Kit Carson, when with Fremont on his first exploring expedition, while hunting for the command, at some point on the Arkansas, left a buffalo which he had just killed and partly cut up, to pursue a large bull that came rushing by him alone. He chased his game for nearly a quarter of a mile, not being able, however, to gain on it rapidly, owing to the blown condition of his horse. Coming up at length to the side of the fleeing beast, Carson fired, but at the same instant his horse stepped into a prairie-dog hole, fell down and threw Kit fully fifteen feet over his head. The bullet struck the buffalo low under the shoulder, which only served to enrage him so that the next moment the infuriated animal was pursuing Kit, who, fortunately not much hurt, was able to run toward the river. It was a race for life now, Carson using his nimble legs to the utmost of their capacity, accelerated very much by the thundering, bellowing bull bringing up the rear. For several minutes it was nip and tuck which should reach the stream first, but Kit got there by a scratch a little ahead. It was a big bend of the river, and the water was deep under the bank, but it was paradise compared with the hades plunging at his back; so Kit leaped into the water, trusting to Providence that the bull would not follow. The trust was well placed, for the bull did not continue the pursuit, but stood on the bank and shook his head vehemently at the struggling hunter who had preferred deep waves to the horns of a dilemma on shore.

Kit swam around for some time, carefully guarded by the bull, until his position was observed by one of his companions, who attacked the belligerent animal successfully with a forty-four slug, and then Kit crawled out and—skinned the enemy!

He once killed five buffaloes during a single race, and used but four balls, having dismounted and cut the bullet from the wound of the fourth, and thus continued the chase. He it was, too, who established his reputation as a famous hunter by shooting a buffalo cow during an impetuous race down a steep hill, discharging his rifle just as the animal was leaping on one of the low cedars peculiar to the region. The ball struck a vital spot, and the dead cow remained in the jagged branches. The Indians who were with him on that hunt looked upon the circumstance as something beyond their comprehension, and insisted that Kit should leave the carcass in the tree as "Big Medicine." Katzatoa (Smoked Shield), a celebrated chief of the Kiowas many years ago, who was over seven feet tall, never mounted a horse when hunting the buffalo; he always ran after them on foot and killed them with his lance.

Two Lance, another famous chief, could shoot an arrow entirely through a buffalo while hunting on horseback. He accomplished this remarkable feat in the presence of the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, who was under the care of Buffalo Bill, near Fort Hays, Kansas.

During one of Fremont's expeditions, two of his chasseurs, named Archambeaux and La Jeunesse,[43] had a curious adventure on a buffalo-hunt. One of them was mounted on a mule, the other on a horse; they came in sight of a large band of buffalo feeding upon the open prairie about a mile distant. The mule was not fleet enough, and the horse was too much fatigued with the day's journey, to justify a race, and they concluded to approach the herd on foot. Dismounting and securing the ends of their lariats in the ground, they made a slight detour, to take advantage of the wind, and crept stealthily in the direction of the game, approaching unperceived until within a few hundred yards. Some old bulls forming the outer picket guard slowly raised their heads and gazed long and dubiously at the strange objects, when, discovering that the intruders were not wolves, but two hunters, they gave a significant grunt, turned about as though on pivots, and in less than no time the whole herd—bulls, cows, and calves—were making the gravel fly over the prairie in fine style, leaving the hunters to their discomfiture. They had scarcely recovered from their surprise, when, to their great consternation, they beheld the whole company of the monsters, numbering several thousand, suddenly shape their course to where the riding animals were picketed. The charge of the stampeded buffalo was a magnificent one; for the buffalo, mistaking the horse and the mule for two of their own species, came down upon them like a tornado. A small cloud of dust arose for a moment over the spot where the hunter's animals had been left; the black mass moved on with accelerated speed, and in a few seconds the horizon shut them all from view. The horse and mule, with all their trappings, saddles, bridles, and holsters, were never seen or heard of afterward.

Buffalo Bill, in less than eighteen months, while employed as hunter of the construction company of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, in 1867-68, killed nearly five thousand buffalo, which were consumed by the twelve hundred men employed in track-laying. He tells in his autobiography of the following remarkable experience he had at one time with his favourite horse Brigham, on an impromptu buffalo hunt:—

One day we were pushed for horses to work on our scrapers, so I hitched up Brigham, to see how he would work. He was not much used to that kind of labour, and I was about giving up the idea of making a work horse of him, when one of the men called to me that there were some buffaloes coming over the hill. As there had been no buffaloes seen anywhere in the vicinity of the camp for several days, we had become rather short of meat. I immediately told one of our men to hitch his horses to a wagon and follow me, as I was going out after the herd, and we would bring back some fresh meat for supper. I had no saddle, as mine had been left at camp a mile distant, so taking the harness from Brigham I mounted him bareback, and started out after the game, being armed with my celebrated buffalo killer Lucretia Borgia—a newly improved breech-loading needle-gun, which I had obtained from the government.

While I was riding toward the buffaloes, I observed five horsemen coming out from the fort, who had evidently seen the buffaloes from the post, and were going out for a chase. They proved to be some newly arrived officers in that part of the country, and when they came up closer I could see by the shoulder-straps that the senior was a captain, while the others were lieutenants.

"Hello! my friend," sang out the captain; "I see you are after the same game we are."

"Yes, sir; I saw those buffaloes coming over the hill, and as we were about out of fresh meat I thought I would go and get some," said I. They scanned my cheap-looking outfit pretty closely, and as my horse was not very prepossessing in appearance, having on only a blind bridle, and otherwise looking like a work horse, they evidently considered me a green hand at hunting.

"Do you expect to catch those buffaloes on that Gothic steed?" laughingly asked the captain.

"I hope so, by pushing on the reins hard enough," was my reply.

"You'll never catch them in the world, my fine fellow," said the captain. "It requires a fast horse to overtake the animals on the prairie."

"Does it?" asked I, as if I didn't know it.

"Yes; but come along with us, as we are going to kill them more for pleasure than anything else. All we want are the tongues and a piece of tenderloin, and you may have all that is left," said the generous man.

"I am much obliged to you, captain, and will follow you," I replied.

There were eleven buffaloes in the herd, and they were not more than a mile ahead of us. The officers dashed on as if they had a sure thing on killing them all before I could come up with them; but I had noticed that the herd was making toward the creek for water, and as I knew buffalo nature, I was perfectly aware that it would be difficult to turn them from their direct course. Thereupon, I started toward the creek to head them off, while the officers came up in the rear and gave chase.

The buffaloes came rushing past me not a hundred yards distant, with the officers about three hundred yards in the rear. Now, thought I, is the time to "get my work in," as they say; and I pulled off the blind bridle from my horse, who knew as well as I did that we were out after buffaloes, as he was a trained hunter. The moment the bridle was off he started at the top of his speed, running in ahead of the officers, and with a few jumps he brought me alongside the rear buffalo. Raising old Lucretia Borgia to my shoulder, I fired, and killed the animal at the first shot. My horse then carried me alongside the next one, not ten feet away, and I dropped him at the next fire.

As soon as one of the buffalo would fall, Brigham would take me so close to the next that I could almost touch it with my gun. In this manner I killed the eleven buffaloes with twelve shots; and as the last animal dropped, my horse stopped. I jumped off to the ground, knowing that he would not leave me—it must be remembered that I had been riding him without bridle, reins, or saddle—and, turning around as the party of astonished officers rode up, I said to them:—

"Now, gentlemen, allow me to present to you all the tongues and tenderloins you wish from these buffaloes."

Captain Graham, for such I soon learned was his name, replied: "Well, I never saw the like before. Who under the sun are you, anyhow?"

"My name is Cody," said I. Captain Graham, who was considerable of a horseman, greatly admired Brigham, and said: "That horse of yours has running points."

"Yes, sir; he has not only got the points, he is a runner and knows how to use the points," said I. "So I noticed," said the captain.

They all finally dismounted, and we continued chatting for some little time upon the different subjects of horses, buffaloes, hunting, and Indians. They felt a little sore at not getting a single shot at the buffaloes; but the way I had killed them, they said, amply repaid them for their disappointment. They had read of such feats in books, but this was the first time they had ever seen anything of the kind with their own eyes. It was the first time, also, that they had ever witnessed or heard of a white man running buffaloes on horseback without a saddle or bridle.

I told them that Brigham knew nearly as much about the business as I did, and if I had twenty bridles they would have been of no use to me, as he understood everything, and all that he expected of me was to do the shooting. It is a fact that Brigham would stop if a buffalo did not fall at the first fire, so as to give me a second chance; but if I did not kill the animal then, he would go on, as if to say, "You are no good, and I will not fool away my time by giving you more than two shots." Brigham was the best horse I ever saw or owned for buffalo chasing.

At one time an old, experienced buffalo hunter was following at the heels of a small herd with that reckless rush to which in the excitement of the chase men abandon themselves, when a great bull just in front of him tumbled into a ravine. The rider's horse fell also, throwing the old hunter over his head sprawling, but with strange accuracy right between the bull's horns! The first to recover from the terrible shock and to regain his legs was the horse, which ran off with wonderful alacrity several miles before he stopped. Next the bull rose, and shook himself with an astonished air, as if he would like to know "how that was done?" The hunter was on the great brute's back, who, perhaps, took the affair as a good practical joke; but he was soon pitched to the ground, as the buffalo commenced to jump "stiff-legged," and the latter, giving the hunter one lingering look, which he long remembered, with remarkable good nature ran off to join his companions. Had the bull been wounded, the rider would have been killed, as the then enraged animal would have gored and trampled him to death.

An officer of the old regular army told me many years ago that in crossing the plains a herd of buffalo were fired at by a twelve-pound howitzer, the ball of which wounded and stunned an immense bull. Nevertheless, heedless of a hundred shots that had been fired at him, and of a bulldog belonging to one of the officers, which had fastened himself to his lips, the enraged beast charged upon the whole troop of dragoons, and tossed one of the horses like a feather. Bull, horse, and rider all fell in a heap. Before the dust cleared away, the trooper, who had hung for a moment to one of the bull's horns by his waistband, crawled out safe, while the horse got a ball from a rifle through his neck while in the air and two great rips in his flank from the bull.

In 1839 Kit Carson and Hobbs were trapping with a party on the Arkansas River, not far from Bent's Fort. Among the trappers was a green Irishman, named O'Neil, who was quite anxious to become proficient in hunting, and it was not long before he received his first lesson. Every man who went out of camp after game was expected to bring in "meat" of some kind. O'Neil said that he would agree to the terms, and was ready one evening to start out on his first hunt alone. He picked up his rifle and stalked after a small herd of buffalo in plain sight on the prairie not more than five or six hundred yards from camp.

All the trappers who were not engaged in setting their traps or cooking supper were watching O'Neil. Presently they heard the report of his rifle, and shortly after he came running into camp, bareheaded, without his gun, and with a buffalo bull close upon his heels; both going at full speed, and the Irishman shouting like a madman,—

"Here we come, by jabers. Stop us! For the love of God, stop us!"

Just as they came in among the tents, with the bull not more than six feet in the rear of O'Neil, who was frightened out of his wits and puffing like a locomotive, his foot caught in a tent-rope, and over he went into a puddle of water head foremost, and in his fall capsized several camp-kettles, some of which contained the trappers' supper. But the buffalo did not escape so easily; for Hobbs and Kit Carson jumped for their rifles, and dropped the animal before he had done any further damage.

The whole outfit laughed heartily at O'Neil when he got up out of the water, for a party of old trappers would show no mercy to any of their companions who met with a mishap of that character; but as he stood there with dripping clothes and face covered with mud, his mother-wit came to his relief and he declared he had accomplished the hunter's task: "For sure," said he, "haven't I fetched the mate into camp? and there was no bargain whether it should be dead or alive!"

Upon Kit's asking O'Neil where his gun was,—

"Sure," said he, "that's more than I can tell you."

Next morning Carson and Hobbs took up O'Neil's tracks and the buffalo's, and after hunting an hour or so found the Irishman's rifle, though he had little use for it afterward, as he preferred to cook and help around camp rather than expose his precious life fighting buffaloes.

A great herd of buffaloes on the plains in the early days, when one could approach near enough without disturbing it to quietly watch its organization and the apparent discipline which its leaders seemed to exact, was a very curious sight. Among the striking features of the spectacle was the apparently uniform manner in which the immense mass of shaggy animals moved; there was constancy of action indicating a degree of intelligence to be found only in the most intelligent of the brute creation. Frequently the single herd was broken up into many smaller ones, that travelled relatively close together, each led by an independent master. Perhaps a few rods only marked the dividing-line between them, but it was always unmistakably plain, and each moved synchronously in the direction in which all were going.

The leadership of a herd was attained only by hard struggles for the place; once reached, however, the victor was immediately recognized, and kept his authority until some new aspirant overcame him, or he became superannuated and was driven out of the herd to meet his inevitable fate, a prey to those ghouls of the desert, the gray wolves.

In the event of a stampede, every animal of the separate, yet consolidated, herds rushed off together, as if they had all gone mad at once; for the buffalo, like the Texas steer, mule, or domestic horse, stampedes on the slightest provocation; frequently without any assignable cause. The simplest affair, sometimes, will start the whole herd; a prairie-dog barking at the entrance to his burrow, a shadow of one of themselves or that of a passing cloud, is sufficient to make them run for miles as if a real and dangerous enemy were at their heels.

Like an army, a herd of buffaloes put out vedettes to give the alarm in case anything beyond the ordinary occurred. These sentinels were always to be seen in groups of four, five, or even six, at some distance from the main body. When they perceived something approaching that the herd should beware of or get away from, they started on a run directly for the centre of the great mass of their peacefully grazing congeners. Meanwhile, the young bulls were on duty as sentinels on the edge of the main herd watching the vedettes; the moment the latter made for the centre, the former raised their heads, and in the peculiar manner of their species gazed all around and sniffed the air as if they could smell both the direction and source of the impending danger. Should there be something which their instinct told them to guard against, the leader took his position in front, the cows and calves crowded in the centre, while the rest of the males gathered on the flanks and in the rear, indicating a gallantry that might be emulated at times by the genus homo.

Generally buffalo went to their drinking-places but once a day, and that late in the afternoon. Then they ambled along, following each other in single file, which accounts for the many trails on the plains, always ending at some stream or lake. They frequently travelled twenty or thirty miles for water, so the trails leading to it were often worn to the depth of a foot or more.

That curious depression so frequently seen on the great plains, called a buffalo-wallow, is caused in this wise: The huge animals paw and lick the salty, alkaline earth, and when once the sod is broken the loose dirt drifts away under the constant action of the wind. Then, year after year, through more pawing, licking, rolling, and wallowing by the animals, the wind wafts more of the soil away, and soon there is a considerable hole in the prairie.

Many an old trapper and hunter's life has been saved by following a buffalo-trail when he was suffering from thirst. The buffalo-wallows retain usually a great quantity of water, and they have often saved the lives of whole companies of cavalry, both men and horses.

There was, however, a stranger and more wonderful spectacle to be seen every recurring spring during the reign of the buffalo, soon after the grass had started. There were circles trodden bare on the plains, thousands, yes, millions of them, which the early travellers, who did not divine their cause, called fairy-rings. From the first of April until the middle of May was the wet season; you could depend upon its recurrence almost as certainly as on the sun and moon rising at their proper time. This was also the calving period of the buffalo, as they, unlike our domestic cattle, only rutted during a single month; consequently, the cows all calved during a certain time; this was the wet month, and as there were a great many gray wolves that roamed singly and in immense packs over the whole prairie region, the bulls, in their regular beats, kept guard over the cows while in the act of parturition, and drove the wolves away, walking in a ring around the females at a short distance, and thus forming the curious circles.

In every herd at each recurring season there were always ambitious young bulls that came to their majority, so to speak, and these were ever ready to test their claims for the leadership, so that it may be safely stated that a month rarely passed without a bloody battle between them for the supremacy; though, strangely enough, the struggle scarcely ever resulted in the death of either combatant.

Perhaps there is no animal in which maternal love is so wonderfully developed as the buffalo cow; she is as dangerous with a calf by her side as a she-grizzly with cubs, as all old mountaineers know.

The buffalo bull that has outlived his usefulness is one of the most pitiable objects in the whole range of natural history. Old age has probably been decided in the economy of buffalo life as the unpardonable sin. Abandoned to his fate, he may be discovered, in his dreary isolation, near some stream or lake, where it does not tax him too severely to find good grass; for he is now feeble, and exertion an impossibility. In this new stage of his existence he seems to have completely lost his courage. Frightened at his own shadow, or the rustling of a leaf, he is the very incarnation of nervousness and suspicion. Gregarious in his habits from birth, solitude, foreign to his whole nature, has changed him into a new creature; and his inherent terror of the most trivial things is intensified to such a degree that if a man were compelled to undergo such constant alarm, it would probably drive him insane in less than a week. Nobody ever saw one of these miserable and helplessly forlorn creatures dying a natural death, or ever heard of such an occurrence. The cowardly coyote and the gray wolf had already marked him for their own; and they rarely missed their calculations.

Riding suddenly to the top of a divide once with a party of friends in 1866, we saw standing below us in the valley an old buffalo bull, the very picture of despair. Surrounding him were seven gray wolves in the act of challenging him to mortal combat. The poor beast, undoubtedly realizing the utter hopelessness of his situation, had determined to die game. His great shaggy head, filled with burrs, was lowered to the ground as he confronted his would-be executioners; his tongue, black and parched, lolled out of his mouth, and he gave utterance at intervals to a suppressed roar.

The wolves were sitting on their haunches in a semi-circle immediately in front of the tortured beast, and every time that the fear-stricken buffalo would give vent to his hoarsely modulated groan, the wolves howled in concert in most mournful cadence.

After contemplating his antagonists for a few moments, the bull made a dash at the nearest wolf, tumbling him howling over the silent prairie; but while this diversion was going on in front, the remainder of the pack started for his hind legs, to hamstring him. Upon this the poor brute turned to the point of attack only to receive a repetition of it in the same vulnerable place by the wolves, who had as quickly turned also and fastened themselves on his heels again. His hind quarters now streamed with blood and he began to show signs of great physical weakness. He did not dare to lie down; that would have been instantly fatal. By this time he had killed three of the wolves or so maimed them that they were entirely out of the fight.

At this juncture the suffering animal was mercifully shot, and the wolves allowed to batten on his thin and tough carcass.

Often there are serious results growing out of a stampede, either by mules or a herd of buffalo. A portion of the Fifth United States Infantry had a narrow escape from a buffalo stampede on the Old Trail, in the early summer of 1866. General George A. Sykes, who commanded the Division of Regulars in the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, was ordered to join his regiment, stationed in New Mexico, and was conducting a body of recruits, with their complement of officers, to fill up the decimated ranks of the army stationed at the various military posts, in far-off Greaser Land.

The command numbered nearly eight hundred, including the subaltern officers. These recruits, or the majority of them at least, were recruits in name only; they had seen service in many a hard campaign of the Rebellion. Some, of course, were beardless youths just out of their teens, full of that martial ardour which induced so many young men of the nation to follow the drum on the remote plains and in the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, where the wily savages still held almost undisputed sway, and were a constant menace to the pioneer settlers.

One morning, when the command had just settled itself in careless repose on the short grass of the apparently interminable prairie at the first halt of the day's march, a short distance beyond Fort Larned, a strange noise, like the low muttering of thunder below the horizon, greeted the ears of the little army.

All were startled by the ominous sound, unlike anything they had heard before on their dreary tour. The general ordered his scouts out to learn the cause; could it be Indians? Every eye was strained for something out of the ordinary. Even the horses of the officers and the mules of the supply-train were infected by something that seemed impending; they grew restless, stamped the earth, and vainly essayed to stampede, but were prevented by their hobbles and picket-pins.

Presently one of the scouts returned from over the divide, and reported to the general that an immense herd of buffalo was tearing down toward the Trail, and from the great clouds of dust they raised, which obscured the horizon, there must have been ten thousand of them. The roar wafted to the command, and which seemed so mysterious, was made by their hoofs as they rattled over the dry prairie.

The sound increased in volume rapidly, and soon a black, surging mass was discovered bearing right down on the Trail. Behind it could be seen a cavalcade of about five hundred Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas, who had maddened the shaggy brutes, hoping to capture the train without an attack by forcing the frightened animals to overrun the command.

Luckily, something caused the herd to open before it reached the foot of the divide, and it passed in two masses, leaving the command between, not two hundred feet from either division of the infuriated beasts.

The rage of the savages was evident when they saw that their attempt to annihilate the troops had failed, and they rode off sullenly into the sand hills, as the number of soldiers was too great for them to think of charging.

Cody tells of a buffalo stampede which he witnessed in his youth on the plains, when he was a wagon-master. The caravan was on its way with government stores for the military posts in the mountains, and the wagons were hauled by oxen.

He says: The country was alive with buffalo, and besides killing quite a number we had a rare day for sport. One morning we pulled out of camp, and the train was strung out to a considerable length along the Trail, which ran near the foot of the sand hills, two miles from the river. Between the road and the river we saw a large herd of buffalo grazing quietly, they having been down to the stream to drink. Just at this time we observed a party of returning Californians coming from the west. They, too, noticed the buffalo herd, and in another moment they were dashing down upon them, urging their horses to their greatest speed. The buffalo herd stampeded at once, and broke down the sides of the hills; so hotly were they pursued by the hunters that about five hundred of them rushed pell-mell through our caravan, frightening both men and oxen. Some of the wagons were turned clear around and many of the terrified oxen attempted to run to the hills with the heavy wagons attached to them. Others were turned around so short that they broke the tongues off. Nearly all the teams got entangled in their gearing and became wild and unruly, so that the perplexed drivers were unable to manage them.

The buffalo, the cattle, and the men were soon running in every direction, and the excitement upset everybody and everything. Many of the oxen broke their yokes and stampeded. One big buffalo bull became entangled in one of the heavy wagon-chains, and it is a fact that in his desperate efforts to free himself, he not only snapped the strong chain in two, but broke the ox-yoke to which it was attached, and the last seen of him he was running toward the hills with it hanging from his horns.

Stampedes were a great source of profit to the Indians of the plains. The Comanches were particularly expert and daring in this kind of robbery. They even trained their horses to run from one point to another in expectation of the coming of the trains. When a camp was made that was nearly in range, they turned their trained animals loose, which at once flew across the prairie, passing through the herd and penetrating the very corrals of their victims. All of the picketed horses and mules would endeavour to follow these decoys, and were invariably led right into the haunts of the Indians, who easily secured them. Young horses and mules were easily frightened; and, in the confusion which generally ensued, great injury was frequently done to the runaways themselves.

At times when the herd was very large, the horses scattered over the prairie and were irrevocably lost; and such as did not become wild fell a prey to the wolves. That fate was very frequently the lot of stampeded horses bred in the States, they not having been trained by a prairie life to take care of themselves. Instead of stopping and bravely fighting off the blood-thirsty beasts, they would run. Then the whole pack were sure to leave the bolder animals and make for the runaways, which they seldom failed to overtake and despatch.

On the Old Trail some years ago one of these stampedes occurred of a band of government horses, in which were several valuable animals. It was attended, however, with very little loss, through the courage and great exertion of the men who had them in charge; many were recovered, but none without having sustained injuries.

Hon. R. M. Wright, of Dodge City, Kansas, one of the pioneers in the days of the Santa Fe trade, and in the settlement of the State, has had many exciting experiences both with the savages of the great plains, and the buffalo. In relation to the habits of the latter, no man is better qualified to speak.

He was once owner of Fort Aubrey, a celebrated point on the Trail, but was compelled to abandon it on account of constant persecution by the Indians, or rather he was ordered to do so by the military authorities. While occupying the once famous landmark, in connection with others, had a contract to furnish hay to the government at Fort Lyon, seventy-five miles further west. His journal, which he kindly placed at my disposal, says:

While we were preparing to commence the work, a vast herd of buffalo stampeded through our range one night, and took off with them about half of our work cattle. The next day a stage-driver and conductor on the Overland Route told us they had seen a number of our oxen twenty-five miles east of Aubrey, and this information gave me an idea in which direction to hunt for the missing beasts. I immediately started after them, while my partner took those that remained and a few wagons and left with them for Fort Lyon.

Let me explain here that while the Indians were supposed to be peaceable, small war-parties of young men, who could not be controlled by their chiefs, were continually committing depredations, and the main body of savages themselves were very uneasy, and might be expected to break out any day. In consequence of this unsettled state of affairs, there had been a brisk movement among the United States troops stationed at the various military posts, a large number of whom were believed to be on the road from Denver to Fort Lyon.

I filled my saddle-bags with jerked buffalo, hardtack and ground coffee, and took with me a belt of cartridges, my rifle and six-shooter, a field-glass and my blankets, prepared for any emergency. The first day out, I found a few of the lost cattle, and placed them on the river-bottom, which I continued to do as fast as I recovered them, for a distance of about eighty-five miles down the Arkansas. There I met a wagon-train, the drivers of which told me that I would find several more of my oxen with a train that had arrived at the Cimarron crossing the day before. I came up with this train in eight or ten hours' travel south of the river, got my cattle, and started next morning for home.

I picked up those I had left on the Arkansas as I went along, and after having made a very hard day's travel, about sundown I concluded I would go into camp. I had only fairly halted when the oxen began to drop down, so completely tired out were they, as I believed. Just as it was growing dark, I happened to look toward the west, and I saw several fires on a big island, near what was called "The Lone Tree," about a mile from where I had determined to remain for the night.

Thinking the fires were those of the soldiers that I had heard were on the road from Denver, and anticipating and longing for a cup of good coffee, as I had had none for five days, knowing, too, that the troops would be full of news, I felt good and determined to go over to their camp.

The Arkansas was low, but the banks steep, with high, rank grass growing to the very water's edge. I found a buffalo-trail cut through the deep bank, narrow and precipitous, and down this I went, arriving in a short time within a little distance of my supposed soldiers' camp. When I had reached the middle of another deep cut in the bank, I looked across to the island, and, great Caesar! saw a hundred little fires, around which an aggregation of a thousand Indians were huddled!

I slid backwards off my horse, and by dint of great exertion, worked him up the river-bank as quietly and quickly as possible, then led him gently away out on the prairie. My first impulse was not to go back to the cattle; but as we needed them very badly, I concluded to return, put them all on their feet, and light out mighty lively, without making any noise. I started them, and, oh dear! I was afraid to tread upon a weed, lest it would snap and bring the Indians down on my trail. Until I had put several miles between them and me, I could not rest easy for a moment. Tired as I was, tired as were both my horse and the cattle, I drove them twenty-five miles before I halted. Then daylight was upon me. I was at what is known as Chouteau's Island, a once famous place in the days of the Old Santa Fe Trail.

Of course, I had to let the oxen and my horse rest and fill themselves until the afternoon, and I lay down, and fell asleep, but did not sleep long, as I thought it dangerous to remain too near the cattle. I rose and walked up a big, dry sand creek that opened into the river, and after I had ascended it for a couple of miles, found the banks very steep; in fact, they rose to a height of eighteen or twenty feet, and were sharply cut up by narrow trails made by the buffalo.

The whole face of the earth was covered by buffalo, and they were slowly grazing toward the Arkansas. All at once they became frightened at something, and stampeded pell-mell toward the very spot on which I stood. I quickly ran into one of the precipitous little paths and up on the prairie, to see what had scared them. They were making the ground fairly tremble as their mighty multitude came rushing on at full speed, the sound of their hoofs resembling thunder, but in a continuous peal. It appeared to me that they must sweep everything in their path, and for my own preservation I rushed under the creek-bank, but on they came like a tornado, with one old bull in the lead. He held up a second to descend the narrow trail, and when he had got about halfway down I let him have it; I was only a few steps from him and over he tumbled. I don't know why I killed him; out of pure wantonness, I expect, or perhaps I thought it would frighten the others back. Not so, however; they only quickened their pace, and came dashing down in great numbers. Dozens of them stumbled and fell over the dead bull; others fell over them. The top of the bank was fairly swarming with them; they leaped, pitched, and rolled down. I crouched as close to the bank as possible, but many of them just grazed my head, knocking the sand and gravel in great streams down my neck; indeed I was half buried before the herd had passed over. That old bull was the last buffalo I ever shot wantonly, excepting once, from an ambulance while riding on the Old Trail, to please a distinguished Englishman, who had never seen one shot; then I did it only after his most earnest persuasion.

One day a stage-driver named Frank Harris and myself started out after buffalo; they were scarce, for a wonder, and we were very hungry for fresh meat. The day was fine and we rode a long way, expecting sooner or later a bunch would jump up, but in the afternoon, having seen none, we gave it up and started for the ranch. Of course, we didn't care to save our ammunition, so shot it away at everything in sight, skunks, rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, and gophers, until we had only a few loads left. Suddenly an old bull jumped up that had been lying down in one of those sugar-loaf-shaped sand hills, whose tops are hollowed out by the action of the wind. Harris emptied his revolver into him, and so did I; but the old fellow sullenly stood still there on top of the sand hill, bleeding profusely at the nose, and yet absolutely refusing to die, although he would repeatedly stagger and nearly tumble over.

It was getting late and we couldn't wait on him, so Harris said: "I will dismount, creep up behind him, and cut his hamstrings with my butcher-knife." The bull having now lain down, Harris commenced operations, but his movement seemed to infuse new life into the old fellow; he jumped to his feet, his head lowered in the attitude of fight, and away he went around the outside of the top of the sand hill! It was a perfect circus with one ring; Harris, who was a tall, lanky fellow, took hold of the enraged animal's tail as he rose to his feet, and in a moment his legs were flying higher than his head, but he did not dare let go of his hold on the bull's tail, and around and around they went; it was his only show for life. I could not assist him a particle, but had to sit and hold his horse, and be judge of the fight. I really thought that old bull would never weaken. Finally, however, the "ring" performance began to show symptoms of fatigue; slower and slower the actions of the bull grew, and at last Harris succeeded in cutting his hamstrings and the poor beast went down. Harris said afterward, when the danger was all over, that the only thing he feared was that perhaps the bull's tail would pull out, and if it did, he was well aware that he was a goner. We brought his tongue, hump, and a hindquarter to the ranch with us, and had a glorious feast and a big laugh that night with the boys over the ridiculous adventure.

General Richard Irving Dodge, United States army, in his work on the big game of America, says:

It is almost impossible for a civilized being to realize the value to the plains Indian of the buffalo. It furnished him with home, food, clothing, bedding, horse equipment— almost everything.

From 1869 to 1873 I was stationed at various posts along the Arkansas River. Early in spring, as soon as the dry and apparently desert prairie had begun to change its coat of dingy brown to one of palest green, the horizon would begin to be dotted with buffalo, single or in groups of two or three, forerunners of the coming herd. Thick and thicker, and in large groups they come, until by the time the grass is well up, the whole vast landscape appears a mass of buffalo, some individuals feeding, others lying down, but the herd slowly moving to the northward; of their number, it was impossible to form a conjecture.

Determined as they are to pursue their journey northward, yet they are exceedingly cautious and timid about it, and on any alarm rush to the southward with all speed, until that alarm is dissipated. Especially is this the case when any unusual object appears in their rear, and so utterly regardless of consequences are they, that an old plainsman will not risk a wagon-train in such a herd, where rising ground will permit those in front to get a good view of their rear.

In May, 1871, I drove in a buggy from old Fort Zarah to Fort Larned, on the Arkansas River. The distance is thirty-four miles. At least twenty-five miles of that distance was through an immense herd. The whole country was one mass of buffalo, apparently, and it was only when actually among them, that the seemingly solid body was seen to be an agglomeration of countless herds of from fifty to two hundred animals, separated from the surrounding herds by a greater or less space, but still separated.

The road ran along the broad valley of the Arkansas. Some miles from Zarah a low line of hills rises from the plain on the right, gradually increasing in height and approaching road and river, until they culminate in Pawnee Rock.

So long as I was in the broad, level valley, the herds sullenly got out of my way, and, turning, stared stupidly at me, some within thirty or forty yards. When, however, I had reached a point where the hills were no more than a mile from the road, the buffalo on the crests, seeing an unusual object in their rear, turned, stared an instant, then started at full speed toward me, stampeding and bringing with them the numberless herds through which they passed, and pouring down on me, no longer separated but compacted into one immense mass of plunging animals, mad with fright, irresistible as an avalanche.

The situation was by no means pleasant. There was but one hope of escape. My horse was, fortunately, a quiet old beast, that had rushed with me into many a herd, and been in at the death of many a buffalo. Reining him up, I waited until the front of the mass was within fifty yards, then, with a few well-directed shots, dropped some of the leaders, split the herd and sent it off in two streams to my right and left. When all had passed me, they stopped, apparently satisfied, though thousands were yet within reach of my rifle. After my servant had cut out the tongues of the fallen, I proceeded on my journey, only to have a similar experience within a mile or two, and this occurred so often that I reached Fort Larned with twenty-six tongues, representing the greatest number of buffalo that I can blame myself with having murdered in one day.

Some years, as in 1871, the buffalo appeared to move northward in one immense column, oftentimes from twenty to fifty miles in width, and of unknown depth from front to rear. Other years the northward journey was made in several parallel columns moving at the same rate and with their numerous flankers covering a width of a hundred or more miles.

When the food in one locality fails, they go to another, and toward fall, when the grass of the high prairies becomes parched by the heat and drought, they gradually work their way back to the south, concentrating on the rich pastures of Texas and the Indian Territory, whence, the same instinct acting on all, they are ready to start together again on their northward march as soon as spring starts the grass.

Old plainsmen and the Indians aver that the buffalo never return south; that each year's herd was composed of animals which had never made the journey before, and would never make it again. All admit the northern migration, that being too pronounced for any one to dispute, but refuse to admit the southern migration. Thousands of young calves were caught and killed every spring that were produced during this migration, and accompanied the herd northward; but because the buffalo did not return south in one vast body as they went north, it was stoutly maintained that they did not go south at all. The plainsman could give no reasonable hypothesis of his "No-return theory" on which to base the origin of the vast herds which yearly made their march northward. The Indian was, however, equal to the occasion. Every plains Indian firmly believed that the buffalo were produced in countless numbers in a country under ground; that every spring the surplus swarmed, like bees from a hive, out of the immense cave-like opening in the region of the great Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain of Texas. In 1879 Stone Calf, a celebrated chief, assured me that he knew exactly where the caves were, though he had never seen them; that the good God had provided this means for the constant supply of food for the Indian, and however recklessly the white men might slaughter, they could never exterminate them. When last I saw him, the old man was beginning to waver in this belief, and feared that the "Bad God" had shut the entrances, and that his tribe must starve.

The old trappers and plainsmen themselves, even as early as the beginning of the Santa Fe trade, noticed the gradual disappearance of the buffalo, while they still existed in countless numbers. One veteran French Canadian, an employee of the American Fur Company, way back in the early '30's, used to mourn thus: "Mais, sacre! les Amarican, dey go to de Missouri frontier, de buffalo he ron to de montaigne; de trappaire wid his fusil, he follow to de Bayou Salade, he ron again. Dans les Montaignes Espagnol, bang! bang! toute la journee, toute la journee, go de sacre voleurs. De bison he leave, parceque les fusils scare im vara moche, ici la de sem-sacre!"



CHAPTER XIII. INDIAN CUSTOMS AND LEGENDS.



Thirty-five miles before arriving at Bent's Fort, at which point the Old Trail crossed the Arkansas, the valley widens and the prairie falls toward the river in gentle undulations. There for many years the three friendly tribes of plains Indians—Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas—established their winter villages, in order to avail themselves of the supply of wood, to trade with the whites, and to feed their herds of ponies on the small limbs and bark of the cottonwood trees growing along the margin of the stream for four or five miles. It was called Big Timbers, and was one of the most eligible places to camp on the whole route after leaving Council Grove. The grass, particularly on the south side of the river, was excellent; there was an endless supply of fuel, and cool water without stint.

In the severe winters that sometimes were fruitful of blinding blizzards, sweeping from the north in an intensity of fury that was almost inconceivable, the buffalo too congregated there for shelter, and to browse on the twigs of the great trees.

The once famous grove, though denuded of much of its timber, may still be seen from the car windows as the trains hurry mountainward.

Garrard, in his Taos Trail, presents an interesting and amusing account of a visit to the Cheyenne village with old John Smith, in 1847, when the Santa Fe trade was at its height, and that with the various tribes of savages in its golden days.

Toward the middle of the day, the village was in a great bustle. Every squaw, child, and man had their faces blackened—a manifestation of joy.[44]

Pell-mell they went—men, squaws, and dogs—into the icy river. Some hastily jerked off their leggings, and held moccasins and dresses high out of the water. Others, too impatient, dashed the stream from beneath their impetuous feet, scarce taking time to draw more closely the always worn robe. Wondering what caused all this commotion, and looking over the river, whither the yelling, half-frantic savages were so speedily hurrying, we saw a band of Indians advancing toward us. As the foremost braves reined their champing barbs on the river-bank, mingled whoops of triumph and delight and the repeated discharge of guns filled the air. In the hands of three were slender willow wands, from the smaller points of which dangled as many scalps— the single tuft of hair on each pronouncing them Pawnees.[45]

These were raised aloft, amid unrestrained bursts of joy from the thrice-happy, blood-thirsty throng. Children ran to meet their fathers, sisters their brothers, girls their lovers, returning from the scene of victorious strife; decrepit matrons welcomed manly sons; and aged chiefs their boys and braves. It was a scene of affection, and a proud day in the Cheyenne annals of prowess. That small but gallant band were relieved of their shields and lances by tender-hearted squaws, and accompanied to their respective homes, to repose by the lodge-fire, consume choice meat, and to be the heroes of the family circle.

The drum at night sent forth its monotony of hollow sound, and my Mexican Pedro and I, directed by the booming, entered a lodge, vacated for the purpose, full of young men and squaws, following one another in a continuous circle, keeping the left knee stiff and bending the right with a half-forward, half-backward step, as if they wanted to go on and could not, accompanying it, every time the right foot was raised, with an energetic, broken song, which, dying away, was again and again sounded—"hay-a, hay-a, hay-a," they went, laying the emphasis on the first syllable. A drum, similar to, though larger than a tambourine, covered with parfleche,[46] was beaten upon with a stick, producing with the voices a sound not altogether disagreeable.

Throughout the entire night and succeeding day the voices of the singers and heavy notes of the drum reached us, and at night again the same dull sound lulled me to sleep. Before daylight our lodge was filled with careless dancers, and the drum and voices, so unpleasing to our wearied ears, were giving us the full benefit of their compass. Smith, whose policy it was not to be offended, bore the infliction as best he could, and I looked on much amused. The lodge was so full that they stood without dancing, in a circle round the fire, and with a swaying motion of the body kept time to their music.

During the day the young men, except the dancers, piled up dry logs in a level open space near, for a grand demonstration. At night, when it was fired, I folded my blanket over my shoulders, comme les sauvages, and went out. The faces of many girls were brilliant with vermilion; others were blacked, their robes, leggings, and skin dresses glittering with beads and quill-work. Rings and bracelets of shining brass encircled their taper arms and fingers, and shells dangled from their ears. Indeed, all the finery collectable was piled on in barbarous profusion, though a few, in good taste through poverty, wore a single band and but few rings, with jetty hair parted in the middle, from the forehead to the neck, terminating in two handsome braids.

The young men who can afford the expense trade for dollars and silver coin of less denomination—coin as a currency is not known among them—which they flatten thin, and fasten to a braid of buffalo hair, attached to the crown lock, which hangs behind, outside of the robe, and adds much to the handsome appearance of the wearer.

The girls, numbering two hundred, fell into line together, and the men, of whom there were two hundred and fifty, joining, a circle was formed, which travelled around with the same shuffling step already described. The drummers and other musicians—twenty or twenty-five of them—marched in a contrary direction to and from and around the fire, inside the large ring; for at the distance kept by the outsiders the area was one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The Apollonian emulators chanted the great deeds performed by the Cheyenne warriors. As they ended, the dying strain was caught up by the hundreds of the outside circle, who, in fast-swelling, loud tones, poured out the burden of their song. At this juncture the march was quickened, the scalps of the slain were borne aloft and shaken with wild delight, and shrill war-notes, rising above the furious din, accelerated the pulsation and strung high the nerves. Time-worn shields, careering in mad holders' hands, clashed; and keen lances, once reeking in Pawnee blood, clanged. Braves seized one another with an iron grip, in the heat of excitement, or chimed more tenderly in the chant, enveloped in the same robe with some maiden as they approvingly stepped through one of their own original polkas.

Thirty of the chiefs and principal men were ranged by the pile of blazing logs. By their invitation, I sat down with them and smoked death and its concomitant train of evils to those audacious tribes who doubt the courage or supremacy of the brave, the great and powerful, Cheyenne nation.

It is Indian etiquette that the first lodge a stranger enters on visiting a village is his home as long as he remains the guest of the tribe. It is all the same whether he be invited or not. Upon going in, it is customary to place all your traps in the back part, which is the most honoured spot. The proprietor always occupies that part of his home, but invariably gives it up to a guest. With the Cheyennes, the white man, when the tribe was at peace with him, was ever welcome, as in the early days of the border he generally had a supply of coffee, of which the savage is particularly fond—Mok-ta-bo-mah-pe, as they call it. Their salutation to the stranger coming into the presence of the owner of a lodge is "Hook-ah-hay! Num-whit,"—"How do you do? Stay with us." Water is then handed by a squaw, as it is supposed a traveller is thirsty after riding; then meat, for he must be hungry, too. A pipe is offered, and conversation follows.

The lodge of the Cheyennes is formed of seventeen poles, about three inches thick at the end which rests on the ground, slender in shape, tapering symmetrically, and eighteen feet or more in length. They are tied together at the small ends with buffalo-hide, then raised until the frame resembles a cone, over which buffalo-skins are placed, very skilfully fitted and made soft by having been dubbed by the women—that is, scraped to the requisite thinness, and made supple by rubbing with the brains of the animal that wore it. They are sewed together with sinews of the buffalo, generally of the long and powerful muscle that holds up the ponderous head of the shaggy beast, a narrow strip running towards the bump. In summer the lower edges of the skin are rolled up, and the wind blowing through, it is a cool, shady retreat. In winter everything is closed, and I know of no more comfortable place than a well-made Indian lodge. The army tent known as the Sibley is modelled after it, and is the best winter shelter for troops in the field that can be made. Many times while the military post where I had been ordered was in process of building, I have chosen the Sibley tent in preference to any other domicile.

When a village is to be moved, it is an interesting sight. The young and unfledged boys drive up the herd of ponies, and then the squaws catch them. The women, too, take down the lodges, and, tying the poles in two bundles, fasten them on each side of an animal, the long ends dragging on the ground. Just behind the pony or mule, as the case may be, a basket is placed and held there by buffalo-hide thongs, and into these novel carriages the little children are put, besides such traps as are not easily packed on the animal's back.

The women do all the work both in camp and when moving. They are doomed to a hopeless bondage of slavery, the fate of their sex in every savage race; but they accept their condition stoically, and there is as much affection among them for their husbands and children as I have ever witnessed among the white race. Here are two instances of their devotion, both of which came under my personal observation, and I could give hundreds of others.

Late in the fall of 1858, I was one of a party on the trail of a band of Indians who had been committing some horrible murders in a mining-camp in the northern portion of Washington Territory. On the fourth day out, just about dusk, we struck their moccasin tracks, which we followed all night, and surprised their camp in the gray light of the early morning. In less than ten minutes the fight was over, and besides the killed we captured six prisoners. Then as the rising sun commenced to gild the peaks of the lofty range on the west, having granted our captives half an hour to take leave of their families, the ankles of each were bound; they were made to kneel on the prairie, a squad of soldiers, with loaded rifles, were drawn up eight paces in front of them, and at the instant the signal—a white handkerchief—was dropped the savages tumbled over on the sod a heap of corpses. The parting between the condemned men and their young wives and children, I shall never forget. It was the most perfect exhibition of marital and filial love that I have ever witnessed. Such harsh measures may seem cruel and heartless in the light of to-day, but there was none other than martial law then in the wilderness of the Northern Pacific coast, and the execution was a stern necessity.

The other instance was ten years later. During the Indian campaign in the winter of 1868-69 I was riding with a party of officers and enlisted men, south of the Arkansas, about fourty miles from Fort Dodge. We were watching some cavalrymen unearth three or four dead warriors who had been killed by two scouts in a fierce unequal fight a few weeks before, and as we rode into a small ravine among the sand hills, we suddenly came upon a rudely constructed Cheyenne lodge. Entering, we discovered on a rough platform, fashioned of green poles, a dead warrior in full war-dress; his shield of buffalo-hide, pipe ornamented with eagles' feathers, and medicine bag, were lying on the ground beside him. At his head, on her knees, with hands clasped in the attitude of prayer, was a squaw frozen to death. Which had first succumbed, the wounded chief, or the devoted wife in the awful cold of that winter prairie, will never be known, but it proved her love for the man who had perhaps beaten her a hundred times. Such tender and sympathetic affection is characteristic of the sex everywhere, no less with the poor savage than in the dominant white race.

To return to our description of the average Indian village: Each lodge at the grand encampment of Big Timbers in the era of traffic with the nomads of the great plains, owned its separate herd of ponies and mules. In the exodus to some other favoured spot, two dozen or more of these individual herds travelled close to each other but never mixed, each drove devotedly following its bell-mare, as in a pack-train. This useful animal is generally the most worthless and wicked beast in the entire outfit.

The animals with the lodge-pole carriages go as they please, no special care being taken to guide them, but they too instinctively keep within sound of the leader. I will again quote Garrard for an accurate description of the moving camp when he was with the Cheyennes in 1847:—

The young squaws take much care of their dress and horse equipments; they dash furiously past on wild steeds, astride of the high-pommelled saddles. A fancifully coloured cover, worked with beads or porcupine quills, making a flashy, striking appearance, extended from withers to rump of the horse, while the riders evinced an admirable daring, worthy of Amazons. Their dresses were made of buckskin, high at the neck, with short sleeves, or rather none at all, fitting loosely, and reaching obliquely to the knee, giving a Diana look to the costume; the edges scalloped, worked with beads, and fringed. From the knee downward the limb was encased in a tightly fitting legging, terminating in a neat moccasin—both handsomely wrought with beads. On the arms were bracelets of brass, which glittered and reflected in the radiant morning sun, adding much to their attractions. In their pierced ears, shells from the Pacific shore were pendent; and to complete the picture of savage taste and profusion, their fine complexions were eclipsed by a coat of flaming vermilion.

Many of the largest dogs were packed with a small quantity of meat, or something not easily injured. They looked queerly, trotting industriously under their burdens; and, judging from a small stock of canine physiological information, not a little of the wolf was in their composition.

We crossed the river on our way to the new camp. The alarm manifested by the children in the lodge-pole drays, as they dipped in the water, was amusing. The little fellows, holding their breath, not daring to cry, looked imploringly at their inexorable mothers, and were encouraged by words of approbation from their stern fathers.

After a ride of two hours we stopped, and the chiefs, fastening their horses, collected in circles to smoke their pipe and talk, letting their squaws unpack the animals, pitch the lodges, build the fires, and arrange the robes. When all was ready, these lords of creation dispersed to their several homes, to wait until their patient and enduring spouses prepared some food. I was provoked, nay, angry, to see the lazy, overgrown men do nothing to help their wives; and when the young women pulled off their bracelets and finery to chop wood, the cup of my wrath was full to overflowing, and, in a fit of honest indignation, I pronounced them ungallant and savage in the true sense of the word.

The treatment of Indian children, particularly boys, is something startling to the gentle sentiments of refined white mothers. The girls receive hardly any attention from their fathers. Implicit obedience is the watchword of the lodge with them, and they are constantly taught to appreciate their inferiority of sex. The daughter is a mere slave; unnoticed and neglected—a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water. With a son, it is entirely different; the father from his birth dotes on him and manifests his affection in the most demonstrative manner.

Garrard tells of two instances that came under his observation while staying at the chief's lodge, and at John Smith's, in the Cheyenne village, of the discipline to which the boys are subjected.

In Vi-po-nah's lodge was his grandson, a boy six or seven months old. Every morning his mother washed him in cold water, and set him out in the air to make him hardy; he would come in, perfectly nude, from his airing, about half-frozen. How he would laugh and brighten up, as he felt the warmth of the fire!

Smith's son Jack took a crying fit one cold night, much to the annoyance of four or five chiefs, who had come to our lodge to talk and smoke. In vain did the mother shake and scold him with the severest Cheyenne words, until Smith, provoked beyond endurance, took the squalling youngster in his hands; he shu-ed and shouted and swore, but Jack had gone too far to be easily pacified. He then sent for a bucket of water from the river and poured cupful after cupful on Jack, who stamped and screamed and bit in his tiny rage. Notwithstanding, the icy stream slowly descended until the bucket was emptied, another was sent for, and again and again the cup was replenished and emptied on the blubbering youth. At last, exhausted with exertion and completely cooled down, he received the remaining water in silence, and, with a few words of admonition, was delivered over to his mother, in whose arms he stifled his sobs, until his heartbreaking grief and cares were drowned in sleep. What a devilish mixture Indian and American blood is!

The Indians never chastise a boy, as they think his spirit would be broken and cowed down; instead of a warrior he would be a squaw—a harsh epithet indicative of cowardice—and they resort to any method but infliction of blows to subdue a refractory scion.

Before most of the lodges is a tripod of three sticks, about seven feet in length and an inch in diameter, fastened at the top, and the lower ends brought out, so that it stands alone. On this is hung the shield and a small square bag of parfleche, containing pipes, with an accompanying pendent roll of stems, carefully wrapped in blue or red cloth, and decorated with beads and porcupine quills. This collection is held in great veneration, for the pipe is their only religion. Through its agency they invoke the Great Spirit; through it they render homage to the winds, to the earth, and to the sky.

Every one has his peculiar notion on this subject; and, in passing the pipe, one must have it presented stem downward, another the reverse; some with the bowl resting on the ground; and as this is a matter of great solemnity, their several fancies are respected. Sometimes I required them to hand it to me, when smoking, in imitation of their custom; on this, a faint smile, half mingled with respect and pity for my folly in tampering with their sacred ceremony, would appear on their faces, and with a slow negative shake of the head, they would ejaculate, "I-sto-met-mah-son-ne-wah-hein"—"Pshaw! that's foolish; don't do so."

Religion the Cheyennes have none, if, indeed, we except the respect paid to the pipe; nor do we see any sign or vestige of spiritual worship; except one remarkable thing—in offering the pipe, before every fresh filling, to the sky, the earth, and the winds, the motion made in so doing describes the form of a cross; and, in blowing the first four whiffs, the smoke is invariably sent in the same four directions. It is undoubtedly void of meaning in reference to Christian worship, yet it is a superstition, founded on ancient tradition. This tribe once lived near the head waters of the Mississippi; and, as the early Jesuit missionaries were energetic zealots, in the diffusion of their religious sentiments, probably to make their faith more acceptable to the Indians, the Roman Catholic rites were blended with the homage shown to the pipe, which custom of offering, in the form of a cross, is still retained by them; but as every custom is handed down by tradition merely, the true source has been forgotten.

In every tribe in whose country I have been stationed, which comprises nearly all the continent excepting the extreme southwestern portion, his pipe is the Indian's constant companion through life. It is his messenger of peace; he pledges his friends through its stem and its bowl, and when he is dead, it has a place in his solitary grave, with his war-club and arrows—companions on his journey to his long-fancied beautiful hunting-grounds. The pipe of peace is a sacred thing; so held by all Indian nations, and kept in possession of chiefs, to be smoked only at times of peacemaking. When the terms of treaty have been agreed upon, this sacred emblem, the stem of which is ornamented with eagle's quills, is brought forward, and the solemn pledge to keep the peace is passed through the sacred stem by each chief and warrior drawing the smoke once through it. After the ceremony is over, the warriors of the two tribes unite in the dance, with the pipe of peace held in the left hand of the chief and in his other a rattle.

Thousands of years ago, the primitive savage of the American continent carried masses of pipe-stone from the sacred quarry in Minnesota across the vast wilderness of plains, to trade with the people of the far Southwest, over the same route that long afterward became the Santa Fe Trail; therefore, it will be consistent with the character of this work to relate the history of the quarry from which all the tribes procured their material for fashioning their pipes, and the curious legends connected with it. I have met with the red sandstone pipes on the remotest portions of the Pacific coast, and east, west, north and south, in every tribe that it has been my fortune to know.

The word "Dakotah" means allied or confederated, and is the family name now comprising some thirty bands, numbering about thirty thousand Indians. They are generally designated Sioux, but that title is seldom willingly acknowledged by them. It was first given to them by the French, though its original interpretation is by no means clear. The accepted theory, because it is the most plausible, is that it is a corruption or rather an abbreviation of "Nadouessioux," a Chippewa word for enemies.

Many of the Sioux are semi-civilized; some are "blanket-Indians," so called, but there are no longer any murderous or predatory bands, and all save a few stragglers are on the reservations. From 1812 to 1876, more than half a century, they were the scourge of the West and the Northwest, but another outbreak is highly improbable. They once occupied the vast region included between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and were always migratory in their methods of living. Over fifty years ago, when the whites first became acquainted with them, they were divided into nearly fifty bands of families, each with its separate chief, but all acknowledging a superior chief to whom they were subordinate. They were at that time the happiest and most wealthy tribe on the continent, regarded from an Indian standpoint; but then the great plains were stocked with buffalo and wild horses, and that fact alone warrants the assertion of contentment and riches. No finer-looking tribe existed; they could then muster more than ten thousand warriors, every one of whom would measure six feet, and all their movements were graceful and elastic.

According to their legends, they came from the Pacific and encountered the Algonquins about the head waters of the Mississippi, where they were held in check, a portion of them, however, pushing on through their enemies and securing a foothold on the shores of Lake Michigan. This bold band was called by the Chippewas Winnebagook (men-from-the-salt-water). In their original habitat on the great northern plains was located the celebrated "red pipe-stone quarry," a relatively limited area, owned by all tribes, but occupied permanently by none; a purely neutral ground—so designated by the Great Spirit—where no war could possibly occur, and where mortal enemies might meet to procure the material for their pipes, but the hatchet was invariably buried during that time on the consecrated spot.

The quarry has long since passed out of the control and jurisdiction of the Indians and is not included in any of their reservations, though near the Sisseton agency. It is located on the summit of the high divide between the Missouri and St. Peter's rivers in Minnesota, at a point not far from where the ninety-seventh meridian of longitude (from Greenwich) intersects the forty-fifth parallel of latitude. The divide was named by the French Coteau des Prairies, and the quarry is near its southern extremity. Not a tree or bush could be seen from the majestic mound when I last was there, some twenty years ago—nothing but the apparently interminable plains, until they were lost in the deep blue of the horizon.

The luxury of smoking appears to have been known to all the tribes on the continent in their primitive state, and they indulge in the habit to excess; any one familiar with their life can assert that the American savage smokes half of his time. Where so much attention is given to a mere pleasure, it naturally follows that he would devote his leisure and ingenuity to the construction of his pipe. The bowls of these were, from time immemorial, made of the peculiar red stone from the famous quarry referred to, which, until only a little over fifty years ago, was never visited by a white man, its sanctity forbidding any such sacrilege.

That the spot should have been visited for untold centuries by all the Indian nations, who hid their weapons as they approached it, under fear of the vengeance of the Great Spirit, will not seem strange when the religion of the race is understood. One of the principal features of the quarry is a perpendicular wall of granite about thirty feet high, facing the west, and nearly two miles long. At the base of the wall there is a level prairie, running parallel to it, half a mile wide. Under this strip of land, after digging through several slaty layers of rock, the red sandstone is found. Old graves, fortifications, and excavations abound, all confirmatory of the traditions clustering around the weird place.

Within a few rods of the base of the wall is a group of immense gneiss boulders, five in number, weighing probably many hundred tons each, and under these are two holes in which two imaginary old women reside—the guardian spirits of the quarry—who were always consulted before any pipe-stone could be dug up. The veneration for this group of boulders was something wonderful; not a spear of grass was broken or bent by his feet within sixty or seventy paces from them, where the trembling Indian halted, and throwing gifts to them in humble supplication, solicited permission to dig and take away the red stone for his pipes.

Near this spot, too, on a high mound, was the "Thunder's nest," where a very small bird sat upon her eggs during fair weather. When the skies were rent with thunder at the approach of a storm, she was hatching her brood, which caused the terrible commotion in the heavens. The bird was eternal. The "medicine men" claimed that they had often seen her, and she was about as large as a little finger. Her mate was a serpent whose fiery tongue destroyed the young ones as soon as they were born, and the awful noise accompanying the act darted through the clouds.

On the wall of rocks at the quarry are thousands of inscriptions and paintings, the totems and arms of various tribes who have visited there; but no idea can be formed of their antiquity.

Of the various traditions of the many tribes, I here present a few. The Great Spirit at a remote period called all the Indian nations together at this place, and, standing on the brink of the precipice of red-stone rock, broke from its walls a piece and fashioned a pipe by simply turning it in his hands. He then smoked over them to the north, the south, the east, and the west, and told them the stone was red, that it was their flesh, that they must use it for their pipes of peace, that it belonged to all alike, and that the war-club and scalping-knife must never be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the ledge for miles was melted and glazed; two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women—the guardian spirits of the place—entered them in a blaze of fire, and they are heard there yet answering to the conjurations of the medicine men, who consult them when they visit the sacred place.

The legend of the Knis-te-neu's tribe (Crees), a very small band in the British possessions, in relation to the quarry is this: In the time of a great freshet that occurred years ago and destroyed all the nations of the earth, every tribe of Indians assembled on the top of the Coteau des Prairies to get out of the way of the rushing and seething waters. When they had arrived there from all parts of the world, the water continued to rise until it covered them completely, forming one solid mass of drowned Indians, and their flesh was converted by the Great Spirit into red pipe-stone; therefore, it was always considered neutral ground, belonging to all tribes alike, and all were to make their pipes out of it and smoke together. While they were drowning together, a young woman, Kwaptan, a virgin, caught hold of the foot of a very large bird that was flying over at the time, and was carried to the top of a hill that was not far away and above the water. There she had twins, their father being the war-eagle that had carried her off, and her children have since peopled the earth. The pipe-stone, which is the flesh of their ancestors, is smoked by them as the symbol of peace, and the eagle quills decorate the heads of their warriors.

Severed about seven or eight feet from the main wall of the quarry by some convulsion of nature ages ago, there is an immense column just equal in height to the wall, seven feet in diameter and beautifully polished on its top and sides. It is called The Medicine, or Leaping Rock, and considerable nerve is required to jump on it from the main ledge and back again. Many an Indian's heart, in the past, has sighed for the honour of the feat without daring to attempt it. A few, according to the records of the tribes, have tried it with success, and left their arrows standing up in its crevice; others have made the leap and reached its slippery surface only to slide off, and suffer instant death on the craggy rocks in the awful chasm below. Every young man of the many tribes was ambitious to perform the feat, and those who had successfully accomplished it were permitted to boast of it all their lives.



CHAPTER XIV. TRAPPERS.



The initial opening of the trade with New Mexico from the Missouri River, as has been related, was not direct to Santa Fe. The limited number of pack-trains at first passed to the north of the Raton Range, and travelled to the Spanish settlements in the valley of Taos.

On this original Trail, where now is situated the beautiful city of Pueblo, the second place of importance in Colorado, there was a little Indian trading-post called "the Pueblo," from which the present thriving place derives its name. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad practically follows the same route that the traders did to reach Pueblo, as it also does that which the freight caravans later followed from the Missouri River direct to Santa Fe.

The old Pueblo fort, as nearly as can be determined now, was built as early as 1840, or not later than 1842, and, as one authority asserts, by George Simpson and his associates, Barclay and Doyle. Beckwourth claims to have been the original projector of the fort, and to have given the general plan and its name, in which I am inclined to believe that he is correct; perhaps Barclay, Doyle, and Simpson were connected with him, as he states that there were other trappers, though he mentions no names. It was a square fort of adobe, with circular bastions at the corners, no part of the walls being more than eight feet high. Around the inside of the plaza, or corral, were half a dozen small rooms inhabited by as many Indian traders and mountain-men.

One of the earlier Indian agents, Mr. Fitzpatrick, in writing from Bent's Fort in 1847, thus describes the old Pueblo:—

About seventy-five miles above this place, and immediately on the Arkansas River, there is a small settlement, chiefly composed of old trappers and hunters; the male part of it are mostly Americans (Missourians), French Canadians, and Mexicans. It numbers about one hundred and fifty, and of this number about sixty men have wives, and some have two. These wives are of various Indian tribes, as follows; viz. Blackfeet, Assiniboines, Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Snakes, and Comanches. The American women are Mormons, a party of Mormons having wintered there, and then departed for California.

The old trappers and hunters of the Pueblo fort lived entirely upon game, and a greater part of the year without bread. As soon as their supply of meat was exhausted, they started to the mountains with two or three pack-animals, and brought back in two or three days loads of venison and buffalo.

The Arkansas at the Pueblo is a clear, rapid river about a hundred yards wide. The bottom, which is enclosed on each side by high bluffs, is about a quarter of a mile across. In the early days of which I write, the margin of the stream was heavily timbered with cottonwood, and the tourist to-day may see the remnant of the primitive great woods, in the huge isolated trees scattered around the bottom in the vicinity of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad station of the charming mountain city.

On each side vast rolling prairies stretch away for hundreds of miles, gradually ascending on the side towards the mountains, where the highlands are sparsely covered with pinyon and cedar. The lofty banks through which the Arkansas occasionally passes are of shale and sandstone, rising precipitously from the water. Ascending the river the country is wild and broken, until it enters the mountain region, where the scenery is incomparably grand and imposing. The surrounding prairies are naturally arid and sterile, producing but little vegetation, and the primitive grass, though of good quality, is thin and scarce. Now, however, under a competent system of irrigation, the whole aspect of the landscape is changed from what it was thirty years ago, and it has all the luxuriance of a garden.

The whole country, it is claimed, was once possessed by the Shos-shones, or Snake Indians, of whom the Comanches of the Southern plains are a branch; and, although many hundred miles divide their hunting-grounds, they were once, if not the same people, tribes or bands of that great and powerful nation. They retain a language in common, and there is also a striking analogy in many of their religious rites and ceremonies, in their folk-lore, and in some of their everyday customs. These facts prove, at least, that there was at one time a very close alliance which bound the two tribes together. Half a century ago they were, in point of numbers, the two most powerful nations in all the numerous aggregations of Indians in the West; the Comanches ruling almost supreme on the Eastern plains, while the Shos-shones were the dominant tribe in the country beyond the Rocky Mountains, and in the mountains themselves. Once, many years ago, before the problem of the relative strength of the various tribes was as well solved as now, the Shos-shones were supposed to be the most powerful, and numerically the most populous, tribe of Indians on the North American continent.

In the immediate vicinity of the old Pueblo fort at the time of its greatest business prosperity, game was scarce; the buffalo had for some years deserted the neighbouring prairies, but they were always to be found in the mountain-valleys, particularly in one known as "Bayou Salado," which forty-five years ago abounded in elk, bear, deer, and antelope.

The fort was situated a few hundred yards above the mouth of the "Fontaine qui Bouille" River,[47] so called from two springs of mineral water near its head, under Pike's Peak, about sixty miles above its mouth.

As is the case with all the savage races of the world, the American Indians possess hereditary legends, accounting for all the phenomena of nature, or any occurrence which is beyond their comprehension. The Shos-shones had the following story to account for the presence of these wonderful springs in the midst of their favourite hunting-ground. The two fountains, one pouring forth the sweetest water imaginable, the other a stream as bitter as gall, are intimately connected with the cause of the separation of the two tribes. Their legend thus runs: Many hundreds of winters ago, when the cottonwoods on the big river were no higher than arrows, and the prairies were crowded with game, the red men who hunted the deer in the forests and the buffalo on the plains all spoke the same language, and the pipe of peace breathed its soothing cloud whenever two parties of hunters met on the boundless prairie.

It happened one day that two hunters of different nations met on the bank of a small rivulet, to which both had resorted to quench their thirst. A small stream of water, rising from a spring on a rock within a few feet of the bank, trickled over it and fell splashing into the river. One hunter sought the spring itself; the other, tired by his exertions in the chase, threw himself at once to the ground, and plunged his face into the running stream.

The latter had been unsuccessful in the hunt, and perhaps his bad fortune, and the sight of the fat deer which the other threw from his back before he drank at the crystal spring, caused a feeling of jealousy and ill-humour to take possession of his mind. The other, on the contrary, before he satisfied his thirst, raised in the hollow of his hand a portion of the water, and, lifting it toward the sun, reversed his hand, and allowed it to fall upon the ground, as a libation to the Great Spirit, who had vouch-safed him a successful hunt and the blessing of the refreshing water with which he was about to quench his thirst.

This reminder that he had neglected the usual offering only increased the feeling of envy and annoyance which filled the unsuccessful hunter's heart. The Evil Spirit at that moment entering his body, his temper fairly flew away, and he sought some pretence to provoke a quarrel with the other Indian.

"Why does a stranger," he asked, rising from the stream, "drink at the spring-head, when one to whom the fountain belongs contents himself with the water that runs from it?"

"The Great Spirit places the cool water at the spring," answered the other hunter, "that his children may drink it pure and undefiled. The running water is for the beasts which scour the plains. Ausaqua is a chief of the Shos-shones; he drinks at the head water."

"The Shos-shones is but a tribe of the Comanches," returned the other: "Wacomish leads the whole nation. Why does a Shos-shone dare to drink above him?"

"When the Manitou made his children, whether Shos-shone or Comanche, Arapaho, Cheyenne, or Pawnee, he gave them buffalo to eat, and the pure water of the fountain to quench their thirst. He said not to one, 'Drink here,' and to another, 'Drink there'; but gave the crystal spring to all, that all might drink."

Wacomish almost burst with rage as the other spoke; but his coward heart prevented him from provoking an encounter with the calm Shos-shone. The latter, made thirsty by the words he had spoken—for the Indian is ever sparing of his tongue—again stooped down to the spring to drink, when the subtle warrior of the Comanches suddenly threw himself upon the kneeling hunter and, forcing his head into the bubbling water, held him down with all his strength until his victim no longer struggled; his stiffened limbs relaxed, and he fell forward over the spring, drowned.

Mechanically the Comanche dragged the body a few paces from the water, and, as soon as the head of the dead Indian was withdrawn, the spring was suddenly and strangely disturbed. Bubbles sprang up from the bottom, and, rising to the surface, escaped in hissing gas. A thin vapour arose, and, gradually dissolving, displayed to the eyes of the trembling murderer the figure of an aged Indian, whose long, snowy hair and venerable beard, blown aside from his breast, discovered the well-known totem of the great Wankanaga, the father of the Comanche and Shos-shone nation.

Stretching out a war-club toward the Comanche, the figure thus addressed him:—

"Accursed murderer! While the blood of the brave Shos-shone cries to the Great Spirit for vengeance, may the water of thy tribe be rank and bitter in their throats!" Thus saying, and swinging his ponderous war-club round his head, he dashed out the brains of the Comanche, who fell headlong into the spring, which from that day to this remains rank and nauseous, so that not even when half dead with thirst, can one drink from it.

The good Wankanaga, however, to perpetuate the memory of the Shos-shone warrior, who was renowned in his tribe for valour and nobleness of heart, struck with the same avenging club a hard, flat rock which overhung the rivulet, and forthwith a round clear basin opened, which instantly filled with bubbling, sparkling water, sweet and cool.

From that day the two mighty tribes of the Shos-shones and Comanches have remained severed and apart, although a long and bloody war followed the treacherous murder.

The Indians regarded these wonderful springs with awe. The Arapahoes, especially, attributed to the Spirit of the springs the power of ordaining the success or failure of their war expeditions. As their warriors passed by the mysterious pools when hunting their hereditary enemies, the Utes, they never failed to bestow their votive offerings upon the spring, in order to propitiate the Manitou of the strange fountain, and insure a fortunate issue to their path of war. As late as twenty-five years ago, the visitor to the place could always find the basin of the spring filled with beads and wampum, pieces of red cloth and knives, while the surrounding trees were hung with strips of deerskin, cloth, and moccasins. Signs were frequently observed in the vicinity of the waters unmistakably indicating that a war-dance had been executed there by the Arapahoes on their way to the Valley of Salt, occupied by the powerful Utes.

Never was there such a paradise for hunters as this lone and solitary spot in the days when the region was known only to them and the trappers of the great fur companies. The shelving prairie, at the bottom of which the springs are situated, is entirely surrounded by rugged mountains and contained two or three acres of excellent grass, affording a safe pasture for their animals, which hardly cared to wander from such feeding and the salt they loved to lick.

The trappers of the Rocky Mountains belonged to a genus that has disappeared. Forty years ago there was not a hole or corner in the vast wilderness of the far West that had not been explored by these hardy men. From the Mississippi to the mouth of the Colorado of the West, from the frozen regions of the north to the Gila in Mexico, the beaver hunter has set his traps in every creek and stream. The mountains and waters, in many instances, still retain the names assigned them by those rude hunters, who were veritable pioneers paving the way for the settlement of the stern country.

A trapper's camp in the old days was quite a picture, as were all its surroundings. He did not always take the trouble to build a shelter, unless in the winter. A couple of deerskins stretched over a willow frame was considered sufficient to protect him from the storm. Sometimes he contented himself with a mere "breakwind," the rocky wall of a canyon, or large ravine. Near at hand he set up two poles, in the crotch of which another was laid, where he kept, out of reach of the hungry wolf and coyote, his meat, consisting of every variety afforded by the region in which he had pitched his camp. Under cover of the skins of the animals he had killed hung his old-fashioned powder-horn and bullet-pouch, while his trusty rifle, carefully defended from the damp, was always within reach of his hand. Round his blazing fire at night his companions, if he had any, were other trappers on the same stream; and, while engaged in cleaning their arms, making and mending moccasins, or running bullets, they told long yarns, until the lateness of the hour warned them to crawl under their blankets.

Not far from the camp, his animals, well hobbled, fed in sight; for nothing did a hunter dread more than a visit from horse-stealing Indians, and to be afoot was the acme of misery.