At daylight the next morning, July 17, I proceeded ahead on a scout. I found that the Indians had not yet crossed the creek. On my way back to the command I discovered a large party of Indians. I got close enough to observe them, and they proved to be Cheyennes, coming from the south. With this information. I hurried back to report.

The cavalrymen were ordered to mount their horses quietly and remain out of sight, while General Merritt, accompanied by two or three aides and myself, went on a little tour of observation to a neighboring hill. From the summit of this we saw the Indians approaching almost directly toward us. As we stood watching, fifteen or twenty of them wheeled and dashed off to the west, from which direction we had come the night before.

Searching the country to see what it was which had caused this unexpected maneuver, we observed two mounted soldiers approaching us on the trail. Obviously they were bearing dispatches from the command of General Merritt.

It was clear that the Indians who had left their main body were intent on intercepting and murdering these two men. General Merritt greatly feared that they would accomplish this purpose. How to aid them was a problem. If soldiers were sent to their assistance, the Indians would observe the rescuers, and come to the right conclusion that a body of troops was lying in wait for them. This of course would turn them back, and the object of our expedition would be defeated.

The commander asked me if I had any suggestions.

"General," I replied, "why not wait until the scouts get a little nearer? When they are about to charge on the two men, I will take fifteen soldiers, dash down and cut them off from their main body. That will prevent them from going back to report, and the others will fall into our trap."

The general at once saw the possibilities of the scheme. "If you can do that, Cody, go ahead," he said.

I at once rushed back to the command and jumped on my horse.

With fifteen of the best men I could pick in a hurry I returned to the point of observation. I placed myself and my men at the order of General Merritt, and asked him to give me the word at the proper time.

He was diligently studying the country before him with his field-glasses. When he thought the Indians were as close to the unsuspecting scouts as was safe, he sang out:

"Go on now, Cody, and be quick about it. They are going to charge on the couriers."

The two soldiers were not more than a hundred yards from us. The Indians, now making ready to swoop down, were a hundred yards further on.

We tore over the bluffs and advanced at a gallop. They saw us and gave battle. A running fight lasted for several minutes, during which we drove them back a fairly safe distance and killed three of their number.

The main body of the Cheyennes had now come into plain sight, and the men who escaped from us rode back toward it. The main force halted when its leaders beheld the skirmish, and seemed for a time at a loss as to what was best to do.

We turned toward General Merritt, and when we had made about half the distance the Indians we had been chasing suddenly turned toward us and another lively skirmish took place.

One of the Indians, who was elaborately decorated with all the ornaments usually worn by a great chief when he engaged in a fight, saw me and sang out:

"I know you, Pa-ho-has-ka! Come and fight with me!"

The name he used was one by which I had long been known by the Indians. It meant Long-Yellow-Hair.

The chief was riding his horse to and fro in front of his men, in order to banter me. I concluded to accept his challenge. I turned and galloped toward him for fifty yards, and he rode toward me about the same distance. Both of us rode at full speed. When we were only thirty yards apart I raised my rifle and fired. His horse dropped dead under him, and he rolled over on the ground to clear himself of the carcass.

Almost at the same instant my own horse stepped into a hole and fell heavily. The fall hurt me but little, and almost instantly I was on my feet. This was no time to lie down and nurse slight injuries. The chief and I were now both on our feet, not twenty paces apart. We fired at each other at the same instant. My usual luck held. His bullet whizzed harmlessly past my head, while mine struck him full in the breast.

He reeled and fell, but I took no chances. He had barely touched the ground, when I was upon him, knife in hand, and to make sure of him drove the steel into his heart.

This whole affair, from beginning to end, occupied but little time. The Indians, seeing that I was a little distance from my pony, now came charging down upon me from the hill, in the hope of cutting me off.

General Merritt had witnessed the duel, and, realizing the danger I was in, ordered Colonel Mason with Company K to hurry to my rescue. This order came none too soon. Had it been given one minute later two hundred Indians would have been upon me, and this present narration would have had to be made by some one else. As the soldiers came up I swung the war-bonnet high in the air and shouted: "The first scalp for Custer!"

It was by this time clear to General Merritt that he could not ambush the Indians. So he ordered a general charge. For a time they made a stubborn resistance, but no eight hundred Indians, or twice that number, for that matter, could make a successful stand against such veteran and fearless fighters as the Fifth Cavalry. They soon came to that conclusion themselves and began a running retreat for the Red Cloud Agency.

For thirty-five miles, over the roughest kind of ground, we drove them before us. Soon they were forced to abandon their spare horses and all the equipment they had brought along. Despite the imminent risk of encountering thousands of other Indians at the Agency, we drove our late adversaries directly into it. No one in our command had any assurance that the Indians gathered there had not gone on the warpath, but little difference that made to us. The Fifth Cavalry, on the warpath itself, would stop at nothing. It was dark when we entered the reservation. All about us we could see the huddling forms of Indians—thousands of them—enough, in fact, to have consummated another Custer massacre. But they showed no disposition to fight.

While at the Agency I learned that the Indian I had killed in the morning was none other than Yellow Hand, a son of old Cut Nose, who was a leading chief of the Cheyennes. The old man learned from the members of Yellow Hand's party that I had killed his son, and sent a white interpreter to me offering four mules in exchange for the young chief's war-bonnet. This request I was obliged to refuse, as I wanted it as a trophy of the first expedition to avenge the death of Custer and his men.

The next morning we started to join the command of General Crook, which was encamped at the foot of Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains. They had decided to await the arrival of the Fifth Cavalry before proceeding against the Sioux, who were somewhere near the head of the Big Horn River, in a country that was as nearly inaccessible as any of the Western fastnesses. By making rapid marches we reached Crook's camp on Goose Creek about the third of August.

At this camp I met many of my old friends, among them being Colonel Royal, who had just received his promotion to a lieutenant-colonelcy. Royal introduced me to General Crook, whom I had never met before, but with whose reputation as an Indian fighter I was of course familiar, as was everybody in the West. The general's chief guide was Frank Grouard, a half-breed, who had lived six years with Sitting Bull himself, and who was thoroughly familiar with the Sioux and their country.

After one day in camp the whole command pulled out for Tongue River, leaving the wagons behind. Our supplies were carried by a big pack-train. Down the Tongue we marched for two days of hard going, thence westerly to the Rosebud River. Here we struck the main Indian trail leading down-stream. From the size of this trail, which was not more than four days old, we estimated that at least seven thousand Indians, one of the biggest Indian armies ever gathered together, must have gone that way. It was here that we were overtaken by Captain Jack Crawford, widely known East and West as "The Poet Scout." Crawford had just heard of the Custer massacre, and had written a very creditable poem upon receipt of the news. His pen was always ready, and he made many epics of the West, many of which are still popular throughout the country.

Jack was a tenderfoot at that time, having lately come to that country. But he had abundant pluck and courage. He had just brought dispatches to Crook from Fort Fetterman, riding more than three hundred miles through a country literally alive with hostile Indians. These dispatches notified Crook that General Terry was to operate with a large command south of the Yellowstone, and that the two commands would probably consolidate somewhere on the Rosebud. On learning that I was with Crook, Crawford at once hunted me up, and gave me a letter from General Sheridan, announcing his appointment as a scout. He also informed me that he had brought me a present from General Jones, of Cheyenne.

"What kind of a present?" I inquired, seeing no indication of any package about Jack.

"A bottle of whisky!" he almost shouted.

I clapped my hand over his mouth. News that whisky was in the camp was likely to cause a raid by a large number of very dry scouts and soldier men. Only when Jack and I had assured ourselves that we were absolutely alone did I dare dip into his saddle pockets and pull forth the treasure. I will say in passing that I don't believe there is another scout in the West that would have brought a full bottle of whisky three hundred miles. But Jack was "bone dry." As Crawford refused to join me, and I was never a lone drinker, I invited General Carr over to sample the bottle. We were just about to have a little drink for two when into camp rode young Lathrop, the reporter for the Associated Press to whom we had given the name of Death Rattler. Death Rattler appeared to have scented the whisky from afar, for he had no visible errand with us. We were glad to have him, however, as he was a good fellow, and certainly knew how to appreciate a drink.

For two or three days the command pushed on, but we did not seem to gain much on the Indians. They apparently knew exactly where we were and how fast we were going, and they moved just as fast as we did.

On the fourth day of our pursuit I rode about ten miles ahead of the command till I came to a hill which gave a fine view of the surrounding country. Mounting this, I searched the hills with my field-glasses. Soon I saw a great column of smoke rising about ten miles down the creek. As this cloud drifted aside in the keen wind, I could see a column of men marching beneath it. These I at first believed to be the Indians we were after, but closer study revealed them as General Terry's soldiers.

I forthwith dispatched a scout who was with me to take this news to Crook. But he had no more than gone when I discovered a band of Indians on the opposite side of the creek and another party of them directly in front of me. For a few minutes I fancied that I had made a mistake, and that the men I had seen under the dust were really Indians after all.

But very shortly I saw a body of soldiers forming a skirmish line. Then I knew that Terry's men were there, and that the Indians I had seen were Terry's scouts. These Indians had mistaken me for an Indian, and, believing that I was the leader of a big party, shouted excitedly: "The Sioux are coming." That is why the general threw out the skirmish line I had observed.

General Terry, on coming into the Post, ordered the Seventh Cavalry to form a line of battle across the Rosebud; he also brought up his artillery and had the guns unlimbered for action, doubtless dreading another Custer massacre.

These maneuvers I witnessed from my hill with considerable amusement, thinking the command must be badly frightened. After I had enjoyed the situation to my heart's content I galloped toward the skirmish line, waving my hat. When I was within a hundred yards of the troops, Colonel Wier of the Seventh Cavalry rode out to meet me. He recognized me at once, and convoyed me inside the line, shouting to the soldiers:

"Boys, here's Buffalo Bill!" Thereupon three rousing cheers ran all the way down the line.

Colonel Wier presented me to General Terry. The latter questioned me closely and was glad to learn that the alarm had been a false one. I found that I was not entitled alone to the credit of having frightened the whole Seventh Cavalry. The Indian scouts had also seen far behind me the dust raised by Crook's troops, and were fully satisfied that a very large force of Sioux was in the vicinity and moving to the attack.

At General Terry's request I accompanied him as he rode forward to meet Crook. That night both commands went into camp on the Rosebud. General Terry had his wagon-train with him, so the camp had everything to make life as comfortable as it can be on an Indian trail.

The officers had large wall-tents, with portable beds to stow inside them, and there were large hospital tents to be used as dining-rooms. Terry's camp looked very comfortable and homelike. It presented a sharp contrast to the camp of Crook, who had for his headquarters only one small fly-tent, and whose cooking utensils consisted of a quart cup in which he brewed his own coffee, and a sharp stick on which he broiled his bacon. When I compared these two camps I concluded that Crook was a real Indian fighter. He had plainly learned that to follow Indians a soldier must not be hampered by any great weight of luggage or equipment.

That evening General Terry ordered General Miles, with the Fifth Infantry, to return by a forced march to the Yellowstone, and to proceed by steamboat down that stream to the mouth of the Powder River, where the Indians could be intercepted in case they made an attempt to cross the stream. The regiment made a forced march that night of thirty-five miles, which was splendid traveling for an infantry regiment through a mountainous country.

Generals Crook and Terry spent the evening and the next day in council. The following morning both commands moved out on the Indian trail. Although Terry was the senior officer, he did not assume command of both expeditions. Crook was left in command of his own troops, though the two forces operated together. We crossed the Tongue River and moved on to the Powder, proceeding down that stream to a point twenty miles from its junction with the Yellowstone. There the Indian trail turned to the southeast, in the direction of the Black Hills.

The two commands were now nearly out of supplies. The trail was abandoned, and the troops kept on down the Powder River to its confluence with the Yellowstone. There we remained for several days.

General Nelson A. Miles, who was at the head of the Fifth Infantry, and who had been scouting in the vicinity, reported that no Indians had as yet crossed the Yellowstone. Several steamboats soon arrived with large quantities of supplies, and the soldiers, who had been a little too close to famine to please them, were once more provided with full stomachs on which they could fight comfortably, should the need for fighting arise.

One evening while we were in camp on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Powder River I was informed that Louis Richard, a half-breed scout, and myself, had been selected to accompany General Miles on a reconnaisance. We were to take the steamer Far West down the Yellowstone as far as Glendive Creek. We were to ride in the pilot-house and keep a sharp look-out for Indians on both banks of the river. The idea of scouting from a steamboat was to me an altogether novel one, and I was immensely pleased at the prospect.

At daylight the next morning we reported on the steamer to General Miles, who had with him four or five companies of his regiment. We were somewhat surprised when he asked us why we had not brought our horses. We were at a loss to see how we could employ horses in the pilothouse of a river steamboat. He said that we might need them before we got back, so we sent for them and had them brought on board.

In a few minutes we were looking down the river, the swift current enabling the little steamer to make a speed of twenty miles an hour.

The commander of the Far West was Captain Grant March, a fine chap of whom I had often heard. For many years he was one of the most famous swift-water river captains in the country. It was on his steamer that the wounded from the battle of the Little Big Horn had been transported to Fort Abraham Lincoln, on the Missouri River. On that trip he made the fastest steamboat time on record. He was an excellent pilot, and handled his boat in those swift and dangerous waters with remarkable dexterity.

With Richard and me at our station in the pilothouse the little steamer went flying down-stream past islands, around bends, and over sandbars at a rate that was exhilarating, but sometimes a little disquieting to men who had done most of their navigating on the deck of a Western pony. Presently, far away inland, I thought I could see horses grazing, and reported this belief to General Miles. The general pointed out a large tree on the bank, and asked the captain if he could land the boat there.

"I can not only land her there; I can make her climb the tree if you think it would be any use," returned March.

He brought the boat skillfully alongside the tree, and let it go at that, as the general could see no particular advantage in sending the steamboat up the tree.

Richard and I were ordered to take our horses and push out as rapidly as possible to see if there were any Indians in the vicinity. Meanwhile, General Miles kept his soldiers in readiness to march instantly if we reported any work for them to do.

As we rode off, Captain March, sang out:

"Boys, if there was only a heavy dew on the grass, I could send the old craft right along after you."

It was a false alarm, however. The objects I had seen proved to be Indian graves, with only good Indians in them. On arriving at Glendive Creek we found that Colonel Rice and his company of the Fifth Infantry which had been sent on ahead by General Miles had built a good little fort with their trowel bayonets. Colonel Rice was the inventor of this weapon, and it proved very useful in Indian warfare. It is just as deadly in a charge as the regular bayonet, and can also be used almost as effectively as a shovel for digging rifle-pits and throwing up intrenchments.

The Far West was to remain at Glendive overnight. General Miles wanted a scout to go at once with messages for General Terry, and I was selected for the job. That night I rode seventy-five miles through the Bad Lands of the Yellowstone. I reached General Terry's camp the next morning, after having nearly broken my neck a dozen times or more.

Anyone who has seen that country in the daytime knows that it is not exactly the kind of a place one would pick out for pleasure riding. Imagine riding at night, over such a country, filled with almost every imaginable obstacle to travel, and without any real roads, and you can understand the sort of a ride I had that night. I was mighty glad to see the dawn break, and to be able to pick my way a little more securely, although I could not increase the pace at which I had driven my horse through the long, dark night.

There was no present prospect of carrying this out, however. After I had taken lunch, General Terry asked me if I would carry some dispatches to General Whistler, and I replied that I would be glad to do so. Captain Smith, Terry's aide-de-camp, offered me his horse, and I was glad to accept the animal, as my own was pretty well spent. He proved to be a fine mount. I rode him forty miles that night in four hours, reaching General Whistler's steamboat at four in the morning. When Whistler had read the dispatches I handed him he said:

"Cody, I want to send information to General Terry concerning the Indians that have been skirmishing around here all day. I have been trying to induce some member in my command to carry them, but no one wants to go."

"Get your dispatches ready, general," I replied, "and I'll take them."

He went into his quarters and came out presently with a package, which he handed me. I mounted the same horse which had brought me, and at eight o'clock that evening reached Terry's headquarters, just as his force was about to march.

As soon as Terry had read the dispatches he halted his command, which was already under way. Then he rode on ahead to overtake General Crook, with whom he held a council. At General Terry's urgent request I accompanied him on a scout for Dry Fork, on the Missouri. We marched three days, a little to the east of north. When we reached the buffalo range we discovered some fresh Indian signs. The redskins had been killing buffalo, and the evidences of their work were very plain. Terry now called on me to carry dispatches to Colonel Rice, who was still encamped at the mouth of Glendive Creek on the Yellowstone. This was about eighty miles distant.

Night had set in with a storm. A drizzling rain was falling, which made the going slippery, and made the blackness of the Western Plains still blacker. I was entirely unacquainted with the section of the country through which I was to ride. I therefore traveled all night and remained in seclusion in the daytime. I had too many plans for the future to risk a shot from a hostile redskin who might be hunting white men along my way.

At daylight I unsaddled my mount and made a hearty breakfast of bacon and hardtack. Then I lighted my pipe, and, making a pillow of my saddle, lay down to rest.

The smoke and the fatigue of the night's journey soon made me drowsy, and before I knew it I was fast asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a loud rumbling noise. I seized my gun instantly, and sprang toward my horse, which I had picketed in a hidden spot in the brush near by where he would be out of sight of any passing Indians.

Climbing a steep hill, I looked cautiously over the country from which the noise appeared to come. There before me was a great herd of buffalo, moving at full gallop. Twenty Indians were behind it, riding hard and firing into the herd as they rode. Others near by were cutting up the carcasses of the animals that had already been killed.

I saddled my horse and tied him near me. Then I crawled on my stomach to the summit of the hill, and for two hours I lay there watching the progress of the chase.

When the Indians had killed all the buffalo they wanted they rode off in the direction whence they had come. This happened to be the way that I hoped to go on my own expedition. I made up my mind that their camp was located somewhere between me and Glendive Creek. I was not at all eager to have any communication with these gentlemen. Therefore, when I resumed my journey at nightfall, I made a wide detour around the place where I believed their camp would be. I avoided it successfully, reaching Colonel Rice's camp just after daybreak.

The colonel had been fighting Indians almost every day since he encamped at this point. He was anxious that Terry should know of this so that reenforcements might be sent, and the country cleared of the redskins. Of course it fell to my lot to carry this word back to Terry.

I undertook the mission willingly enough, for by this time I was pretty well used to night riding through a country beset with perils, and rather enjoyed it.

The strain of my recent rides had told on me, but the excitement bore me up. Indeed, when a man is engaged in work of this kind, the exhilaration is such that he forgets all about the wear and tear on his system, and not until all danger is over and he is safely resting in camp does he begin to feel what he has been through. Then a good long sleep usually puts him all right again.

Many and many a time I have driven myself beyond what I believed was the point of physical endurance, only to find that I was ready for still further effort if the need should arise. The fact that I continued in rugged health during all the time I was on the Plains, and have had little illness throughout my life, seems to prove that living and working outdoors, despite its hardships, is far better for a man than any sedentary occupation can possibly be.

I started back to overhaul General Terry, and on the third day out I found him at the head of Deer Creek. He was on his way to Colonel Rice's camp. He was headed in the right direction, but bearing too far east. He asked me to guide his command in the right course, which I did. On arriving at Glendive I bade good-by to the general and his officers and took passage on the Far West, which was on her way down the Missouri. At Bismarck I left the steamer, and proceeded by rail to Rochester, New York.

It has been a great pleasure to me to meet and know and serve with such men as Crook and Miles. I had served long enough on the Plains to know Indian fighters when I saw them, and I cannot close this chapter without a tribute to both of these men.

Miles had come to the West as a young man with a brilliant war record, having risen to a major-general of volunteers at the age, I think, of 26 or 27.

He took naturally to Indian fighting. He quickly divested himself of all the tactics that were useless in this particular kind of warfare, and learned as much about the Indians as any man ever knew.

Years later, when I was giving my Wild West Show in Madison Square Garden, General Miles visited it as my guest.

The Indians came crowding around him, and followed him wherever he went, although other army officers of high reputation accompanied him on the visit.

This Indian escort at last proved to be almost embarrassing, for the general could not go to any part of the Garden without four or five of the braves silently dogging his footsteps and drinking in his every word.

When this was called to my attention I called one of the old men aside and asked him why he and his brothers followed Miles so eagerly.

"Heap big chief!" was the reply. "Him lickum Injun chiefs. Him biggest White Chief. Heap likum." Which was really a very high tribute, as Indians are not given to extravagant praise.

When we have met from time to time General Miles has been kind enough to speak well of me and the work I have done on the Plains. I am very glad to have this opportunity of returning the compliment.

Crook was a man who lived and fought without any ostentation, but who had high courage and used rare judgment. The fact that he had command of the forces in the West had much to do with their successes in subduing the hostile red man. Indeed, had not our army taught the Indians that it was never safe, and usually extremely dangerous, to go on the warpath against the Big White Chief, organizations might have been formed which would have played sad havoc with our growing Western civilization.

I am and always have been a friend of the Indian. I have always sympathized with him in his struggle to hold the country that was his by right of birth.

But I have always held that in such a country as America the march of civilization was inevitable, and that sooner or later the men who lived in roving tribes, making no real use of the resources of the country, would be compelled to give way before the men who tilled the soil and used the lands as the Creator intended they should be used.

In my dealings with the Indians we always understood each other. In a fight we did our best to kill each other. In times of peace we were friends. I could always do more with the Indians than most white men, and I think my success in getting so many of them to travel with my organization was because I understood them and they understood me.

Shrewd as were the generals who conducted the fight against the Indians, I believe they could have done little without the services of the men who all over the West served them in the capacity of scouts.

The adventures of small scouting parties were at times even more thrilling than the battles between the Indians and the troops.

Among the ablest of the scouts I worked with in the West were Frank Grouard and Baptiste Pourier. At one time in his childhood Grouard was to all intents and purposes a Sioux Indian. He lived with the tribe, hunted and fought with them, and wore the breech-clout as his only summer garment.

He met some hunters and trappers while living this life. Their language recalled his childhood, and he presently deserted his red-skinned friends and came back to his own race.

His knowledge of the tongues of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow Indians and his marvelous proficiency in the universal sign language made him an extremely desirable acquisition to the service.

Grouard and "Big Bat" (Baptiste Pourier) were the two scouts that guided Lieutenant Sibley, a young officer of experience and ability, on a scout with about thirty officers and John Finnerty of the Chicago Times, a newspaper man who was known all over the West.

At eight o'clock at night they left their halting-place, Big Goose Creek, and in the silent moonlight made a phantom promenade toward the Little Big Horn.

Presently they made out the presence of a war party ahead of them, and one of the scouts of this outfit began riding around in a circle, which meant that the enemy had been discovered.

There were too many Indians to fight in the open, so Grouard led the soldiers to a deep thicket where there were plenty of logs and fallen timber out of which to make breastworks.

The Indians repeatedly circled around them and often charged, but the white men, facing a massacre like that of Custer's men, steadily held them at bay by accurate shooting.

Soon red reenforcements began to arrive. The Indians, feeling that they had now a sufficient advantage, attempted another charge, as the result of which they lost White Antelope, one of the bravest of their chiefs.

This dampened their ardor, but they kept up an incessant firing that rattled against the log breastworks like hailstones.

Fearing that the Indians would soon start a fire and burn them out, Sibley ordered a retreat. The two scouts were left behind to keep up a desultory fire after night had fallen, in order to make the Indians think the party was still in its breastworks. Then the other men in single file struggled up the precipitous sides of the mountain above them, marching, stumbling, climbing, and falling according to the character of the ground they passed over.

The men left behind finally followed on. The temperature fell below zero, and the night was one of suffering and horror. At last they gained a point in the mountains about twenty-five miles distant from Crook's command.

Halting in a sheltered cave, they got a little sleep and started out just in time to escape observation by a large war-party which was scouting in their direction.

At night the jaded party, more dead than alive, forded Tongue River up to their armpits. Two were so exhausted that it was not considered advisable to permit them to plunge into the icy stream, and they were left on the bank till help could be sent to them.

Those that got across dragged themselves over the trail to Crook's camp. The rocks had broken their boots, and with bleeding feet and many a bullet wound they managed to get within sight of the camp, where two men of the Second Cavalry found them and brought them in.

Sibley's men threw themselves on the ground, too exhausted to go another step. Hot food was brought them, and they soon were strong enough to go to Camp Cloud Peak, to receive the hospitality and sympathy of their comrades. The two men who had been left behind were brought in and cared for.

This expedition was one of the most perilous in the history of the Plains, and the fact that there were any survivors is due to the skill, coolness, and courage of the two scouts, Grouard and Pourier.



CHAPTER X

My work on the Plains brought me many friends, among them being some of the truest and staunchest that any man ever had. You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one's friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle. And I found out that most of mine would as cheerfully risk their lives for me as they would give me a light for my pipe when I asked it.

Such a friend was old "Buffalo Chips," who certainly deserves a place in these memoirs of mine.

One morning while I was sitting on my porch at North Platte, playing with my children, I saw a man limping on crutches from the direction of the Post hospital. He was a middle-aged man, but had long, flowing white hair, and the most deeply-pitted face I have ever beheld.

Noticing that he seemed confused and in trouble, I sent the children out to bring him to me. He came up haltingly, and in response to my questioning told me that he had been rejected by the hospital because he had been a Confederate soldier and it was against their rules to accept any but Union veterans.

I turned the stranger over to my sister, who prepared a meal for him while I went over to the adjutant's office to see what could be done. I met General Emory in the adjutant's office, and on my promise to pay the ex-Confederate's bills, he gave me an order admitting him to the hospital. Soon my new protege, who said his name was Jim White, was duly installed, and receiving the treatment of which he stood in sore need.

In a few weeks he had nearly recovered from the wound in his leg which had necessitated the use of his crutches. Every day he came to my house to play with the children and to care for my horses, a service for which he gruffly refused to accept any pay.

Now and then he would borrow one of my rifles for a little practice. I soon discovered that he was a splendid shot, as well as an unusually fine horseman. My surprise at these accomplishments was somewhat lessened when he told me that he had spent his four years' war service as one of General J.E.B. Stuart's scouts. Stuart had no other kind of men in his command.

For years, wherever I went, no matter how dangerous the errand, my new friend went along. The first time he followed me I still remember vividly. I had left the Post on a five days' scout, and was particularly anxious that no one should know the direction I was to take.

When I was four or five miles from the Post I looked back and saw a solitary horseman riding in my direction about a mile in my rear. When I stopped he stopped. I rode on for a little way and looked around again. He was exactly the same distance behind me, and pulled his horse up when I halted. This maneuver I repeated several times, always with the same result. Considerably disquieted by this mysterious pursuit, I decided to discover the reason for it. I whipped up my horse and when I had put a sandhill between myself and the man behind I made a quick detour through a ravine, and came up in his rear. Then I boldly rode up till I came abreast of him.

He swung around when he heard me coming, and blushed like a girl when he saw how I had tricked him.

"Look here, White," I demanded, "what the devil are you following me in this way for?"

"Mrs. Cody said I could follow you if I wanted to," he said, "and, well, I just followed you, that's all."

That was all he would say. But I knew that he had come along to keep me from getting hurt if I was attacked, and would rather die than admit his real reason. So I told him to come along, and come along he did.

There was no need for his services on that occasion, but a little later he put me in debt to him for my life. He and I rode together into a border town, where there were a few gentlemen in the horse-stealing business who had reason to wish me moved along to some other sphere. I left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need. White noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear their conversation.

"We'll go in while he is taking a drink," one of them was saying, "and shoot him from behind. He'll never have a chance."

Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the door. Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers. But before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which they instantly complied after one look at his face.

I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been sent to apprehend. My revolvers were put into instant requisition, and I kept them covered while White removed the guns with which they had expected to put me out of their way.

With White's help I conducted these gentlemen forty miles back to the sheriff's office, and they walked every step of the way. Each of them got ten years in the penitentiary as soon as they could be tried. They either forgave me or forgot me when they got out, for I never heard of either of them again.

In the campaign of 1876 I secured employment for White as a scout. He was with me when Terry and Crook's commands separated on the Yellowstone. By this time he had come to copy my gait, my dress, my speech, and even my fashion of wearing my hair down on my shoulders, though mine at that time was brown, and his was white as the driven snow.

We were making a raid on an Indian village, which was peopled with very lively and very belligerent savages. I had given White an old red-lined coat, one which I had worn conspicuously in a number of battles, and which the Indians had marked as a special target on that account.

A party of Indians had been driven from among the lodges into a narrow gorge, and some of the soldiers, among them Captain Charles King, had gone after them. As they were proceeding cautiously, keeping tinder cover as much as possible, King observed White creeping along the opposite bluff, rifle in hand, looking for a chance at the savages huddled below, and hoping to distract their fire so they would do as little damage as possible to the soldiers who were closing in on them.

White crawled along on all-fours till he reached a stunted tree on the brim of the ravine. There he halted, brought his rifle to his shoulder in readiness to aim and raised himself slowly to his feet. He was about to fire, when one of the Indians in the hole below spotted the red-lined coat. There was a crack, a puff of smoke, and White toppled over, with a bullet through his heart. The coat had caught the attention of the savages, and thus I had been the innocent means of my friend's death; for, with the soldiers pressing them so hard, it is not likely that any of the warriors would have wasted a shot had they not thought they were getting Pa-ho-has-ka. For a long time the Indians believed that I would be a menace to them no more. But they discovered their mistake later, and I sent a good many of them to the Happy Hunting-Grounds as a sort of tribute to my friend.

Poor old White! A more faithful man never took a trail, nor a braver. He was a credit to me, and to the name which General Sheridan had first given him in derision, but which afterward became an honor, the name of "Buffalo Chips."

When Terry and Crook's commands joined on the Yellowstone both commands went into camp together and guards were placed to prevent surprise. The scene was typical of the Old West, but it would astonish anyone whose whole idea of warfare has been gained by a visit to a modern military post or training camp, or the vast camps where the reserve forces are drilled and equipped for the great European war.

Generals Crook, Merritt, and Carr were in rough hunting rigs, utterly without any mark of their rank. Deerskin, buckskin, corduroy, canvas, and rags indiscriminately covered the rest of the command, so that unless you knew the men it was totally impossible to distinguish between officers and enlisted men. However, every one in the commands knew every one else, and there was no confusion.

A great part of that night was spent in swapping stories of recent experiences. All of them were thrilling, even to veteran campaigners fresh from the trail. There was no need of drawing the long bow in those days. The truth was plenty exciting enough to suit the most exacting, and we sat about like schoolboys, drinking in each other's tales, and telling our own in exchange.

A story of a personal adventure and a hairbreadth escape in which Lieutenant De Rudio figured was so typical of the fighting days of the West that I want my readers to know it. I shall tell it, as nearly as I can, just as it came to me around the flickering fire in that picturesque border camp.

De Rudio had just returned from his adventure, and he told it to us between puffs of his pipe so realistically that I caught several of my old friends of the Plains peering about into the darkness as if to make sure that no lurking redskins were creeping up on them.

In the fight of a few days before De Rudio was guarding a pony crossing with eight men when one of them sang out:

"Lieutenant, get your horse, quick. Reno (the commander of the outfit) is retreating!" No trumpet had sounded, however, and no orders had been given, so the lieutenant hesitated to retire. His men left in a hurry, but he remained, quietly waiting for the call.

Presently, looking behind him, he saw thirty or forty Indians coming full gallop. He wheeled and started to get into safer quarters. As lie did so they cut loose with a volley. He leaned low on his horse as they shot, and the bullets sang harmlessly over his head.

Before him was a fringe of thick underbrush along the river, and into this he forced his unwilling horse. The bullets followed and clipped the twigs about him like scissors. At last he gained the creek, forded, and mounted the bank on the other side. Here, instead of safety, he found hundreds of Indians, all busily shooting at the soldiers, who were retreating discreetly in the face of a greatly superior force. He was entirely cut off from retreat, unless he chose to make a bold dash for his life right through the middle of the Indians. This he was about to do, when a young Indian, who had observed him, sent a shot after him, and his horse fell dead under him, rolling over and over, while he managed to scramble to his feet.

The shot had attracted the attention of all the Indians in that immediate neighborhood, and there were plenty of them there for all offensive purposes. De Rudio jumped down the creek bank and hid in an excavation while a hail of bullets spattered the water ahead of him and raised a dozen little clouds of dust at his feet.

So heavy had this volley been that the Indians decided that the bullets had done their work, and a wild yell broke from them.

Suddenly the yell changed to another sort of outcry, and the firing abruptly ceased. Peering out, De Rudio saw Captain Benteen's column coming up over the hill. He began to hope that his rescue was at hand. But in a few minutes the soldiers disappeared and the Indians all started off after them.

Just beyond the hill was the noise of a lively battle, and he made up his mind that Reno's command had rallied, and that if he could join them he might be saved.

Working his way softly through the brush he was nearing the summit of the slope when he heard his name whispered and saw three of his own company in the brush. Two of them were mounted. The horse of the third had been killed.

The three men remained in the bushes, lying as low as they could and making no sound. Looking out now and then, they could see an old Indian woman going about, taking scalps and mutilating the bodies of the soldiers who had been slain. Most of the warriors were occupied with the battle, but now and then a warrior, suspicious that soldiers were still lurking in the brush, would ride over in their direction and fire a few shots that whistled uncomfortably close to their heads.

Presently the firing on the hill ceased, and hundreds of Indians came slowly back. But they were hard pressed by the soldiers, and the battle was soon resumed, to break out intermittently through the entire night.

In a quiet interval the two soldiers got their horses, and with their companion and De Rudio holding to the animals' tails forded the river and made a detour round the Indians. Several times they passed close to Indians. Once or twice they were fired on and answered the fire, but their luck was with them and they escaped bringing a general attack down upon them.

As they were making their way toward the edge of the clearing they saw directly before them a party of men dressed in the ragged uniforms of American cavalrymen, and all drew deep breaths of relief. Help seemed now at hand. But just as they sprang forward to join their supposed comrades a fiendish yell broke from the horsemen. In another instant the four unfortunates were rushing to cover, with a dozen Indians, all dressed in the clothing taken from dead soldiers, in hot pursuit.

The Indians had been planning a characteristic piece of Sioux strategy. As fast as it could be accomplished they had been stripping the clothing from dead and wounded soldiers and garbing themselves in it with the purpose of deceiving the outposts of Reno's command and surprising the Americans as soon as day broke. Had it not been for the accidental discovery of the ruse by De Rudio's party it might have succeeded only too well.

The lieutenant and his companions managed to get away safely and to find shelter in the woods. But the Indians immediately fired the underbrush and drove them further and further on. Then, just as they had begun to despair of their lives, their pursuers, who had been circling around the tangle of scrub growth, began singing a slow chant and withdrew to the summit of the hill.

There they remained in council a little time and then cantered away single file.

Fearing another trap, the white men remained for weary hours in their hiding-place, but at last were compelled by thirst and hunger to come out.

No Indians were visible, nor did any appear as, worn out and dispirited, they dragged themselves to the camp of the soldiers. In the forty-eight hours since he had been cut off from his command De Rudio had undergone all the horrors of Indian warfare and a hundred times had given himself up for dead.

Bullets had passed many times within a few inches of him. Half a dozen times only a lucky chance had intervened between him and the horrible death that Indians know so well how to inflict. Yet, save for the bruises from his fall off his horse, and the abrasions of the brush through which he had traveled, he had never received a scratch.



CHAPTER XI

Of all the Indians I encountered in my years on the Plains the most resourceful and intelligent, as well as the most dangerous, were the Sioux. They had the courage of dare-devils combined with real strategy. They mastered the white man's tactics as soon as they had an opportunity to observe them. Incidentally they supplied all thinking and observing white commanders with a great deal that was well worth learning in the art of warfare. The Sioux fought to win, and in a desperate encounter were absolutely reckless of life.

But they also fought wisely, and up to the minute of closing in they conserved their own lives with a vast amount of cleverness. The maxim put into words by the old Confederate fox, Forrest: "Get there fastest with the mostest," was always a fighting principle with the Sioux.

They were a strong race of men, the braves tall, with finely shaped heads and handsome features. They had poise and dignity and a great deal of pride, and they seldom forgot either a friend or an enemy.

The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his due.

Sitting Bull it was who stirred the Indians to the uprising whose climax was the massacre of the Little Big Horn and the destruction of Custer's command.

For months before this uprising he had been going to and fro among the Sioux and their allies urging a revolt against the encroaching white man. It was easy at that time for the Indians to secure rifles. The Canadian-French traders to the north were only too glad to trade them these weapons for the splendid supplies of furs which the Indians had gathered. Many of these rifles were of excellent construction, and on a number of occasions we discovered to our cost that they outranged the army carbines with which we were equipped.

After the Custer massacre the frontier became decidedly unsafe for Sitting Bull and the chiefs who were associated with him, and he quietly withdrew to Canada, where he was for the time being safe from pursuit.

There he stayed till his followers began leaving him and returning to their reservations in the United States. Soon he had only a remnant of his followers and his immediate family to keep him company. Warily he began negotiating for immunity, and when he was fully assured that if he would use his influence to quiet his people and keep them from the warpath his life would be spared, he consented to return.

He had been lonely and unhappy in Canada. An accomplished orator and a man with a gift of leadership, he had pined for audiences to sway and for men to do his bidding. He felt sure that these would be restored to him once he came back among his people. As to his pledges, I have no doubt that he fully intended to live up to them. He carried in his head all the treaties that had been made between his people and the white men, and could recite their minutest details, together with the dates of their making and the names of the men who had signed for both sides.

But he was a stickler for the rights of his race, and he devoted far more thought to the trend of events than did most of his red brothers.

Here was his case, as he often presented it to me:

"The White Man has taken most of our land. He has paid us nothing for it. He has destroyed or driven away the game that was our meat. In 1868 he arranged to build through the Indians' land a road on which ran iron horses that ate wood and breathed fire and smoke. We agreed. This road was only as wide as a man could stretch his arms. But the White Man had taken from the Indians the land for twenty miles on both sides of it. This land he had sold for money to people in the East. It was taken from the Indians. But the Indians got nothing for it.

"The iron horse brought from the East men and women and children, who took the land from the Indians and drove out the game. They built fires, and the fires spread and burned the prairie grass on which the buffalo fed. Also it destroyed the pasturage for the ponies of the Indians. Soon the friends of the first White Men came and took more land. Then cities arose and always the White Man's lands were extended and the Indians pushed farther and farther away from the country that the Great Father had given them and that had always been theirs.

"When treaties were broken and the Indians trespassed on the rights of the White Man, my chiefs and I were always here to adjust the White Man's wrongs.

"When treaties were broken and the Indians' rights were infringed, no one could find the white chiefs. They were somewhere back toward the rising sun. There was no one to give us justice. New chiefs of the White Men came to supplant the old chiefs. They knew nothing of our wrongs and laughed at us.

"When the Sioux left Minnesota and went beyond the Big Muddy the white chiefs promised them they would never again be disturbed. Then they followed us across the river, and when we asked for lands they gave us each a prairie chicken's flight four ways (a hundred and sixty acres); this they gave us, who once had all the land there was, and whose habit is to roam as far as a horse can carry us and then continue our journey till we have had our fill of wandering.

"We are not as many as the White Man. But we know that this land is our land. And while we live and can fight, we will fight for it. If the White Man does not want us to fight, why does he take our land? If we come and build our lodges on the White Man's land, the White Man drives us away or kills us. Have we not the same right as the White Man?"

The forfeiture of the Black Hills and unwise reduction of rations kept alive the Indian discontent. When, in 1889, Congress passed a law dividing the Sioux reservation into many smaller ones so as to isolate the different tribes of the Dakota nation a treaty was offered them. This provided payment for the ponies captured or destroyed in the war of 1876 and certain other concessions, in return for which the Indians were to cede about half their land, or eleven million acres, which was to be opened up for settlement.

The treaty was submitted to the Indians for a vote. They came in from the woods and the plains to vote on it, and it was carried by a very narrow majority, many of the Indians insisting that they had been coerced by their necessities into casting favorable ballots.

Congress delayed and postponed the fulfillment of the promised conditions, and the Indian unrest increased as the months went by. Even after the land had been taken over and settled up, Congress did not pass the appropriation that was necessary before the Indians could get their money.

Sitting Bull was appealed to for aid, and once more began employing his powerful gift of oratory in the interest of armed resistance against the white man.

Just at this time a legend whose origin was beyond all power to fathom became current among the red men of the north.

From one tribe to another spread the tidings that a Messiah was to come back to earth to use his miraculous power in the interest of the Indian. The whites were to be driven from the land of the red man. The old days of the West were to be restored. The ranges were to be re-stocked with elk, antelope, deer, and buffalo.

Soon a fever of fanaticism had infected every tribe. Not alone were the Sioux the victims of this amazing delusion, but every tribe on the continent shared in it.

There was to be a universal brotherhood of red men. Old enmities were forgotten. Former foes became fast friends. The Yaquis in Mexico sent out word that they would be ready for the great Armageddon when it came. As far north as Alaska there were ghost dances and barbaric festivities to celebrate the coming restoration of the Indian to the lands of his inheritance.

And as the Indians danced, they talked and sang and thought of war, while their hatred of the white man broke violently forth.

Very much disquieted at the news of what was going on the War Department sent out word to stop the dancing and singing. Stop it! You could as easily have stopped the eruption of Mount Lassen! Among the other beliefs that spread among the Indians was one that all the sick would be healed and be able to go into battle, and that young and old, squaws and braves alike, would be given shirts which would turn the soldiers' bullets like armor-plate.

Every redskin believed that he could not be injured. None of them had any fear of battle, or any suspicions that he could be injured in the course of the great holy war that was to come.



CHAPTER XII

In November, 1890, I was returning from Europe with my Wild West Company. When the New York pilot came aboard he brought a big packet of papers. That was before the days of wireless, and we had had no tidings of what was going on in the world since we had left the other side.

As he came up the ladder he recognized me, and shouted: "Colonel, there's a big Indian war started! I guess you'll be needed out there."

I seized the papers and eagerly read the details of the threatened outbreak. I was not surprised when, on arriving at Quarantine, I was handed a telegram from General Miles.

I was requested to come to Chicago as soon as possible, and to telegraph the time of my arrival. Canceling all New York engagements, I caught the first train for the West, and in thirty-six hours reported to General Miles in his headquarters.

He briefly described to me what had been happening and went over with me the maps of the Western States where the Indians were getting ready for war. He said that it was his understanding that the Bad Lands of North Dakota had been selected as the battle-ground by the Indians, and asked me to give him all the information I possessed about that country and its accessibility for troops.

Miles was about to leave for the Pine Ridge Agency, and take command of the campaign to put down the Indians.

I was thoroughly familiar with the Bad Lands, and spent an hour or more in discussing the coming campaign with the general. We both agreed that the Indians had selected a particularly good country for their uprising, and an especially good season, as in winter, with the hills covered with snow, and blizzards of almost daily occurrence, it would be far harder to hunt them out than in summer, when the troops could travel easily.

Miles said that Sitting Bull had his camp somewhere within forty or fifty miles of the Standing Rock Agency, and was haranguing the Indians thereabout, spreading the Messiah talk and getting them to join him. He asked me if I could go immediately to Standing Rock and Fort Yates, and thence to Sitting Bull's camp.

He knew that I was an old friend of the chief, and he believed that if any one could induce the old fox to abandon his plans for a general war I could. If I could not dissuade him from the warpath the general was of the opinion that I might be able to delay him in taking it, so that troops could be sent into the country in time to prevent a horrible massacre of the defenseless white settlers, who were already in terror of their lives.

I knew that this would be the most dangerous undertaking of my career. I was sure that if I could reach Sitting Bull he would at least listen to me. But in the present inflamed state of the Indian mind it would be next to impossible to get to his camp alive.

Nevertheless I was quite ready to take the risk. I knew what fearful damage could be done by a sudden uprising of fanatical and infuriated Indians, and any danger to me personally was as nothing to the importance of preventing such, a thing, if possible.

Having no standing as an army officer or as a Government agent, it was necessary for me to be supplied with some sort of credentials, in order to secure the assistance I should need on my mission. When I informed General Miles of this he took one of his visiting-cards from a case and wrote the following on the back of it:

To COMMANDING OFFICERS OF UNITED STATES TROOPS:

Furnish Colonel William F. Cody with any assistance or escort that he may ask for.

NELSON A. MILES.

I took the next train for Mandan, N.D., which was the station nearest the Standing Rock Agency. There I hired a livery team and driver for the ride of sixty-five miles to the Agency. I had considerable difficulty in securing a driver, as the report had gone abroad that all the Indians were on the warpath, and few of the settlers cared to risk their scalps on such a venture. But I went higher and higher in my offers, till at last a liveryman figured that a hundred dollars was sufficient reward for the risk, and, hitching up his team, told me to come along.

After an intensely cold drive we reached the Agency, where I hurried into the trader's store to thaw out by his stove. I had hardly arrived before the trader came in and told me that Major McLaughlin, the Indian agent, wanted to see me. News travels very fast in the Indian country, especially in war times. Someone about the Post who had seen me driving in had hurried to headquarters to inform the agent that Buffalo Bill had arrived by way of reenforcements.

As soon as I got my chilled blood into circulation I went to the major's quarters, and informed him of the purpose of my visit. We were old friends, and he was very glad to see me, but he was much concerned on learning what I intended to do.

"That is impossible!" he said. "The Sioux are threatening a great war. At this very moment we do not know when the Indians here at the Agency may rise. We can take care of our own situation, for we have four troops of cavalry here, but we cannot permit you to go to Sitting Bull's camp. Not only would you be killed before you got halfway there, but your presence in the country would precipitate hostilities for which we are not in the least prepared. I'm sorry, Cody, but it can't be done."

More fully to persuade me of the truth of what he said he took me to the quarters of Colonel Brown, the commander of the troops at the Agency, and asked him to talk to me. Brown listened to my statement of what I proposed and shook his head.

"I've heard of you, Cody, and of your nerve, but this is more than even you can do. Sitting Bull's camp is forty miles away, and the country between here and there is swarming with Indians all ready to go on the warpath, and wholly beyond the sway of reason. I cannot permit you to make this attempt."

"Do you hear, Cody?" said McLaughlin. "The only thing for you to do is to stay all night with us and then return to the railroad. Even that will be risky enough, even for you." "But go you must," added Brown. "The Agency is under martial law, and I cannot permit you to remain any longer than tomorrow morning."

There was no arguing with these men. So I resorted to my credentials. Taking General Miles's card from my pocket, I laid it before Colonel Brown.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, and passed the card to McLaughlin.

"It looks like orders," said McLaughlin.

"Yes," said Brown, "and I can't disobey them."

Just then Captain Fatchett, an old friend of mine, came into the quarters, and Brown turned me over to him for entertainment until I should formulate my plans for my visit to Sitting Bull. I had never served with the Eighth Cavalry to which the companies at the Post belonged, but I had many friends among the officers, and spent a very pleasant afternoon and evening talking over old times, and getting information about the present situation.

After guard-mount the next morning I told Colonel Brown that I did not think I would require an escort for my visit, as the presence of a number of armed men in the Indian country would be sure to start the trouble it was our purpose to avoid, or to delay as long as possible. The man who had driven me over was anxious to return at once, so I asked for a light spring-wagon and a team of mules.

"Wait an hour or two," said the colonel, "and I'll send the quartermaster to you."

I waited, and he employed the time, as I afterward learned, in telegraphing to General Miles, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to the Secretary of the Interior, and to President Harrison. He informed all of them that I was there, insisting on going to Sitting Bull's camp, and that such an errand would not only result in my death, but would precipitate the outbreak then brewing, and for which he was not at all prepared. He besought all of them to instruct me to return to Mandan.

While he waited for replies to his dispatches I hunted about the camp for someone who knew just where Sitting Bull was located and how to get there. I also wanted a first-class interpreter, as I would have matters to discuss with Sitting Bull beyond his mastery of English or mine of Sioux to express. At last I found a man who agreed to go with me as guide for five hundred dollars, which I promised him without a protest. Then I went over to the post-trader's store and bought all manner of presents which I knew would be acceptable to Sitting Bull, his squaw, and his children.

When I returned to Colonel Brown's quarters he endeavored once more to put me off. But I would not be put off. I informed him that I had explicit orders from General Miles as to my mission, and that if he interfered with me he was violating the orders of his commanding officer and running into very serious trouble.

At last he reluctantly sent for the quartermaster, and ordered him to have a span of good mules hitched to a light spring-wagon.

The wagon was driven to the post-trader's store, where I found my guide and interpreter, and loaded aboard the presents I had bought for the old warrior. With plenty of robes to keep out the intense cold, we started out on our journey, a little apprehensive, but fully determined to go through with it. Five or six miles from the Post we met three men in a wagon driving toward the Agency. They told us that Sitting Bull's camp had been lately moved, and that it was now further down the river. I knew that if the old man was really on the warpath he would be moving up the river, not down, so I felt considerably reassured.

When we had proceeded a few miles further we heard a yell behind us, and, looking back, saw a rider approaching at full speed. This proved to be one of Major McLaughlin's Indian scouts. He bore a telegram reading:

COLONEL WILLIAM F. CODY, Fort Yates, N.D.:

The order for the detention of Sitting Bull has been rescinded. You are hereby ordered to return to Chicago and report to General Miles.

BENJAMIN HARRISON, President.

That ended my mission to Sitting Bull. I still believe I could have got safely through the country, though there were plenty of chances that I would be killed or wounded in the attempt.

I returned to the Post, turned back my presents at a loss to myself, and paid the interpreter fifty dollars for his day's work. He was very glad to have the fifty and a whole skin, for he could not figure how the five hundred would be of much help to him if he had been stretched out on the Plains with an Indian bullet through him.

I was supplied with conveyance back to Mandan by Colonel Brown and took my departure the next morning. Afterward, in Indianapolis, President Harrison informed me that he had allowed himself to be persuaded against my mission in opposition to his own judgment, and said he was very sorry that he had not allowed me to proceed.

It developed afterward that the people who had moved the President to interfere consisted of a party of philanthropists who advanced the argument that my visit would precipitate a war in which Sitting Bull would be killed, and it was to spare the life of this man that I was stopped!

The result of the President's order was that the Ghost Dance War followed very shortly, and with it came the death of Sitting Bull.

I found that General Miles knew exactly why I had been turned back from my trip to Sitting Bull. But he was a soldier, and made no criticism of the order of a superior. General Miles was glad to hear that I had been made a brigadier-general, but he was still more pleased with the fact that I knew so many Indians at the Agency.

"You can get around among them," he said, "and learn their intentions better than any other man I know."

I remained with General Miles until the final surrender of the North American Indians to the United States Government after three hundred years of warfare.

This surrender was made to Miles, then lieutenant-general of the army, and it was eminently fitting that a man who had so ably conducted the fight of the white race against them and had dealt with them so justly and honorably should have received their surrender.

With that event ended one of the most picturesque phases of Western life—Indian fighting. It was with that that I was identified from my youth to my middle age, and in the time I spent on the Plains, Indian warfare reached its greatest severity and its highest development.



CHAPTER XIII

In the preceding chapters I have sketched briefly some of the most interesting of my adventures on the Plains. It has been necessary to omit much that I would like to have told. For twenty years my life was one of almost continuous excitement, and to tell the whole story would require many volumes.

It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show. How greatly I was to succeed in this venture I had no idea when it first occurred to me. As I have told you, I had already appeared in a small Western show, and was the first man to bring Indians to the East and exhibit them. But the theater was too small to give any real impression of what Western life was like. Only in an arena where horses could be ridden at full gallop, where lassos could be thrown, and pistols and guns fired without frightening the audience half to death, could such a thing be attempted.

After getting together a remarkable collection of Indians, cowboys, Indian ponies, stage-coach drivers, and other typical denizens of my own country under canvas I found myself almost immediately prosperous.

We showed in the principal cities of the country, and everywhere the novelty of the exhibition drew great crowds. As owner and principal actor in the enterprise I met the leading citizens of the United States socially, and never lost an opportunity to "talk up" the Western country, which I believed to have a wonderful future. I worked hard on the program of the entertainment, taking care to make it realistic in every detail. The wigwam village, the Indian war-dance, the chant of the Great Spirit as it was sung on the Plains, the rise and fall of the famous tribes, were all pictured accurately.

It was not an easy thing to do. Sometimes I had to send men on journeys of more than a hundred miles to get the right kind of war-bonnets, or to make correct copies of the tepees peculiar to a particular tribe. It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was. I was much gratified in after years to find that scientists who had carefully studied the Indians, their traditions and habits, gave me credit for making very valuable contributions to the sum of human knowledge of the American native.

The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.

For my grand entrance I made a spectacle which comprised the most picturesque features of Western life. Sioux, Arapahoes, Brules, and Cheyennes in war-paint and feathers led the van, shrieking their war-whoops and waving the weapons with which they were armed in a manner to inspire both terror and admiration in the tenderfoot audience.

Next came cowboys and soldiers, all clad exactly as they were when engaged in their campaigns against the Indians, and lumbering along in the rear were the old stage-coaches which carried the settlers to the West in the days before the railroad made the journey easy and pleasant.

I am sure the people enjoyed this spectacle, for they flocked in crowds to see it. I know I enjoyed it. There was never a day when, looking back over the red and white men in my cavalcade, I did not know the thrill of the trail, and feel a little sorry that my Western adventures would thereafter have to be lived in spectacles.

Without desiring to dim the glory of any individual I can truthfully state that the expression "rough riders," which afterward became so famous, was my own coinage. As I rode out at the front of my parade I would bow to the audience, circled about on the circus benches, and shout at the top of my voice:

"Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce you to the rough riders of the world!"

For three years we toured the United States with great success. One day an Englishman, whose name I never learned, came to see me after the show.

"That is a wonderful performance," he told me. "Here in America it meets with great appreciation, but you have no idea what a sensation it would be in the Old World, where such things are unheard of."

That set me to thinking. In a few days, after spending hours together considering the matter, I had made up my mind that Europe should have an opportunity to study America as nearly at first-hand as possible through the medium of my entertainment.

Details were soon arranged. In March, 1886, I chartered the steamer State of Nebraska, loaded my Indians, cowboys, horses, and stage-coaches on board, and set sail for another continent.

It was a strange voyage. The Indians had never been to sea before, and had never dreamed that such an expanse of water existed on the planet. They would stand at the rail, after the first days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy and forlorn lot of savages. The joy that seized them when at last they came in sight of land, and were assured that we did not intend to keep on sailing till we fell over the edge of the earth, was something worth looking at.

At Gravesend we sighted a tug flying the American colors, and when the band on board responded to our cheers with "The Star-Spangled Banner" even the Indians tried to sing. Our band replied with "Yankee Doodle," and as we moved toward port there was more noise on board than I had ever heard in any battle on the Plains.

When the landing was made the members of the party were sent in special coaches to London. Crowds stared at us from every station. The guards on the train were a little afraid of the solemn and surly-looking Indians, but they were a friendly and jovial crowd, and when they had recovered from their own fright at the strange surroundings they were soon on good terms with the Britishers.

Major John M. Burke, who was my lifetime associate in the show business, had made all arrangements for housing the big troupe. We went to work at our leisure with our preparations to astonish the British public, and succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The big London amphitheater, a third of a mile in circumference, was just the place for such an exhibition. The artist's brush was employed on lavish scale to reproduce the scenery of the Western Plains. I was busy for many days with preparations, and when our spectacle was finally given it was received with such a burst of enthusiasm as I had never witnessed anywhere.

The show began, after the grand entry, with the hour of dawn on the Plains. Wild animals were scattered about. Within their tents were the Indians sleeping. As the dawn deepened the Indians came out of their tents and went through one of their solemn and impressive war-dances. While this was going on the British audience held its breath. You could have heard a whisper in almost any part of the arena.

Then in came a courier to announce the neighborhood of a hostile tribe. Instantly there was a wild scramble for mounts and weapons. The enemy rushed in, and for ten minutes there was a sham battle which filled the place with noise and confusion. This battle was copied as exactly as it could be copied from one of the scrimmages in which I had taken part in my first days as a scout. Then we gave them a buffalo hunt, in which I had a hand, and did a little fancy shooting. As a finish there was a Wild Western cyclone, and a whole Indian village was blown out of existence for the delectation of the English audience.

The initial performance was given before the Prince and Princess of Wales, afterward King Edward and his Queen, and their suite. At the close of the program the Prince and Princess, at their own request, were introduced to all the leading members of the company, including many of the Indians. When the cowgirls of the show were presented to the Princess they stepped forward and offered their hands, which were taken and well shaken in true democratic fashion.

Red Shirt, the most important chief in the outfit, was highly pleased when he learned that a princess was to visit him in his camp. He had the Indian gift of oratory, and he replied to her greeting with a long and eloquent speech, in which his gestures, if not his words, expressed plainly the honor he felt in receiving so distinguished a lady. The fact that he referred to Alexandria as a squaw did not seem to mar her enjoyment.

That the Prince was really pleased with the exhibition was shown by the fact that he made an immediate report of it to his mother. Shortly thereafter I received a command from Queen Victoria to appear before her.

This troubled me a good deal—not that I was not more than eager to obey this flattering command, but that I was totally at a loss how to take my show to any of the great residences occupied by Her Majesty.

Finally, after many cautious inquiries, I discovered that she would be willing to visit the show if a special box was prepared for her. This we did to the best of our ability. The box was placed upon a dais covered with crimson velvet and handsomely decorated. When the Queen arrived I met her at the door of the box, with my sombrero in my hand and welcomed her to "the Wild West of America."

One of the first acts in the performance was to carry the flag to the front. This was done by a soldier. Walking around the arena, he offered the Stars and Stripes as an emblem of the friendship of America to all the world. On this occasion he carried the flag directly to the royal box, and dipped it three times before the Queen.

Absolute silence fell over the great throng. Then the Queen rose and saluted the flag with a bow, her suite following her example. There was a wild cheer from everyone in the show, Indians included, and soon all the audience was on its feet, cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs.

This gave us a fine start and we never put on a better performance. When it was all over Her Majesty sent for me, and paid me many compliments as well as to my country and the West. I found her a most gracious and charming woman, with none of the haughtiness which I had supposed was inseparable from a person of such exalted rank. My subsequent experiences with royalty convinced me that there is more real democracy among the rulers of the countries of Europe than you will find among the petty officials of a village.

It was interesting to watch old Red Shirt when he was presented to the Queen. He clearly felt that this was a ceremony between one ruler and another, and the dignity with which he went through the introduction was wonderful to behold. One would have thought to watch him that most of his life was spent in introductions to kings and queens, and that he was really a little bored with the effort required to go through with them. A second command from the Queen resulted in an exhibition before a number of her royal guests, including the Kings of Saxony, Denmark, and Greece, the Queen of the Belgians, and the Crown Prince of Austria.

The Deadwood coach, one of the features of the show, was of particular interest to my royal guests. This was a coach with a history. It was built in Concord, N.H., and sent by water to San Francisco to run over a route infested with road-agents. A number of times it was held up and robbed. Finally, both driver and passengers were killed and the coach abandoned on the trail. It remained for a long time a derelict, but was afterward brought into San Francisco by an old stage-driver and placed on the Overland trail.

As it worked its way East over the Overland route its old luck held steadily. Again were driver and passengers massacred; again it was abandoned. At last, when it was "hoodooed" all over the West and no independent driver or company would have anything to do with it I discovered it, bought it, and used it for my show.

One of the incidents of my program, as all who have seen it will remember, was an Indian attack on this coach. The royal visitors wanted a real taste of Western life—insisted on it, in fact, and the Kings of Denmark, Greece, Saxony, and the Crown Prince of Austria climbed to the box with me.

I had secretly instructed the Indians to throw a little real energy into their pursuit of the coach, and they followed my instructions rather more completely than I expected. The coach was surrounded by a demoniac band of shooting and shouting Indians. Blank cartridges were discharged at perilously close proximity to the rulers of four great nations. Looking around to quiet my followers, I saw that the guests of the occasion were a trifle pale, but they were all of them game, and came out of the affair far less scared than were the absolutely terrified members of the royal suites, who sat in their boxes and wrung their hands in wild alarm.

In recognition of this performance the Prince of Wales sent me a souvenir consisting of a feathered crest, outlined in diamonds, with the words "Ich dien" worked in jewels underneath. A note in the Prince's own hand expressed the pleasure of his guests in the entertainment I had provided for them.

After a tour of the principal cities we returned to America, proud of our success, and well rewarded in purse for our effort.

The welcome to America was almost as elaborate as that from England. I quote from the description of it printed in the New York World:

The harbor probably has never witnessed a more picturesque scene than that of yesterday, when the Persian Monarch steamed up from Quarantine. Buffalo Bill stood on the captain's bridge, his tall and striking figure clearly outlined, and his long hair waving in the wind; the gaily painted and blanketed Indians leaned over the ship's rail; the flags of all nations fluttered from the masts and connecting cables. The cowboy band played "Yankee Doodle" with a vim and enthusiasm which faintly indicated the joy felt by everybody connected with the "Wild West" over the sight of home.

Shortly after my arrival I was much pleased by the receipt of the following letter:

FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, NEW YORK. COLONEL WM. F. CODY:

Dear Sir—In common with all your countrymen, I want to let you know that I am not only gratified but proud of your management and success. So far as I can make out, you have been modest, graceful, and dignified in all you have done to illustrate the history of civilization on this continent during the past century. I am especially pleased with the compliment paid you by the Prince of Wales, who rode with you in the Deadwood coach while it was attacked by Indians and rescued by cowboys. Such things did occur in our days, but they never will again.

As nearly as I can estimate, there were in 1865 about nine and one-half million of buffaloes on the Plains between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains; all are now gone, killed for their meat, their skins, and their bones. This seems like desecration, cruelty, and murder, yet they have been replaced by twice as many cattle. At that date there were about 165,000 Pawnees, Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, who depended upon these buffaloes for their yearly food. They, too, have gone, but they have been replaced by twice or thrice as many white men and women, who have made the earth to blossom as the rose, and who can be counted, taxed, and governed by the laws of Nature and civilization. This change has been salutary, and will go on to the end. You have caught one epoch of this country's history, and have illustrated it in the very heart of the modern world—London—and I want you to feel that on this side of the water we appreciate it.

This drama must end; days, years, and centuries follow fast; even the drama of civilization must have an end. All I aim to accomplish on this sheet of paper is to assure you that I fully recognize your work. The presence of the Queen, the beautiful Princess of Wales, the Prince, and the British public are marks of favor which reflect back on America sparks of light which illuminate many a house and cabin in the land where once you guided me honestly and faithfully, in 1865-66, from Fort Riley to Kearney, in Kansas and Nebraska.

Sincerely your friend,

W.T. SHERMAN.

Our next descent on Europe was made in the steamer Persian Monarch, which was again chartered. This time our destination was France. The Parisians received the show with as much favor as had the Londoners.

Everything American became the fad during our stay. Fashionable young men bought American and Mexican saddles for their rides in the Bois. Cowboy hats appeared everywhere on the street. There was a great cry for stories of the Plains and all the books that could be found that dealt with the West were translated into the French language. Relics from the Plains and mountains, bows, moccasins, and Indian baskets, sold like hot cakes in the souvenir stores.

While in the city I accepted an invitation from Rosa Bonheur to visit her at her superb chateau. In return I extended her the freedom of the show, and she made many studies from life of the fine animals I had brought over with me. She also painted a portrait of me on my favorite horse—a picture which I immediately sent home to my wife.

Our sojourn in Rome was lively with incident. The Prince of Simonetta, who visited the show, declared that he had some wild horses in his stable which no cowboy could ride. The challenge was promptly taken up by some of the dare-devils in my party. That the horses might not run amuck and injure anyone, special booths were erected in the show arena, where the trial was to be made.

The greatest enthusiasm was manifested by the Romans in the performance, and it was clear to me that most of them looked eagerly forward to the mortal injury of some of the members of my company. The Latin delight in sports like those of the old Roman arena had by no means died out.

When the horses were loosed in the ring they sprang into the air, snorted, kicked up their heels, and plainly defied any of the cowboys to do so much as to lay a hand on them. But in less time than I can tell it the plainsmen had sent their lassos hurtling through the air, and the horses discovered that they had met their masters. The audience, always strong for the winners, forgot their disappointment in the absence of fatalities, and howled with delight as the cowboys, one after another, mounted the fractious horses and trotted them submissively about the arena. We closed this tour of Europe, which was successful to the end, with a second visit to England.

I have now come to the end of my story. It is a story of "The Great West that Was," a West that is gone forever.

All my interests are still with the West—the modern West. I have a number of homes there, the one I love best being in the wonderful Big Horn Valley, which I hope one day to see one of the garden spots of the world.

In concluding, I want to express the hope that the dealings of this Government of ours with the Indians will always be just and fair. They were the inheritors of the land that we live in. They were not capable of developing it, or of really appreciating its possibilities, but they owned it when the White Man came, and the White Man took it away from them. It was natural that they should resist. It was natural that they employed the only means of warfare known to them against those whom they regarded as usurpers. It was our business, as scouts, to be continually on the warpath against them when they committed depredations. But no scout ever hated the Indians in general.

There have been times when the Government policy toward the Indians has been unwise and unjust. That time, I trust, has passed forever. There are still many thousand Indians in the country, most of them engaged in agricultural pursuits. Indian blood has added a certain rugged strength to the characters of many of our Western citizens. At least two United States Senators are part Indian, and proud of it.

The Indian makes a good citizen, a good farmer, a good soldier. He is a real American, and all those of us who have come to share with him the great land that was his heritage should do their share toward seeing that he is dealt with justly and fairly, and that his rights and liberties are never infringed by the scheming politician or the short-sighted administration of law.

THE END