Part 19

Their ponies had all been eaten for food, so the proud Indians were compelled to make the journey on foot to the place of meeting.

But when they had arrived at the bluffs, on the edge of the valley, they were surprised to see a bountiful supper spread on the bank of the stream, close by the Forks, and a white woman close by, standing up and making signs to them to descend from the bluffs.

Having never before seen a "white squaw," they were greatly astonished. The medicine-man descended to the valley. The white woman told him that the Great Spirit would talk to the council through her. She told him that the wars of the tribe were displeasing to the Great Spirit, and they must make peace with the Sioux nation. When that was done, the great chief, "The-Bear-that-grabs," must return to her.

They sent out runners to the Sioux, and peace was declared between the tribes for the first time in one hundred years.

She then told the great chief to follow the mountain in a westerly course, until he came to the Big Horn River, and where the rock was perpendicular, he was to shoot three arrows, hitting the rock each time.

The chief departed on his mission, and as he gained the bluffs from the stream, he looked back at the white squaw, but what was his surprise when he saw her rising in the air and floating towards the mountains! He watched her until she disappeared over the highest peak towards the sky.

The chief pursued his journey, and, arriving at the place told him by the white squaw, he discharged his arrows. The first one struck in rock. The second flew over the mountain. The third was discharged, and a terrible noise followed: the heavens were aglow with lightning; the thunder shook the mountains. The earth trembled, and the rocks were rent asunder, and out of the fissure countless herds of buffalo came, filling the valleys and the hills. The hearts of the Indians were glad, and they ate and were merry, and returned thanks to the Great Spirit and to the good white woman.

The great fissure in the rocks is the canon of the Big Horn River.

Iron Bull avers that when anything of note is about to befall the tribe, the image of the white woman can be seen hovering over the peak of the mountain at "Crazy Woman's Fork." He says the Crows have never killed any of the whites, and his people say and believe "that they are treated by the government agents worse than the tribes who give us all the trouble."

In other words, because they are peaceable, we need not, as with others, to buy them off with presents. And they say we have taken some of their lands and given them to the Sioux, who were fighting and destroying the whites as often as they could.

PHIL. KEARNEY MASSACRE.

One of the most fearful and fatal massacres on the plains that is known, occurred in the forenoon of December 21st, 1866, at Fort Phil. Kearney, Dakota.

About nine o'clock, some Indians, a few only (as usual), were seen on the bluffs. Brevet General Carrington, Colonel of the 18th United States Infantry, in command of the post, sent out eighty-one men, one company of infantry, and one of 2d Cavalry, Company C, under command of Colonel Fetterman. The instructions, it is said, were not to go over the hills. However that may be, they pursued the hostile Indians beyond sight of the post, crossing the river near the fort to do so. At ten o'clock the fight began, the firing being heard plainly at the post. There were from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred Sioux, under chief Red Leaf.

The soldiers were led into an ambuscade, and having shot away all their ammunition in a panic, were surrounded and massacred before two o'clock in the afternoon. Sixteen Indians were killed, and chief Spider among them. The bodies of the soldiers were horribly mutilated and scalped. Why reinforcements were not sent out to help them out of their perilous condition does not appear. Colonel Fetterman was killed, a noble, brave man, and the fort next above "Laramie" was named after him. This is an eyesore to Red Cloud, and he requested the President to have it removed, as of no use, he said, and costing the government a great deal of money. His wish was not gratified.

MAUVAISES TERRES, OR BAD LANDS, DAKOTA.

Up in the Indian country, in Dakota, near White River, as one travels over a prairie country, one comes suddenly upon a valley, down between one and two hundred feet, which is at least thirty miles wide, by ninety in length. It looks as though it had sunk down below all the country round; while standing like sentinels all around, one sees pillars of immense height, of irregular prismatic columns of masses of stone, stretching up to the height of from one to two hundred feet or more. It reminds one of the ruins of Pompeii (described by Bulwer) as the traveler wends his way through deep passages, amidst petrified snakes, turtles, and mammoth animals, which must have been larger than elephants. Turtles weighing a thousand pounds, petrified, lie around, and all over is strewn the remains of extinct animals in this vast charnel-house.

Professor Leidy, of Philadelphia, has detected about thirty remains of species of extinct mammalia. Many of these belonged to animals such as the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, tapir, etc. One extinct animal, called the Oreodon, had grinding teeth like lions, cats, etc., and must have belonged to a race that lived on vegetables and flesh, and yet chewed the cud like a cow. Another called the Machairodus, was wholly carnivorous, and combined the size and weight of the grizzly bear with the jaws and teeth of the Bengal tiger. Most of the bones are yet in good preservation and highly mineralized. Dr. Owen says he saw all the bones of a skeleton eighteen feet long and nine in height; also a jaw of a similar animal, which measured five feet along the range of its teeth. At one place there is a valley which has the appearance of a floor of an ancient lake, where turtles lie imbedded by hundreds, and some weighing a ton. This wonderful place looks like the city of the dead; and as nothing grows there, and there is no water for animals, no living thing is found there, not even a bird. General Sully made a forced march through it with cavalry a few years ago, and had to carry water for the men and horses. The Indians never go there, unless driven in by some tribe attacking in superior numbers. The fossils which have been brought from the Mauvaises Terres belong to a species that became extinct before the period when the Mastodon inhabited this country. The strata in which these animals are imbedded indicate that the water was fresh or brackish. It is the most desolate and barren prospect one could lay his eyes on; and if the place for bad people is like this, when they come to die, may no boy have to go there and be frightened all his life-long for his wicked and cruel deeds to others, or to animals either; for the sight of these skeletons is enough to make any boy afraid of disobeying his mother, or to go to sleep any night without being sorry for his sins.

Gold is said to be deposited there, and may yet be found in large quantities, if the Indians can be induced to let the whites prospect there. A while since, an Indian brought into a fort some gold-dust and a large nugget. The post-trader looked at it and pretended it was iron, saying to the Indian, "No good." He threw it out of the window and gave the Indian a glass of whisky. When he went out, the trader picked it up, and it was worth thirty dollars. The Indian having refused to tell where he got it, was made quite drunk, and then he said it came from the Bad Lands; but if the chief found out he had told of it, he would kill him.

NATURAL HISTORY--ANIMALS ON THE PLAINS.

The animals which are found west of the Missouri River, especially in the Rocky Mountains, and far beyond them, are the buffalo, elk, deer, cimarron bear, mountain sheep, antelope, coyote, prairie-dog, etc.

The buffalo, which affords good beef to the Indian hunters, and has fed many thousand toilers over the plains to Salt Lake and California, is mainly known to boys in the comfortable buffalo robes, which every one knows the use of in sleigh-riding. But to us officers and soldiers on the plains they are life-preservers almost, in our sleeping out nights on the ground, far away from home and good beds and blankets.

The buffalo meat is tough, unless from a young cow; and the Indians make little difference in drying it for winter use, as they have good teeth and always a first-rate appetite. The skins are dried and tanned by the squaws, who lay them on the grass; and I saw an old gray-haired squaw toiling away with a sharp instrument, made of the end of a gun-barrel, something like a carpenter's gouge, and this had a bone handle, with which she kept scraping off the inside of the skin of its fibres, so as to make it soft and pliable. She had a stone to sharpen the tool with, and as she leaned over, tugging away, the perspiration rolled off her face in streams. Poor old creature, I felt sorry for her, as the work might have been done by several big, lazy, half-grown Indian boys I saw romping around and shooting their arrows at a mark. But it is disgraceful for the lords of creation to labor, so they only kill the game, and leave the squaws to cure and prepare it for eating.

It is astonishing how poorly Indians are compensated for their robes and furs. In Colorado, some Indians had been very successful in killing buffaloes, had plenty of meat, and purchased with their robes flour, sugar, coffee, dry-goods, and trinkets from the white and Mexican traders; but they did not realize one-fourth their value. They were worth eight or nine dollars by the bale at wholesale. The traders paid seventy-five cents in brass wire or other trinkets for a robe; two dollars in groceries, and less in goods. Six tribes, in 1864, furnished at least fifteen thousand robes, which, at eight dollars, would amount to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The traders literally swindled the poor Indians. They will give the robe off their backs for a bottle of whisky on the coldest day.

The cimarron bear is avoided by the soldiers, if possible, when met by them. Up in the Wind River country, a soldier was mauled terribly by one which he had wounded, but failed to kill on the first fire. The fight was desperate, for the bear, said to have been six or seven feet long, and weighing nine hundred pounds, had clinched the soldier, and both rolled down the ravine together, the other soldiers afraid to fire lest they should hit the poor comrade, almost in the jaws of death. They did rescue him, however, by lunging a knife into bruin's side, compelling him to release his hold, after lacerating the soldier's arm and side.

The coyote is a kind of wolf that preys on the antelope. It is a mean, sneaking thief, too mean to attack a herd of antelopes, but follows them up, and while one strays off, grazing, watches the opportunity to spring upon his victim, run him down, and snap the hamstring of poor antelope, and then eats him.

One night I was woke up at Fort Sedgwick, thinking I heard wild geese flying over. But I learned it was a drove of coyotes, which came over the bluffs, into and through the fort nightly, to eat the refuse meat outside, where beef was slaughtered. They prowl about, and sometimes make a noise like a lot of school-children hallooing at play. They never bite, unless attacked. An old lady got lost about a mile outside the post, at Russell, in the winter. She started out of Cheyenne, one Monday afternoon, to search for an emigrant train which might be going to Montana, where she had a son living.

She strayed away and was found in a snow-bank, by some soldiers going out to dig a grave. She was glad to see the faces of white men, for it was on Friday, and she had thus been out, wandering around since Monday, four days! She was brought into the hospital and given a warm cup of tea. "Dear me," she exclaimed, "give me a quart,--I'm almost famished!" She said she was only frightened by the coyotes coming round nights and barking at her. Her feet were partly frozen, but in a few weeks she went on to Montana.

The black-tailed deer are fine eating; the grass on which they feed in the mountains is said to make the meat tender and sweet.