to befriend. In recording these incidents the situation can be more clearly presented in the MacDc^nald case. Not finding the mail carriers body, and a further knowledge from some Montana miners about who the old German was, started up an investigation. This man had $40,000 in du?t when he disapp?ared l'i)\il' ToTTEN TkAIL. 27O from the mines and had chosen this eccentric method of eluding the organized gang of road ao-ents. as the robbers were then called that in- fested the mining region. The failure to find MacDonald's body was made conclusive to some people that he had by some means suspected that the old man had wealth and had murdered him for it, and made a ruse to show the bloody deed the work of Indians. A squad of soldiers on their way to Fort Snelling with some prisoners two or three years later claimed they had recognized the lost mail carrier among a crowd at the St. Paul depot and on being called by name disappeared in the crowd. And further, in all the trading posts con- tiguous to the Fort Totten trail, no gold in any large quantity was offered in barter by hostile reds. In the summer of 1868, when mail carrying be- tween the two forts became decidedly interesting, John George Brown, whom we have already re- ferred to in the sketch of the War Woman, un- dertook to carry the mail through alone by night rides. At his day hiding place near Strawberry Lake, he was surprised by Setting Bull and his band of Uncpapas, who were returning leasurely from a visit to the Sissetons! Brown was dis- armed, his horses were confiscated, and then his clothes stripped from him, and with hard hitting welts from coo sticks applied over his naked shoul- ders was told in vigorous Sioux to "ke-ke-dah," so wended his way back to Fort Stevenson in this plight much to his chagrin, for next to his pride of 2/1 Frontier and Indian Lifb. notoriety as a frontiersman, Brown had a high opinion of his diplomacy that would "soothe the savage breast." But who can say had it been some one other than Brown, he might have shared the fate of MacDonald, or the old German or the soldier escort at Big Hollow. In March 1869, Sergeant Major Volger, Ser- geant Bitman, and a private soldier called Shang, received their military discharges from the 22nd Infantry at Fort Stevenson, and prepared to cross overland to St. Paul, thence eastward by rail to their eastern homes. They hired John George Brown to guide them to Fort Totten. They bid iidieu to their army comrades and started out hopefully under the soothing effects of a mild chin- nook breeze. After leaving the Dog Den, Brown became snow blind, and a storm coming on about the same time the party became separated and all perished but the guide. Sergeant Major Volger's body was iound after the snow melted, many miles beyond Fort Totten. In the autumn of 1873, James Wicker a well known old timer of Fort Berthold accompanied two men named Bagaman and Dickerman, over the Trail from Fort Stevenson to Mouse river via the Dog Den on a trapping expedition. Late in December, Dickerman returned to Fort .Stevenson alone, and said his partners had preceeded him three weeks before and were bringing in some cat- tle found running wild, and feigned surprise at their non-appearance. After circumstances point- FOKT TOTTEN TraI),. 2/2 ed to foul play, and it is probable, that Wicker and Bagaman were made food for Mouse river pick- erel or buzzards and coyotes. The first ranch established near the Dog Den, was also the scene of a tragedy. A man named M()()re in company with a woman claiming to be his wife constructed a ranch in a deep ravine lined with spreading oaks and directly north of the main butte. The pair were joined in 1886 by a young stock owner named Chamberlin. Early in the spring his body was found many miles from the ranch, with signs of having just eaten a lunch before death and with features dreadfully contorted. It had been reported at the ranch that the young man had started out to roimd up the stock and had perished in a storm. The circumstances of the case induced Sheriff Satterlund, of McLean County to effect Moore's arrest and bring the prisoner to Washburn, the county s(^at to stand trial for murder, but was allowed to leave the country and after- wards was killed in Montana. Postmaster Miller of Turtle Lake, though twenty-five miles from the ranch at Dog Den, was at the lime the nearest mail station and office, received a letter from a prominent business man in a Minnesota town, asking information, by tenderly inquiring for the supposed wife of Moore as "one, once very dear to me." Another recorded tragedy along the Totten Trail was enacted in the autunm of 1884. Flopping P>11], a fronli'T'^m^in of ninnx' virlssitudr.=; — r\ mem- 273 Frontier and Indian Life. ber of t'hc "medicine lodge" at Tough Timber in 1869, described in the sketch of the War Woman; had been shot ahnost to death by Indians; lost his red wife by a breach of confidence, and set afoot several times at his wood yard by horse thieves. With a command of fifteen reckless cowboys rep- resenting a cattle syndicate along the British line, Bill moved down the Missouri, and under unwar- ranted authority from this syndicate, hung or shot thirty men — many, or most of the victims leading blameless lives. From the Wintering river these licensed desperadoes returned with three men tightly bound as prisoners and encamped for the night at the Dog Den. One of the prisoners — a forlorn, friendless hall Indian, had been carrying the Washburn and Villard mail for months through storms of winter or rains of summer with good word from all. After a melancholy night at the ranch, the captives tied together with ropes were led to a secluded spot of the third lake in the Strawberry chain, when they were shot down in cold blood and their bodies thrown in the water. Some years later two grinning skeletons tied with ropes were discovered by Colonel Low and a party ;of hunters, at that place and brought into the town of Washburn on the Missouri, but never a grave was dug or a tear of pity shed over the blanched bones of these murdered men. Such is life — and such is death — as shadowy forms follow on and on in successive lines to that far away time when loud trumpet calls will proclaim the dawn of resurrection and the new life. t: O -J -Ij J^' ^ 25 -/ ^ 1 *2?' w 11 " V Eu ^4 i / l-H ■J i /^ "^ POSY. . IN the early morning- of a May day. 187 1, there came a skiff with a lone occupant pointing shoreward at the old Fort Berthold landing. A tie up amid a group of water carrier maids and early bathers— and with oars in one hand and his portable property in the other, this lone navigator made his way up the blufi to Malnorie's place. A warm - breakfast, a good smoke and a little rest, and the stranger sought the first opening for em- ployment The object sought came to him in the offer of an assistant in a local contractor's log- ging camp situated about twenty-five miles up the river, nearly opposite the mouth of Little Mis- souri and near where the principal school build- in;;- has since been located. An old vvoodyard sh?xk was headquarters for the logging crew, with a large tent as -uplementary lodging place. No introduction was needed by his companions, beyond the fact that he came down from Fort Bu- ford, and he had been duly christianed by the loiterers at that posl after an Indiana county — Posy which, as bsing in their expressed opinion, the abiding place of the tenderfoot who stood passive to evolutionary links and refused to move with the light. He had little to say to his companions in working hours, but over his pipe or a cup of coffee he sometimes had hilarious moods, though 274 Frontier AND Indian Life. he clothed his expressions of thought with some epigramic sentences, which caused his messmates to render judgment against him and he was forth- with condemned as a "queer fellow." To those of his comrades whose demeanor to- ward himself marked a more brotherly spirit, he reciprocated by self betrayal of his heart's secrets, which in so doing, with a limited allowance of cau- tion, he felt made it easier to bear. In Hoosier land he had loved and lost a maid in her teens, and he thought new lands and new faces would give him fresh courage and a change of scene assuage the gratings of a lacerated heart. On the evening of the 13th of June, when the supper was over and fragrant kinnekinic was send- ing up incense in small twirling clouds, the usual "Indian subject" was brought up for discussion. Several Aricaree and Gros Ventre war parties were out hunting after straoroHnor Sioux, and the consensus of opinion among the loggers, was, that the Sioux would be apt to retaliate — and if they did, as "Ree white men" they might expect a call. Meantime, as the conversation continued, daylight merged into the moonlight and matches • were applied to tapers within the tent. "Do you want to draw Indian fire. Put out those lights!" exclaimed Posy in an unusual voice of authorit)'. The remark was only greeted with a laugh. He then explained how accurate the aim and how deadly the shots that a tent full of peo- ple would be subject to, did a war partv conclude P0SY« 275 to make a night raid. But the warning only cre- ated more mirth and ridicule at the Hoosier's ex- pense. Posy, nettled, then gathered up his blank- ets, — saying as he did so, — ^"I would much rather snooze in the willows than be shot to death sleep- ing in the tent." He had hardly gone two minutes, when the in- mates of the shack and tent were startled by the reports of three distinct rifle shots, almost simul- taneously fired at short range. After the shots came a wild yell from Posy — followed by calls for help, and groans, bivestigation proved that he had been shot from umbush and that his wounds were mortal. Upon the alter of Posy's sacri- fice the entire party of loggers — perhaps — owe their lives. Whether chance or fate — the result brought forth a puzzle, as unsolvable to our limit- ed understanding as the enigma of the mystery of life itselt. The morning light following, marked the de- parture of a war party of Sissetons from the timber, who as the avowed avengers of the murder of Bad Hand and his comrade, near that vicinity, the year previous, and to further satisfy themselves in payment with interest in full, drove off fifteen head of work catde belonging to the contractors of the logging camp. A company of visitors, including the scribe ot these pages were waked from an early morning slumber at Malnorie's place, by the arrival of a 276 Frontier and Indian Life. skiff from the Little Missouri logging camp bear- ing the wounded Posy, and two attendants. The agency physician being in a maudlin mood, a fur- ther journey of seventeen miles must be made to reach the army surgeon at Fort Stevenson. An expected steamer — the Katie P. Kountz — Captain Braithwaite in command, reached Fort Berthold from above during tht; evening, and Posy was taken aboard for the boat's run by moonlight to the military post. It came about, also, that the party with whom I was traveling, took passage on the same steamer. The moon shone down from a clear sky, full and fair-faced. The air was crisp and still. The hard groans of the dying man, in- terrupted only by the time clank of the boat's machinery — the escaping steam — now and then the hooting of an owl as we glided by a timbered point — the whistle of a deer or the yelp of a wolf as we rounded the bends, — hold passive memory from the night poor Posy's spirit took Hight. A prepared grave; a headboard marked "Killed by Indians," and the man who unwittingly met death that his comrades might live, became but a misty personality before his earthly covering was man- tled with green. Upper Missofri Steamboat. CHRONICLE OF THE SPANISH WQODYARD. ONE October day in the year 1868, a handsome made and roomy skift, in which were seated three men with accompanying bales and blankets, and boxes containing- tools and provisions, quietly drifted from its moorings at the Fort Buford land- ing and followed the current made rapid by the junction of the Yellowstone river with the Mis- souri. The steering oar alone was used by these boatmen as though in no haste to loose sight of these friendly bastions where they had passed many months in comparative quiet under protection of the alert soldiery that composed the garrison. The day was calm, cloudless and mildly warm. The water serenely becalmed, save in the boiling channel's course, lent inactive languidness to the silent trio w4io watched their own shadows dance in the great liquid mirror spread around about them. Whatever turn their revieres in fancy took, none may know. The tall blond Teuton whose hand played idly with the steering oar, perchance in iancy, was back again along the green banks of the blue Danube, with the playmates of his youth watching the gliding vessels in whitened sails pass them by. or listening to the reveberation of the church and school bells with their solemn tones. Or, perhaps, in looking into the water his eyes were searching beyond his moving shadow, and follow- in o- fortune's hidden hand through his present voy- 277 Frontier and Indian Life. age to the isolated cabin in a cottonwood forest where financial betterment that was fondly hoped •would come quickly to improve his present sit- uation. The voyager com panions of the German, too, were dreamine- Once more in faultless raiment, hand in hand with blanketed maids, they reeled in mazy fandango in the Trinidad hall, within the shadow of New Mexico's Rattoon range. Strains of sweet music, giddy, black eyed senoritas, bad whiskey, boisterous and aggressive band of Mis- souri and Kansas bullwhackers — jealousy — knife, pistol, fight and flight. Whatever hopes in life buoyed up the two Mexican plainsmen — fDr such they were — rested in lands far away from the vivid memories of the fandango at Trinidad, in the night of the full moon of September, 1864. One year later from the opening of this chron icle of 1868, — a trim and handsome stern wheel steamer, under the watchful eyes of skillful pilots at the wheel, was plowing along the ruffled surface of the Missouri's upper waters. The little cabin on the boat's hurricane roof had been tightly girded by heavy oak planks to protect the two men within, at the guiding wheel, from kirking foes hidden in timber or coulee co\'erts along that inhospitable shore. The steamer's prow, contin- uously changing its direction, and like the bewil- dered figure in blind man's bluft, twistino; around CflROMCLE CF rilK SpAMSM WOODYARD. 278 with the chaiigingr o( channel waters, and avoiding the ever present hidden snags and bars of sub- meroed sand. In this steamer's engine room on that October clay of which we now make record, sat three men on a pile of wood in an earnest though not an animated conversation. One was a Bavarian; ont; an Irishman; one hailed from Michigan State, and was a native there. The Bavarian was the boat's fireman and was resting a moment or so from his work. As the conversation lulled the fireman again applied himself to his task, but before so doing, said to his companions who had arizen and were moving off to some other part of the vessel: "We are passing the Tobacco Gardens now. and our boat will reach the Spanish Woodyard by sundown." Within the time specified by the speaker, a well curved bend with a heavy body of stately cotton- wood trees came to the boatmens' view, and out in bold relief upon the cut bank was piled great ricks of dry cordwood and some distance in the background a high, roomy, square constructed inclosure of picketed logs. At the reveberating shrill sound of the steamer's whistle three men emero-ed from a ponderous wicket gate of the forbidding looking structure, and after seeing the preparadons made by the crew for landing, walked leisurely toward the river bank. As the steamer's landino- planks were thrown a.shore and the tow line made fast, three ' men walked out from the 279 • Frontier and Indian Life. boats gangway, each with a bundle of blankets slung over their shoulders, and each carrying a vaHse or partly filled gunny sack in their right hands, and all moved slowly — almost hesitatingly forward to greet these three men of the .woods. "Take up thy bed and walk !" Such was an order given in a jocular mimic manner by a mounted mail carrier to a gaudy dressed companion; who had clambered off irom a pack pony that was being held in hand by the facetious speaker. The dismounted man stooped to quench his thirst in a bubbling rivulet that sprang from the base of a bluff among broken lands. This gushing water was called Cuyzic's Springs; the rough, uneven lands about, marked the course of the twisted lines of the Tobacco Gardens creek — and the time, November 9th, 1869. The mail carrier riding one pony and leading another, with the missives and treasures of the U. S. postal service tightly strapped to a pack saddle jogged along;- the unused grass grown trail, soon passed out of sight--and we might correctly say out of mind, of the lone man by this fountain among the hills. "Let's see" soliloquized the pedestrian, as he arose and slung a roll of blankets over his shoul- der, "fourteen miles through this snow before a chance for grub pile." Though banks of snow— through crevised lands, with cold, wintry silence all about him strode Chronicle of the Spanish VVoodyard. 280 he hopefully onward to carve out in this lowly way the jagged path of blind destiny. — with a mind wandering in gaps of intervals between the conscious past and almost unconscious present, until shadows of darkness settled about him but black and indistinct lines that marked the timber bends of the big frozen river, gave courage to his depressed, bewildered mind and strengjth to his jaded and exhausted legs. He was a total stranger in these lands, and only the instincts of the trained border rover enabled him to line so accurately the timber he was seeking, but now the gifts of an owl was invoked to find the isola- ted stockade that he knew must be somewhere in that neighborhood. But it was the born gifts of a swift or a fox rather than that of the owl, that here enabled the lost strano-er to tread hopefully forward. A sniff of smoke floating low in air pointed the direction he should go, and a baying dog apprised him that the journey of the day was nearinor its end. The fierce growls of the watch dog; a glimmer of light; an opening of the pon- derous wicket gate of the stockade; a dark form standing, gun in hand near the aperture, and the stern words: "Down watch, down!" with the further remark' in an inquiring and softer tone, "Who is it?" gave the pedestrian the opportunity to reply: "A tired stranger." A word of welcome from the inquiring sentinal adding that a "tired stranger was a good password here," the two entered the door of the enclt). e 1 cabin to iind live men seated at the supper ;abh'. and in whicli; after a dash at toilet, the strano-er and sentinal join'-d theni at the evening- meal. The stranger soon announced what modve had brought him there. Though not a professional woodchopper, he was a willing one, and if ihey needed an extra man he would be glad to stay v/\[h them- -"until the boats run." "Stay widi us — stay with us" answered one of the party, "you will be number seven, and seven for luck, you know— -seven for luck.'' / "Aye, now you have it — now you have it" re- joined some one of the, men and then the whole party repeated in chorus: "Seven for luck! Seven for luck!" The winter oi 1869, in the country alxnit the mouth of Yellowstone river, thouoh slartino- in early, was, on the whole a tolerable mild winter for that latitude. Cold waves blovv^ing from the Artie seas were^ flanked by the balmy chinnook breezes Irom the warm artery currents of the Pa- citic ocean, which blew trom the west and cjntered the Upper Missouri valley through depressions of the Rocky iMountains. Life at the Spanish Wooclyard went on in even, monotenous way When the day's work was done and the evening meal over, with die dishes stowed caretully away, such of the woodchopper's whom nature or art had favcred with musical voices, sung, songs for the edihcation ni' those-- CiiKO.N iCLi-; :i' nil-: Spamsii Woodvarp. 282 ol the party less g-itted, and through an arrange- ment previously aggreed upon, the unnausical 'Lold "a tale" as a side contribution to diversify I he evening program. About the middle of February. 1870, came the expected monthly thaw, that moves vv^ith some regularity in connection with the moon's changes, but often varies in the matter of days, and vara- blent^ss in temperture of the chinnowk winds. i he lone yoke of work cattle belonging to the firm, from which so much depended in their win- try isolation, had greeted the change of weather with a change of feed. During the continuance of the cold storms they were contented to brouse upon the green rushes along the timber jjottoms; In melting- of the snow, the grasses of the bro- ken buties invited them to needed changes of diet. When the cattle's absence from their accustomed haunts v^as noticed and reported, Pablo, one of the Mexicans slung a gun over his .shoulder and followed the cattle's trail to the prairie. With the exception of the cook, the rest oi the party were within their separate wood lots cutting splitting and cribbing wood. Weaver the Bavar- ian, or Chriss Weaver, as he was called by his fellows, occu.pied the outward lot and some dis- tance east of the balance, and in a strip of ash not far from the prairie bluffs. About noontime, a heavy fog had settled along the timber, when suddenly from out the misty stillness the sound of half dozen rifle shots in quick succession fol- 283 1mlSH W'OOD YARD. 28S dunes which strt^tched along about one mile in a parallel line with die riv^er. A fire had lately passed through the strip with such intensity that many of the trees- had been totally destroyed; while in some cases parts of the tree trunks were still :staridine, — fantastic, silent fio^ures in a weird, lonely locality. In passing to the right of this strip I saw an object which looked like an Indian, yet as one transfixed. The red man had evidently got the first glimpse, and with his black blanket spread around his form, and standing erect and immove- able, was a perfect imitation ot the burnt trunks about him. Not liking his play, though humor- ing^ it long enough to get some distance from him, when I drew my field glasses and took a careful survey of the statue poser He remained in this position undl thinking, probably, 1 was far enough away, and having satisfied himself on the success of his masking, — disappeared. The day following, more wary, I commenced attending the trap line with a reversed roitte, and in the same clump of burned trees, met two; In- dians instead of the one, as on the previous^'day, and both followed the same impassive statue-like manner of the lone fellow the day preceding. One of them stood close up to a burnt tree trunk and his presence not revealed until a look through the field glass brought him out plainly. The day after I saddled a pony and raised the traps. But previous to doing so, discovered four Indians 289 Frontier AxND Indian Life. standing out in plain view on a high sand dune among the burnt tree clump. The action ot these Indians savored of the mysterious. My stockade home was three miles away, and there was but two other ranches within twenty miles. While their manner of action was not friendly, I would have been at their mercy were they disposed to be hostile. The oppor- tunity to waylay a trapper attending his traps is a very easy task for hostile Indians v/hen they are so disposed. From their actions it was very evi- dent that it was not the scalp of the writer of this chronicle that these Indians ot the burnt clump were after, yet it was also very evident that from him tht-y would wish to hide their identity. The Indians in those days seldom ever passed the stockade without camping or callino-, unless it was a war party, and even these frequency called lo levy a war contribution and replenish their com- missary. But the Sioux were more chary of ac- quaintance, especially an up bound war party. A few years previous at the Painted Tree group, about one mile above the sand dune timber strip, a war party of Yanktoneys Vv'ere in hiding for Aricarees passing the Narrows in bull boais. "Shoemaker Joe" a deserter from Fort Stevenson, coming down in a bull boat had smoked them out, while himself had a long run through^brush and brier in an imaginary effort of saving his life. It was needles waste of fear and worry. Ihe Sioux were after Aricaree scalps — noi soklier coijblers. Chronicle cv riii-: Spamsh Woodvard. ' 290 Sdrne months after the episode at the burnt clump an Aricaree, well up among the councils of his tribe, had acknowled that the mysterious party of four were from among his own people, but fur- ther on the subject he would not discourse. In the early years of the present century trav- elers and fur traders among Indian nations or tribes of the far west regarded the Mandans as the most elaborate in preparation, as well as the most finished and methodical in program, and moreover the most grotesque; most uncanny and most wierd in appearance and barbaric display, in their great medicine and other tribel dances, of any of the wild people in the land of the buffalo. l)Ut on the writer's advent in the Indian country in the early sixties. I learned from the .Sioux on the lower river, that the acme of mys- tery was in the medicine lodge of the Aricaree; that the medicine making priests of that tribe could catch bullets on tht-ir tongues; could walk with bared (eet upon heaped coals of living fire, yet feel no pain, because their fiesh would not burn; could outdo the agile otter in springing from the river bank into the muddy, swiriing stream, and brino therefrom— tightened in his drip- ping jaws, a huge fish, that the power of his to- tem of mystery had assisted him to catch in his dive in watery depths, with the same ease that would have enabled him to have plucked a posy from thc^ flowered plain. 291 Fkontif-k and Indian Life. But after some familarity with the sights wit- nessed chiring this mystery making- of ihf' Ar- ricaree medicine men, or the dancing and ceremony attendant upon the young fledghng"s admittance among the mystic group — so thenceforth be known as a warrior and a man, I could see but little ihat would approach, even, the ordinary slight of hand performer. I had seen the confident young man, after being rubbed down by this priest of mystery, spring- nimbly from among the group of candi- dates for man's estate and a warrior's plume, rush to the river make the dive for the fish, that his "medicine" would orive him, come back with a dripping hide and a woful face, sit down and cry with riiortification — in all sincerity — before the intensely interested audience The scene as above discribed, the writer had silently witnessed in the Aricaree medicine lodge, at the midnight hour in August, 1874. I had been pleased to control my own feelings, but was mortified that my companion of this oc- casion could not masque his features or restrain his mirth- Had he done so — in all probability, the preceeding statements about Chris Weaver, would have closed his connection with this chron- icle. r= Midway between Fort Stevenson and the site of old Fort Berthold, on the west side of the Missouri, a low narrow point ot" scraggy timber nestles along the steep and ragged line of high- lands that curve and twist with the river's course. Frontikr and Indian Life. 292 Sometime during the winter of 1874-5, two ^vood- yards had been located in the point. One was owned and conducted by two partners — George Morgan and Gros Venture Thompson. The rival yard was owned and operated by Chris Weaver. Neither of the parties had choppers employed; the boating prospects not justifying the outlay. On one of the closing days of April, Weaver made a journey to Fort Berthold, and the occa- sion now noted as his final visit in the flesh. Two or three days later, Morgan, having occasion to visit Weaver's place, stumbled upon his dead body on the prairie at the entry of the path lead- ino- through the timber to his yard. Upon a l^noll — stiff and cold — with his face to the sun, lay the second victim of mystery, but fifth in the order of rotation of the stricken Spanish Wood- yard crew. A bullet had crashed through his brain. Powder burned hair marked the close range of the weapon. Four distinct shaped moccasin tracks told the number of the dead man's assail- ants; a mark on the upturned face — so skillfully imprinted that none but the initiated could know, translated the cipher that would chronicle apother to the long list oi prescribed frontier- men upon whose luckless head an Indian medicine lodge through chosen assassins had executed its tribel judgment. . Thus closed the record of the events of disaster that had befallen the personnal of the "seven for 293 ' I'KONTIEK AM) IXDIAN LlIE. luck'' crew of woodchoppers of Spanish Point revealed to the chronicler of these pages up to August lo th, 1889/=' *0n a retrospective tour, as well as a journey for information in connection with some incidents of early Sioux Indian outbreaks in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas, the wriier of this chronicle after a 700 mile trip with pony and buckboard drove into the little town of Elk Point, South Da- kota, on the evening of July 18th, 1896. In this retrospective journey, the writer had kept an eye open to see, and an ear poised to hear of certain characters believed to be still living, and who in some way had figured among the early day incidents already recorded in this book as well as its compan- ion ones. Within a few miles of that town I had hoped to learn of two characters whom mention was made in connection with two separate events of other day life in the valley of the Upper .Missouri. After some inquiry I was told that a lame man would appear from the country at a certain saloon at sundown, who could give some information concerning at least one of the characters sought. Meeting the man referred to on the street, I asked him for the whereabouts of a Mr. C , wlio h^.d resided on the Upper Missouri in ihe early -seventies. "Just what I would like to know myself* he re- replied quickly, "he left here for the last time about^ twelve years ago, and lia« never ^ been heard ot (since that date. We think him dead. Why do you ask."' '"My reasons are partly personal, part}" chrono- logical,*' I answered. "All. C- was number six of the Spanish Woodyard crew.** About fifteen days later, witii the shades of evening an(! a tiireatening thu!id(^r stonti hurrviiio- CiiKOMci i: CI- Till-: Spanish Woodvari). 294 pony and myself forwai-d, 1 drove into the pictur- esque town of Sioux Rapids, Iowa, so nicely located on the hanks of the Little Sioux river. The main livery stable in the town was reached in time to save ourselves from a downpour of drenching rain. Within the stable near the office sat a group of men talking — some were young — some old. They were in desultory conversation. An old gentleman in the party made some reference to the river Soldier and of his acquaintance there. The name of the Sol- dier river drew the chronicler's attention, for upon its banks were the association of a memory that is never recalled but in sadness. But it was not of this that the gentleman from the Soldier river was questioned. During a lull. I asked pardon of the old gentle- man for interrupting him after which the following conversation ensued between us: '"Do joii know the W 's on the Soldier?'' •'Yes sir!" "Do you know of a member of that family who was on the Upper Missouri in the early seventies?" "I do." "Where is he now!';' '•In his grave. Now stranger I will have a ques- tion. Why do ^-ou ask about Billy W ?" •'Because he was Number Seven of the Spanish Woodyard crew." '"That is strange. While in the State Asylum for the Insane, his attendant said Billy kept re- peating before he died: 'Number 7 — number 7. Sev- en for luck — seven for luck!' " The' old gentleman hesitated a moment then low- ering his voice, added. '-Imay say, Billy W was mv oldest son." THE PEACEMAKERS. WHILE the American aborigines are a war- like race, a knowledge of whatever tribe of these people where opportunity has favored, the writer with a personal acquaintance of indi- vidual members, or an intimate general knowl- edge of the tribe as a whole, I had noted that the merciful and divine mission of the unselfish peacemaker is respected even among the most turbulent and boisterous ot the fig^hting element. In the days of restful quiet from savage strife among these tribes of red men, the peacemaker is sought out from the quiet of his lodge, and his advice serves as guide on all public matters affect- ing the well being of the community. Thus it is that we often mark so many kindly and benev- olent faces among the principal chiefs of the wild American Indian tribes. During the calam- ity of war or some great moving crisis in the af- fairs of the tribe, the war chief forges himself to the front by the dread necessity of the hour, but unless he has some marked judicial qualities of mind, his stay in the charmed circle of eminence is brief. The Sioux or Dakota Indians, the most numer- ous as well as the ablest governed of the tribcis of the great western plains, and who are by tlieir Joseph.— Chief of the Nez Perces. TlIK I'l-ACIMAKKKS 296 training a warlike people, — fully sustain us in these sentiments, as a studied review of their past history or a glance at the personnal of their ablest chieftains will show^ The greatest warrior that the Sioux have yet produced, as far as any record we have of that nation's history, was probably the the Teton chief Crazy Horse, whose unchallenged boast that he slew thirty-four enemies with his own hands before he entered upon and planned resis- tence to the forces of Generals Crook, Terry and Gibbon in 1876, that ended in the slaughter of Custer's command at the Little Bio Horn river. Though acknowledged their ablest war chief, his assassination a short time after the surrender of the Sioux, and the little grief or affection shown by his people over his death, proved that he had no claim on their hearts beyond a meagre grati- tude and some admiration for his prowess in war. Pawnee Killer, of the western Brule Sioux, and White Antelope, the chief of the Northern Chey- ennes in 1876, were of the mental order of Crazy Horse, and ended their career much as he did. But judicial brained chiefs of the order of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, of the Tetons, or Strike- the-Ree, Two Bears and Medicine Bear of the Yanktons; Red Stone of the South Assinnaboines, Standing Buffalo of the Santees, or the venerable chief Grass of the Blackfeet Sioux, who had s;ov- erned their tribes for a life time, and whose prin- cipal trouble daring all of their respective years of authority was in restraining the military ardor of 297 Frontikk and Ixdian Life. their young men, which plainly show that leaders peacefully disposed wear longer in the affections, even among these people commonly called sav- ages, than does the turbulent blood hunter be he ever so able. Other tribes less known follow the same lines. Son of the Star, an Aricaree chief, was another ex- ample of the peacemaker chief, and the writer believes no leader of any people was more idol- ized while living or whose memory is more revered since death than was this honest hearted chief by the little neighborhood of Aricaree farmers around Six Mile Creek, or the winding coulee of Pour Bears. Ihen, again, let us review the remarkable ca- reer of the second Joseph, chief of the Nez Perces or Pierced Noses, of mountanious Idaho. The son of an able chief — raised up from infancy in a mission school, with daily lessons from Chris- tian teachings from habitually devout teachers — this young man of quiet ways became his peoples' chieftain, without military training or experience. But fragrant impositions from white neighbors, and from whose injustice an appeal to the statutes 1)V the Nez Perce, was met by an appeal to race prejudice by the clominent and aggressive laiul grabber or dieir dispensatory hirelings, with no course left to lorn manhood hut an appeal to the law of a just resistence to a causeless wrong, did he take i;p r.rms in the defense of himself and people. Wiilvir, lour monlhs from the d^y of his TiiK Pkackm \ki:ks 298 first resistenee to the military authorities repre- senting- seventy milHons of people, claiming the most advanced stand in the grand march of mod- ern civilization this mountain chief acknowledged himself beaten and laid down his arms. To stand with him and to fall with him were less than two hundred men. They were poorly armed, badly provisioned and scantily clothed. They were handicapped by the care of their families and their herds. Their natural allies had turned against them to fawn for favor from a race whose numbers were as trees of the mountains, and whose wealth was poured out in golden wreaths from a cornuco- pian horn. Ihe Bannocks of the mountains sent forth companies of scouts clothed in blue to fight the Nez Perces from their lands. The Moun- tain Crows — fighters by nature — were hired in hundreds to intercept and harass Joseph and his people in their flight from their homes. Trained scouts from among the Aricarees and Chey- enne^ v\;ere hired to track them down in their flii^ht. 'Besides all these hired minions of their own race,,pitted against the dauntless Nez Perces, there came bearing down upon them, four seperate ::-.rmies of a great government, with their cannons; their itp^roved rifles; their filled caissons of ammu- nitions-and long trains of supplies. Each and every one of these four separate commands of trained soldiers were led by veterans scarred in a more creditable strife — had double the numbers of fighting men to pit against red Josesph. How- 299 Frontier AND .Indian Life. ard and his command had been mel^and checked ilear Mt. Idaho. Gibbon had been beaten back at Big Hole. Gen. Sturges had been out-witted and out-manoevered along the Yellowstone. Weary and jaded, tired out with a journey of several hun- dred miles of battles by day and flight by night, Joseph and his men took a breath of rest among the dc^files of the Bear Paw foot hills. Gen. Miles with men and horses all fresh and strong were upon them. Joseph stood in dispairing quandry. His enemies, the white soldiers and their red allies had his camp surrrounded. and they were in numbers, three to one, to his own fighting men. Two days more. Gen. Howard could reach there. They then would be outnumbered ten to one. His enemy had artillery. He had none. The British line was not far away. They could not reach it now, but Sitting Bull and his incorrigable hosts, were encamped just, across the line near Woody Mountain. They were allies ia> a . like cause. Scouts had already ran the gauntlet of. the enemy's cordon, to apprise the Sioux ot, their dilemma. Would help come ? Meantime shot and shell rained down on the hapless camp. Joseph's wife lay dying on the ground beside him — mangled and torn by a bursting shell. Other]^ wives than his and other children than his, were dead about him. Under a flag ot truce he approached Gen. Miles in two separate intervals of the strife, for terms of honorable surrender. Twice had he returned to the fight. But the panting bloodhounds of his The Peacemakers 300 own race were Oircling- his camp, and for the sake of the helpless from the heartless, went out the third time — gnn in hand — and surrendered. "From where the sun now stands" said this man of Spartan mould as he gave up his gun, "I will fight no more forever." How well he has stood by his word, let the story of his captivity be the answer. During the many years that the writer followed the hunter and trapper vocation in the Upper Missouri river country, it was always a pleasant meet when the lonely lodge, of Long Feather the Peacemaker was sighted. Come rain or snow; come wind or calm; come hot or cold, clouds or sunshine, the frank, benev- olent countenance of the Peacemaker wore the same placid cast; and with extended hands gave the same hearty grip in meeting and at parting. What influence brought Long Feather to first assume the peacemaker role, I never knew. Cer- tain I am, it was not from any missionary effort of the dominent race. Rather would I think the same spirit moved him to action that had prompted the Shawanee Tecumseh's brother— the Prophet of the Alleghany — to stalk silently through wide forests between the g^reat lakes and the Ohio valley to impart to the Indian villagers what the Great Spirit would have his red children do — make peace and be strong together — that the pale faces may become afraid and turn back from their western 30I Frontier and Indian Life. march of despoiling tlie Indians of their homes. This was during- the days which cuhninated in the death struggle at Tipppecanoe, when Tecumseh's red confederacy in the lands of the sycamores, went down. In honor Feather the Peacemaker's case, whether this spirit of peace came to him through the pregnant mother who had watched war par'ics march out from her husband's camp searching for the blood or scalps of her relatives and friends, or whether it came later in life, I do not know. I only knew that the spirit of good will was wnth him on our first acquaintance in 1870. and was with him amidst all the turbulence that sur- rounded him in his subsequent years of primi- tive missionary lite. Perhaps his environments brought this about. A ratified peace between Indian nations who were heriditary foes, was as its best but an armstice, at its worst, a mere cover to strike an unsuspect- ing blow- Ihe mother of Long Feather was an Aricaree maid. Whether she had been a captive, taken in some foray, or by the marriage law of the wild Indian, secured to some covetcms Sioux through presentation to her parents the stipulated price for a useful andhandsome bride, we cannot now determine, Inil that he was of both nations, in the order ot parentage above stated he had frequently told us in his communicative moods. Thus, the blood of the Sioux and the Aricarree coursefi through his veins. A lini;'uist. fluent alike LONG FEATHER. -Tlie Peacemaker. The Peacemakers 302 in either tongue, and with the sacredness of inter tribel custom in such cases, his home at times among the dirt covered lodges of the hunted Ar- icarees, and then again would change with his family and appear as of their own, in the skin tepees of the ever restless Sioux. Either nation shared their conhdence in his integrity. To each of these peoples he would plead for cessation of bloody strife and the hand of amity, friendship, and neighborly intercourse. "What fools my Indian people are" said he fre- qu'-ntly, in talking about the Sioux and Aricaree war in the days of our earlier acqaintance, "to fight like little chickadees over the offals of a deer. When the magpies come they will eat up offal, chickadees and all." His analogous comparison at times varied to the lands and buffalo The more fierce and more destructive the war among Indians themselves," said he, "the easier and smoother for the whites when they came to take possession of the Indians inheritance and use it for their own." While these argumentative facts or analogous illus- trations were some of Long Feather's everyday utterances in the villages, to influence the rest of the Indians to his way of thinking; yet aside from this crude presentation of his philosophical reason- ing to catch attention from the average Indian mind, at heart he was truly a man of peace, for peace's sake. It was born in him he said to have a horror of war. 303 Frontier and Indian Life. In the month of August, 1880. I think it was, that the writer of these Hnes, had his last inter- view with Long Feather the Peacemaker. In a chance meeting along the Missouri river trail late in the afternoon, we mutually made camp. His Sioux wife and their two boys were his company. They soon had "their white tepee erected to catch a shaded breeze from the glaring rays of a scorch- ing sun. The place of meeting was at the Lake of the Beaver Dam. Here a lone beaver family, had many years lived on mayrtrs to their owu in- dustry and gentle ways, but who had long warded off the dreaded fur hunter in his repeated as- saults upon their well entrenched home. The lake was small, deep and gourd shaped. The prairie with some scattered oaks lined one bank while on the opposite shore tangled willows and a dense growth of tall young cotton woods studded the background. Through a meadow of waving green came forth murmuring sounds of a little clear water rivulex, and near its passage to the lake, by beavers' ingenjiity, a waterfall was made, from whose hushed cadence, the Muttering leaves of overspreading oaks added their soodiing strain in commingling song. C)n the green diven near by — pipe in hand — Long Feather sat telling of his life work. In the lull of converse, while he sat smoking in silence — he seemed the very per- sonaiion of I'eace; so quiet; so impassive and nuH'k appeariuLi. A beautiful memory to linger The Peacemakers 304 upon — this scene of the Peacemaker telling his closing- story. Bright murmuring waters; sighing trees, yellow clad hills and green vales. Around and about our camp fire, and along the water's edge— thousands upon thousands of yellow Au- gust flowers nodding to the evening breeze. Out on such a scene came the spirit of Wordsworth and his dream of the daffodils. I declaimed his verses then, — I repeat them now: "I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vaiei and hills When all^at once I «aw a crowd, A host of g^olden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the star* that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never ending line, Along the margin of the bay, Ten thousand saw I at a glance. Tossing^ their heads in sprightly dance. The waves besides them danced — but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee. A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company: I gazed and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought. For oft when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon'that inward eye, Which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodil*." 305 Frontier an'd In'dian LiI'E. After an interval of many years 1 again visited the Lake of the Beaver Dam. The waters of this romantic dell had disappeared— perhaps forev- er. On its sandy bed, straggling plants of flags and fox tail, catch the breeze where once the blue waters rolled. The scattered trees of oak no longer lined the prairie's edge. Decayed stumps alone remained to mark the spot where the woodman had not "spared the tree." Save here and there a deformed straggler, the cotton- wood forest, too, that had lined the lake''s south shore had passed away. A tangled mass of mud and dead brush mark the ruined home of the beavers that had once gave life to their environs here, and enjoyed their moonlight siestas duri^ng warm summer nights. A dry embankment — rooted and torn by swine — and leveled here and there by freshets from melting snows, show traces of the solid masonary work, and remain as monuments to these born architects and mark the hig;h gifts with which their Creator had endowed them. The beavers good work though on lesser compass than the dykes of the Holland lowlands, were fashioned much the sanies With consumate skill in methodi- cal engineering, they wrought fertility from their suroundings and brought forth herbs, flowers and green verdure in slerile nooks and sand banks :s did the home sick princess from the hanging gardens of old Babylon. But all is changed. No murmuring waterfall now. Saline crusted pools or stagnant ponds, reveal ruin as complete, in its Till-: 1^:a(i:maivKrs 306 way, as the crushed domes of commercial Carthage that wrung tears from Marius, its conqueror when gloomily reading the closing chapter of his own life from the mosses of its mouldering walls. All was peace at Lake of the Beaver Dam. But it was the peace that death brought. Even my two vener- able companions of that camp here in August 1 880, had lain down to their long rest. Long Feather had wrapped himself in his chief's robes, closed his eyes in his death sleep at the Standing Reck, vvhen assured the long inter-tribel wars c.morg the Red people on the Upper Missouri, was over, and that his good work had been w^ell and happily done. THE END. [KP 1^ <0 MAR 13 1902 1 copy Da roeAT, oiv. '"'" '4 1902