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BY
GEORGE FREDERIC RUXTON,
AUTHOR OF ‘‘ ADVENTURES IN MEXICO AND THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC,
PEW V.OR-K:. FE
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
1849.
vee ve
oe >
,
THE LATE
GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
Tue London newspapers of October, 1848, contained the
mournful tidings of the death, at St. Louis on the Mississippi,
and at the early age of twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George
Frederick Ruxton, formerly of her Majesty’s 89th regiment, the
author of the following sketches.
Many men, even at the most enterprising periods of our
history, have been made the subjects of elaborate biography,
with far less title to the honor than this lamented young officer?
Time was not granted him to embody in.a permanent shape a
tithe of his personal experiences and strange adventures in
three quarters of the globe. Considering, indeed, the amount
of physical labor he underwent, and the extent of the fields over
which his wanderings spread, it is almost surprising he found
leisure to write so much. At the early age of seventeen, Mr.
Ruxton quitted Sandhurst, to learn the practical part of a
soldier’s profession in the civil wars of: Spain. He obtained a
commission in a squadron of lancers then attached to the
division of General Diego Leon, and was actively engaged in
iv THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
several of the most important combats of the campaign. For
his marked gallantry on these occasions, he received from Queen
Isabella II., the cross of the first class of the order of St.
Fernando, an honor which has seldom been awarded to one so
young. On his return from Spain he found himself gazetted to
a commision in the 89th regiment; and it was while serving
with that distinguished corps in Canada that he first became
acquainted with the stirring scenes of Indian life, which he has
since so graphically portrayed. His eager and enthusiastic
spirit soon became wearied with the monotony of the barrack-
room; and yielding to that impulse which in him was irresis-
tibly developed, he resigned his commission, and directed his
steps toward the stupendous wilds, tenanted only by the red
Indian, or by the solitary American trapper.
Those familiar with Mr. Ruxton’s writings can not fail to
have remarked the singular delight with which he dwells upon
the recollections of this portion of his career, and the longing
which he carried with him, to the hour of his death, for a
return to those scenes of primitive freedom. « Although liable
to an accusation of barbarism,” he writes, «I must confess that
the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in~the
wilderness of the Far West ; and I never recall, but with pleas-
ure, the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salade,
‘with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no com-
panions more sociable than my good horse and mules, or the
attendant cayeute which nightly serenaded us. With a plentiful
supply of dry pine-logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze stream-
ing far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and
exhibiting the animals, with well-filled bellies, standing content-
THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. Vv
edly at rest over their picket-fire, I would sit cross-legged, enjoy-
ing the genial warmth, and, pipe in mouth, watch the blue
smoke as it curled upward, building castles in its vapory
wreaths, and in the fantastic shapes it assumed, peopling the
solitude with figures of those far away. Scarcely, however, did
I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries
of civilized life; and, unnatural and extraordinary as it may
appear, yet such is the fascination of the life of the mountain
hunter, that I believe not one instance could be adduced of even
the most polished and civilized of men, who had once tasted the
sweets of its attendant liberty, and freedom from every worldly
care, not regretting the moment when he exchanged it for the
monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing and sighing again
once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements.”
On his return to Europe from the Far West, Mr. Ruxton,
animated with a spirit as enterprising and fearless as that of
Raleigh, planned a scheme for the exploration of Central Africa,
which was thus characterized by the president of the Royal
Geographical Society, in his anniversary address for 1845 :—
«To my great surprise, I recently conversed with an ardent and
accomplished youth, Lieutenant Ruxton, late of the 89th regi-
ment, who had formed the daring project of traversing Africa in
the parallel of the southern tropic, and has actually started for
this purpose. Preparing himself by previous excursions on foot,
in North Africa and Algeria, he sailed from Liverpool early in
December last, in the Royalist, for Ichaboe. From that spot he
was to repair to Walvish Bay, where we have already mercan-
tile establishments. The intrepid traveler had received from
the agents of these establishments such favorable accounts of the
vi THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
nations toward the interior, as also of the nature of the climate,
that he has the most sanguine hopes of being able to penetrate to
the central region, if not of traversing it to the Portuguese colo-
nies of Mozambique. If this be accomplished, then indeed will
Lieutenant Ruxton have acquired for himself a permanent name
among British travelers, by making us acquainted with the
nature of the axis of the great continent of which we possess the
southern extremity.”
In pursuance of this hazardous scheme, Ruxton, with a single
companion, landed on the coast of Africa, a little to the south
of Ichaboe, and commenced his journey of exploration. But it
seemed as if both nature and man had combined to baffle the
execution of his design. The course of their travel lay along a
desert of moving sand, where no water was to be found, and
little herbage, save a coarse tufted grass, and twigs of the resin-
ous myrrh. ~The immediate place of their destination was
Angra Peguena, on the coast, described as a frequented station,
but which in reality was deserted.. One ship only was in offing
when the travelers arrived, and, to their inexpressible mortifica-
tion, they discovered that she was outward bound. No trace
was visible of the river or streams laid down in the maps as
falling into the sea at this point, and no resource was left to
the travelers save that of retracmg their steps—a labor for which
their strength was hardly adequate. But for the opportune
assistance of a body of natives, who encountered them at the
very moment when they were sinking from fatigue and thirst,
Ruxton and his companion would have been added to the long
catalogue of those whose lives have been sacrificed in the attempt
to explore the interior of that fatal country. s
THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. Vii
The jealousy of the traders, and of the missionaries settled on the
African coast, who constantly withheld or perverted that inform-
ation which was absolutely necessary for the successful prosecu-
tion of the journey, induced Ruxton to abandon the attempt for
the present. He made, however, several interesting excursions
toward the interior, and more. especially in the country of the
Bosjesmans.
Finding his own resources inadequate for the accomplishment
of his favorite project, Mr. Ruxton, on his return to England,
made application for Government assistance. But though this
demand was not altogether refused, it having been referred to
the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, and favorably
reported upon by that body, so many delays interposed that
Ruxton, in disgust, resolved to withdraw from the scheme, anid.
to abandon that field of African research which he had already
contemplated from its borders. He next bent his steps to
Mexico; and, fortunately, has presented to the world his
reminiscences of that country, in one of the most fascinating
volumes which, of late years, has issued from the press. It
would, however, appear that the African scheme, the darling
project of his life, had again recurred to him at a later period ;
for, in the course of the present spring, before setting out on that
journey which was destined to be his last, the following expres-
sions occur in one of his letters :—
“My movements are uncertain, for I am trying to get
up a yacht voyage to Borneo and the Indian Archipelago ;
have volunteered to Government to explore Central Africa ;
and the Aborigenes Protection Society wish me to go out to
viii THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
Canada to organize the Indian tribes; while, for my own
part and inclination, I wish to go to all parts of the world at
once.”’
As regards the volume to which this notice serves as Preface,
the editor does not hesitate to express a very high opinion of its
merits. Written by a man untrained to literature, and whose
life, from boyhood upward, was passed in the field and on the
road, in military adventure and travel, its style is yet often
as remarkable for graphic terseness and vigor, as its substance
every where is for great novelty and originality. The narrative
of «Life in the Far West’ was first offered for insertion in
Blackwood’s Magazine, in the spring of 1848, when the greater
portion of the manuscript was sent, and the remainder shortly
followed. During its publication in that periodical, the wildness
of the adventures related excited suspicions in certain quarters as
to their actual truth and fidelity. It may interest the reader to
know that the scenes described are pictures from life, the results
of the author’s personal experience. The following are extracts
from letters addressed by him, in the course of last summer, to
the conductors of the Magazine above named :—
«T have brought out a few more softening traits in the char-
acters of the mountaineers—but not at the sacrifice of truth—
for some of them have their good points; which, as they are
rarely allowed to rise to the surface, must be laid hold of at once
before they sink again. Killbuck—that ‘old hos,’ par exemple,
was really pretty much of a gentleman, as was La Bonté. -Bill
‘Williams, another ‘hard case,’ and Rube Herring, were ‘some’
too.
THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. 1X
—_SsSsSsSsSSSSSSSSS
«The scene where La Bonté joins the Chase family is so far
true, that he did make a sudden appearance ; but, in reality, a
day before the Indian attack. The Chases (and I wish I had
not given the proper name *) did start for the Platte alone, and
were stampedoed upon the waters of the Platte. .
~
ad
«The Mexican fandango zs true to the letter. It does seem
difficult to understand how they contrived to keep their knives
out of the hump-ribs of the mountaineers; but how can you
account for the fact, that, the other day, 4000 Mexicans, with
13 pieces of artillery, behind strong intrenchments and two lines
of parapets, were routed by 900 raw Missourians; 300 killed,
as many more wounded, all their artillery captured, as well as
several hundred prisoners ; and that not one American was killed
in the aflair? This is positive fact.
«JT myself, with three trappers, cleared a fandango at Taos,
armed only with bowie-knives—some score Mexicans, at least,
being in the room.
-
«With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starvation,
cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head.
They are all matters of history in the mountains; but I have,
no doubt, jumbled the dramatis persone one with another, and
may have committed anachronisms in the order of their occur-
rence.”
* In accordance with this suggestion, the name was changed to Brand. The
mountaineers, it seems, are more sensitive to type than totomahawks; and poor
Ruxton, who always contemplated another expedition among them, would some- .
’ times jestingly speculate upon his reception, should they learn that he had shown
them up in print.
A*
x THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
Again he wrote as follows :-—
«7 think it would be as well to correct a misapprehension as
to the truth or fiction of the paper. It is no fictzon. 'There is
no incident in it which has not actually occurred, nor one charac-
ter who is not well known in the Rocky Mountains, with the
exception of two whose names are changed—the originals of
these being however, equally well known with the others.”’
His last letter, written just before his departure from England,
a few weeks previously to his death, will hardly be read by any
one who ever knew the writer, without a tear of sympathy for the
sad fate of this fine young man, dying miserably in a strange
land, before he had well commenced the hazardous journey whose
excitement and dangers he so joyously anticipated :—
« As you say, human nature can’t go on feeding on civilized
fixings in this ‘big village ;’ and this child has felt lke going
West for many a month, being half froze for buffler meat and
mountain doins. My route takes me va New York, the Lakes,
and St. Louis, to Fort Leavenworth, or Independence on the
Jndian frontier. Thence packing my ‘< possibles’ on a mule, and
mounting a buffalo horse (Panchito, if he is alive), I strike the
Santa Fé trail to the Arkansas, away up that river to the moun-
tains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La
Bonté Joined the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to
Great Salt Iake—and that’s far enough to look forward
to—always supposing my hair is not lifted by Comanche or
Pawnee on the scalping route of the Coon Creeks and Pawnee
Fork.”
THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. xi
Poor fellow! he spoke lightly in the buoyancy of youth and
a confident spirit, of the fate he little thought to meet, but
which too surely overtook him—not indeed by Indian blade, but
by the no less deadly stroke of disease. Another motive, besides
that love ef rambling and adventure, which, once conceived and
indulged, is so difficult to eradicate, impelled him across the
Atlantic. He had for sore time been out of health at intervals,
and he thought the air of his beloved prairies would be effica-
cious to work a cure. In a letter to a friend, in the month of
May last, he thus referred to the probable origin of the evil :—
«JT have been confined to my room for many days, from the
effects of an accident I met with in the Rocky Mountains,
having been spilt from the bare back of a mule, and falling on
the sharp picket of an Indian lodge on the small of my back. I
fear I injured my spine, for I have never felt altogether the
thing since, and shortly after I saw you, the symptoms became
rather ugly. However, I am now getting round again.”
His medical advisers shared his opinion that he had sustairied
internal injury from this ugly fall; and itis not improbable that
it was the remote, but real cause of his dissolution. From what-
soever this ensued, it will be a source of deep and lasting regret
to all that ever enjoyed opportunities of appreciating the high and
sterling qualities of George Frederick Ruxton. Few men, so
prepossessing on first acquaintance, gained so much by being
better known. With great natural abilities and the most daunt-
less bravery, he united a modesty and gentleness peculiarly
pleasing. Had he lived, and resisted his friends’ repeated solici-
tations to abandon a roving life, and settle down in England,
xli THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.
there can be little doubt that he would have made his name
eminent on the list of those daring and persevering men, whose
travels in distant and dangerous lands have accumulated for
England, and for the world, so rich a store of scientific and
general information. And, although the few words it has been
thought right and becoming here to devote to his memory, will
doubtless be more particularly welcome to his personal friends,
we are persuaded that none will peruse without interest this
brief tribute to the merits of a gallant soldier, and accomplished
English gentleman.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
CHAPTER I.
Away to the head waters of the Platte, where several small
streams run into the south fork of that river, and head in the
broken ridges of the “ Divide” which separates the valleys of the
Platte and Arkansas, were camped a band of trappers on a creek
called Bijou. It was the month of October, when the early frosts
of the coming winter had crisped and dyed with sober brown the
leaves of the cherry and quaking ash belting the brooks; and the
ridges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already covered
with a glittering mantle of snow, sparkling i in the still powerful
rays of the autumn sun.
The camp had all the appearance of permanency ; for not only
did it comprise one or two unusually comfortable shanties, but the
numerous stages on which huge stripes of buffalo meat were hang-
ing in process of cure, showed that the party had settled themselves
here in order to lay in a store of provisions, or, as is termed in
the language of the mountains, “to make meat.’ Round the
camp fed twelve or fifteen mules and horses, their forelegs confined
by hobbles of raw hide; and, guarding these animals, two men
paced backward and forward, driving in the stragglers, ascending
ever and anon the bluffs which overhung the river, and leaning on
their long rifles, while they swept with their eyes the surrounding
prairie. Three or four fires burned in the encampment, at some of
- which Indian women carefully tended sundry steaming pots ;
14 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
while round one, which was in the center of it, four or five stal-
wart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, pipe in mouth.
They were a trapping party from the north fork of Platte, on
their way to wintering-ground in the more southern valley of the
Arkansas ; some, indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to
the distant settlements of New Mexico, the paradise of mount-
aineers. ‘The elder of the company was a tall, gaunt man, with
a face browned by twenty years’ exposure to the extreme climate
of the mountains ; his long black hair, as yet scarcely tinged with
gray, hanging almost to his shoulders, but his cheeks and chin
clean shaven, after the fashion of the mountain men. His dress
was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long fringes down
the seams, with pantaloons similarly ornamented, and moccasins
of Indian make. While his companions puffed their pipes in
silence, he narrated a few of his former experiences of western life ;
and while the buffalo “‘ hump-ribs’’ and “ tender-loin’” are singing
away in the pot, preparing for the hunters’ supper, we will note
down the yarn as it spins from his lips, giving it in the language
spoken in the “far west :’—
“Twas about ‘calf-time,’ maybe a little later, and not a hun-
dred year ago, by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of rendezvous
was held ‘to’ Independence, a mighty handsome little location
away up on old Missoura. A pretty smart lot of boys was camp’d
thar, about a quarter from the town, and the way the whisky
flowed that time was ‘some’ now, J can tell you._)Thar was old
Sam Owins—him as got ‘rubbed out’ * by the Spaniards at Sac-
ramenty, or Chihuahuy, this hos doesn’t know which, but he ‘ went
under + any how. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch
up for the Mexican country—twenty thunder big Pittsburg
wagons; and the way /zs Santa Fé boys took in the liquor beat
all—eh, Bill ?”
* Killed,
t Died t both terms adapted from the Indian figurative language.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 15
sash acis ne daamarcapaceemeer eee a NES Dae een re
“ Well, it did.”
“ Bill Bent—his boys camped the other side the trail, and they
was all mountain men, wagh !—and Bill Williams and Bill Tharpe
(the Pawnees took his hair on Pawnee Fork last spring) : three Bills,
and them three’s all ‘gone under.’ Surely Hatcher went out that
time ; and wasn’t Bill Garey along, too? Didn’t him and Chabonard
sit in camp for twenty hours at a deck of Euker? Them was
Bent’s Indian traders up on Arkansa. Poor Bill Bent! them
Spaniards made meat of him. He lost his topknot at Taos. A
‘clever’ man was Bill Bent as I ever know’d trade a robe or
‘throw’ a bufler in his tracks. Old St. Vrain could knock the
hind-sight off him though, when it came to shootin, and old silver
heels spoke true, she did: ‘ plum-center’ she was, eh ?”
“ Well, she wasn’t nothin else.”
“The Greasers* paid for Bent’s scalp, they tell me. Old St.
Vrain went out of Santa Fé with a company of mountain men,
and the way they made ’em sing out was ‘slick as shootin’. -He
‘counted a coup,’ did St. Vrain. He throwed a Pueblo as had on
poor Bent’s shirt. I guess he tickled that niggur’s hump-ribs. Fort
William +} aint the lodge it was, an’ never will be agin, now he’s
gone under ; but St. Vrain’s ‘pretty much of a gentleman,’ .too ;
if he aint, I’ll be dog-gone, eh, Bill ?”
“He is so-o.”
“Chavez had his wagons along. He was only a Spaniard
any how, and some of his teamsters put a ball into him his next
trip, and made a raise of his dollars, wagh! Uncle Sam hung
‘em for it, I heard, but can’t b’lieve it, nohow. If them Spaniards
wasn’t born for shootin’, why was beaver made? You was with
us that spree, Jemmy ?”
“No strre-e ; I went out when Spiers lost his animals on Cim-—
* The Mexicans are called « Spaniards” or “Greasers” (from their greasy ap-
pearance) by the Western people.
t Bent’s Indian trading fort on the Arkansas.
16 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
maron: a hundred and forty mules and oxen was froze that night,
wagh!” m
“Surely Black Harris was thar ; and the darndest Jiar was
Black Harris—for lies tumbled out of his month like boudins out
of a bufler’s stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied
forest in the Black Hills. Black Harris come in from Laramie ;
he’d been trapping three year an’ more on Platte and the ‘ other
side ;’ and, when he got into Liberty, he fixed himself right off
life a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner one day in the
tavern, and a lady says to him :—
*« Well, Mister Harris, I hear you’re a great travler.’
“*'Travler, marm,’ says Black Harris, ‘ this niggur’s no travler ;
I ar a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!’
«Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great travlers, and you
goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound
to say.’
“« A sioht, marm, this coon’s gone over, if that’s the way your
‘stick floats..* Dve trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and
away up on Missoura and Yaller Stone; I’ve trapped on Co-
lumbia, on Lewis Fork, and Green River; I’ve trapped, marm,
on Grand River and the Heely (Gila). I’ve fout the ‘ Blackfoot’
(and d—d bad Injuns they ar); I’ve raised the hair’} of more
than one Apach, and made a Rapaho ‘come’ afore now; I’ve
trapped in heav’n in airth, and h—; and scalp my old head,
marm, but I’ve seen a putrified forest.’
“¢T,a, Mister Harris, a what ?’
«¢ A putrefied forest, marm, as sure as my rifle’s got hind-sights,
and she shoots center. JI was out on the Black Hills, Bill Sub-
lette knows the time—the year it raimed fire—and every body
knows when that was. If thar wasn’t cold doins about that time,
* Meaning—if that’s what you mean. The “stick” is tied to the beaver trap
by a string; and, floating on the water, points out its position, should a beaver
have carried it away. t Scalped.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 17
this child wouldn’t say so. The snow was about fifty foot deep,
and the bufler lay dead on the ground like bees after a beein’ ;
not whar we was tho’, for thar was no bufler, and no meat, and
me and my band had been livin’ on our moccasins (leastwise the
parflesh *), for six weeks ; and poor doins that feedin’ is, marm, as
you'll never know. One day we crossed a ‘canon’ and over a
‘divide,’ and got into peraira, whar was green grass, and green
trees, and green leaves on the trees, and birds singing in the green
leaves, and this in Febrary, wagh! Our animals was like to die
when they see the green grass, and we all sung out, ‘ hurraw for
summer doins.’
“* Hyar goes for meat,’ says I, and I jest ups old Ginger at one
of them singing birds, and down come the crittur elegant; its
darned head spinning away from the body, but never stops singing,
and when I takes up the meat, I finds it stone, wagh! | ‘Hyar’s
damp powder and no fire to dry it,’ I says, quite skeared.
“« Fire be dogged,’ says old Rube. ‘Hyar’s a hos as ‘ll make
fire come ; and with that he takes his ax and lets it drive at a
cotton wood. Schr-u-k—goes the ax agin the tree, and out comes
a bit of the blade as big as my hand. We looks at the animals,
and thar they stood shaking over the grass, which I’m dog-gone
if it wasn’t stone, too. Young Sublette comes up, and he’d been
clerking down to the fort on Platte, so he know’d something. He
looks and looks, and scrapes the trees with his butcher knife, and
snaps the grass like pipe sterns, and breaks the leaves a-snappin’
like Californy shells.
““¢ What’s all this, boy ?’ I asks.
““* Putrefactions,’ says he, looking smart, ‘ putrefactions, or I’m
a nigeur.’
“«Ta, Mister Harris,’ says the lady, ‘ putrefactions! why, did
the leaves, and the trees, and the grass smell badly ?”
* Soles made of buffalo hide.
18 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
“¢Smell badly, marm! says Black Harris, ‘would a skunk
stink if he was froze to stone? No, marm, this child didn’t know
what putrefaction was, and young Sublette’s varsion wouldn’t
‘shine’ no how, so I chips a piece out of a tree and puts it in my
trap-sack, and carries it in safe to Laramie. Well, old Captain
Stewart, (a clever man was that, though he was an Englishman),
he comes along next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap was along
too. ‘I shows him the piece I chipped out of the tree, and he
ealled it a putrefaction too; and so, marm, if that wasn’t a putre-
fied peraira, what was it? For this hos doesn’t know, and he
knows ‘fat cow’ from ‘ poor bull,’ anyhow.’ >
‘Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. He went
to the ‘ Parks’ trapping with a Vide Poche Frenchman, who shot
him for his bacca and traps. Darn them Frenchmen, they’re no
account any way you lays your sight. (Any bacca in your bag,
Bill? this beaver feels like chawing.)
« Well, any how, thar was the camp, and they was going to
put out the next morning ; and the last as come out of Indepen-
dence was that ar Englishman. He'd a nor-west * capote on, and
a two-shoot gun rifled. Well, them English are darned fools ;
they can’t fix a rifle any ways; but that one did shoot ‘some ;’
leastwise he made it throw plum-center. He made the bufler
‘come,’ he did, and fout well at Pawnee Fork too. What was
hisname? All the boys called him Cap’en, and he got his fixings
from old Choteau ; but what he wanted out thar in the mountains,
I never jest rightly know’d. He was no trader, nor a trapper,
and flung about his dollars right smart. ‘Thar was old grit in
him, too, and a hair of the black b’ar at that.t They say he
took-the bark off the Shians when he cleared out of the village with
* The Hudson Bay Company having amalgamated with the American North
West Company, is known by the name ‘North West’ to the southern trappers.
Their employés usually wear Canadian capotes.
t A spice of the devil
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 19
old Beaver Tail’s squaw. THe’d been on Yaller Stone afore that :
Leclere know’d him in the Blackfoot, and up in the Chippeway
country ; and he had the best powder as ever I flashed through life,
and his gun was handsome, that’s a fact. Them thar locks was
grand; and old Jake Hawken’s nephey (him as trapped on Heely
that time), told me, the other day, as he saw an English gun on
Arkansa last winter as beat all off hand.
“Nigh upon two hundred dollars I had in my possibles, when I
went to that camp to see the boys afore they put out; and you
know, Bill, as I sat to ‘Euker’ and ‘ Seven up’* till every cent was
gone.
«Take back twenty, old coon,’ says Big John.
«« Hs full of such takes back,’ says 1; and I puts back to
town and fetches the rifle and the old mule, puts my traps into the
sack, gets credit for a couple of pounds of powder at Owin’s store,
and hyar I ar on Bijou, with half a pack of beaver, and running
meat yet, old hos: so put a log on, and let’s have a smoke.
‘“ Hurraw, Jake, old coon, bear a hand, and let the squaw put
them tails in the pot; for sun’s down, and we'll have to put out
pretty early to reach ‘ Black Tail’ by this time to-morrow. Who's 1
fust guard, boys? them cussed ‘ Rapahos’ will be after the animals
to-night, or ’m no judge of Injun sign. How many did yougee,
Maurice ?”
“Enfant de Garce, me see bout honderd, when I pass Squirrel
Creek, one dam war-party, parceque, they no hosses, and have
de lariats for steal des animaux. May be de Yutas in Bayou
Salade.”’
‘We'll be having trouble to-night, I’m thinking, if the devils
are about. Whose band was it, Maurice 2”
“ Shm-Face—I see him ver close—is out; mais I think it
White Wolf’s.”
*« Huker,” “ Poker,” and ‘Seven up,” are the fashionable games of cards.
20 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
«White Wolf, maybe, will lose his hair if he and his band
knock round here too often. That Injun put me afoot when we
was out on ‘Sandy’ that fall. ‘This niggur owes him one, any
how.
« F—’s full of White Wolves: go ahead, and roll out some of
your doins across the plains that time.”
“ You seed sights that spree, eh, boy ?”
“Well, we did. Some of em got their flints fixed this side of
Pawnee Fork, and a heap of mule-meat went wolfing. Just by
Little Arkansa we saw the first Injun. Me and young Somes
was ahead for meat, and I had hobbled the old mule and was
‘approaching’ some goats,* when I see the critturs turn back their
>
heads and jump right away for me. ‘Hurraw, Dick! I shouts,
‘hyars brown-skin a-comin,’ and off I makes for the mule. ‘The
young. greenhorn sees the goats runnin up to him, and not being
up to Injun ways, blazes at the first and knocks him over. Jest
then seven darned red heads top the bluff, and seven Pawnees
come a-screechin upon us. I cuts the hobbles and jumps on the
mule, and, when I looks back, there was Dick Somes ramming a
ball down his gun like mad, and the Injuns flinging their arrows
at him pretty smart, I tell you. ‘Hurraw, Dick, mind your hair,’
and I ups old Greaser and let one Injun ‘have it,’ as was going
plum into the boy with his lance. He tumed on his back hand-
some, and Dick gets the ball down at last, blazes away, and drops
another. Then we charged on em, and they clears off like runnin
cows; and I takes the hair off the heads of the two we made
meat of ; and I do b’lieve thar’s some of them scalps on my old
leggings yet.
“Well, Dick was as full of arrows as a porkypine: one was
sticking right through his cheek, one in his meat-bag, and two
more, bout his hump-ribs. I tuk ’em all out slick, and away we
* Antelope are frequently called “ goats” by the mountaineers.
i
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 21
go to camp, (for they was jest a-campin’ when we went ahead)
and carryin’ the goat too. ‘Thar’ was a hurroo when we rode in
with the scalps at the end of our guns. ‘Injuns! Injuns!’ was
the cry from the greenhorns; ‘we'll be ’tacked to-night, that’s
certain.’
“«°Tacked be —’ says old Bill; ‘aint we men too, and white
at that? Look to your guns, boys; send out a strong hos’-guard
with the animals, and keep your eyes skinned.’
‘Well, as soon as the animals were unhitched from the wagons,
the guvner sends out a strong guard, seven boys, and old hands at
that. It was pretty nigh upon sundown, and Bill had just sung
out to ‘corral.’ The boys were drivin’ in the animals, and we
were all standin’ round to get ’em in slick, when, ‘ howgh-owgh-
owgh-owgh,’ we hears right behind the bluff, and ’bout a minute
and.a perfect crowd of Injuns gallops down upon the animals.
Wagh! war’nt thar hoopin’! We jump for the guns, but before
we get to the fires, the Injuns were among the cavayard. I saw
Ned Collyer and his brother, who were in the hos’-guard, let drive
at em; but twenty Pawnees were round ’em before the smoke
cleared from their rifles, and when the crowd broke the two boys
were on the ground, and their hair gone. Well, that ar English-
man just saved the cavayard. He had his horse, a regular buffalo-
runner, picketed round the fire quite handy, and as soon as he sees
the fix, he jumps upon her and rides right into the thick of the
mules, and passes through ’em, firing his two-shoot gun at the
Injuns, and, by Gor, he made two come. The mules, which was
a snortin’ with funk and running before the Injuns, as soon as they
see the Englishman’s mare (mules ‘ill go to h— after a horse, you
all know), followed her right into the corral, and thar they was
safe. Fifty Pawnees come screechin’ after em, but we was ready
that time, and the way we throw’d ’em was something handsome,
I tell you. But three of the hos’-guard got skeared—leastwise
their mules did, and carried ’em off into the peraira, and the
22° LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
Injuns having enough of ws, dashed after’em right away. Them
poor devils looked back miserable now, with about a hundred red
varmints tearin’ after their hair, and whooping like mad. Young
Jem Bulcher was the last ; and when he seed it was no use, and
his time was nigh, he throw’d himself off the mule, and standing
as upright as a hickory wiping stick, he waves his hand to us, and
blazes away at the first Injun as come up, and dropped him slick ;
but the moment after, you may guess, he died.
“We could do nothin’, for, before our guns were loaded, all
three were dead and their scalps gone. Five of our boys got rub-
bed out that time, and seven Injuns lay wolf’s meat, while a
many more went away gut-shot, [ll lay. How’sever, five of us
went under, and the Pawnees made a raise of a dozen mules, wagh !”
Thus far, in his own words, we have accompanied the old
hunter in his tale; and probably he would have taken us, by the
time the Squaw Chilipat had pronounced the beaver tails cooked,
safely across the grand prairies—fording Cotton Wood, Turkey
Creek, Little Arkansas, Walnut Creek, and Pawnee Fork—pass-
ed the fireless route of the Coon Crecks, through a sea of fat buf-
falo meat without fuel to cook it; have struck the big river, and,
leaving at the ‘ Crossing” the wagons destined for Santa Fé, have
trailed us up the Arkansas to Bent’s Fort; thence up Boiling
Spring across the divide over to the southern fork of the Platte,
away up to the Black Hills, and finally camped us, with hair still
preserved, in the beaver-abounding valleys of the Sweet Water,
and Cache la Poudre, under the rugged shadow of the Wind
River Mountains ; if it had not so happened at this juncture—as
all our mountaineers sat cross-legged round the fire, pipe in mouth,
and with Indian gravity listened to the yarn of the old trapper,
interrupting him only with an occasional wagh! or with the ex-
clamation of some participator in the events then under narration,
who would every now and then put in a corroborative—‘ 'This
child remembers that fix,” or, “ hyars a niggur lifted hair on that
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 23
spree,” &c.—that a whizzing noise was heard in the air, followed
by a sharp but suppressed cry from one of the hunters.
In an instant the mountaineers had sprung from their seats,
and, seizing the ever-ready rifle, each one had thrown himself on
the ground a few paces beyond the light of the fire (for it was
now nightfall); but not a word escaped them, as, lying close,
with their keen eyes directed toward the gloom of the thicket,
near which the camp was placed, with rifles cocked, they waited
a renewal of the attack. Presently the leader of the band, no
other than Killbuck, who had so lately been recounting some of
his experiences across the plains, and than whom no more crafty
woodsman or more expert trapper ever tracked a deer or grained
a beaverskin, raised his tall, leather-clad form, and, placing his
hand over his mouth, made the prairie ring with the wild, pro-
tracted note of an Indian war-whoop. This was instantly repeat-
ed from the direction where the animals belonging to the camp
were grazing, under the charge of the horse-cuard. Three shrill
whoops answered the warning of the leader, and showed that the
guard was on the alert, and understood the signal. However,
with the manifestation of their presence the Indians appeared to
be satisfied ; or, what is more probable, the act of aggression had
been committed by some daring young warrior, who, being out of
his first expedition, desired to strike the first cowp, and thus signal-
ize himself at the outset of the campaign. After waiting some
few minutes, expecting a renewal of the attack, the mountaineers
in a body rose from the ground and made toward the animals,
with which they presently returned to the camp; and, after care-
fully hobbling and securing them to pickets firmly driven into the
ground, mounting an additional guard, and examining the neigh-
boring thicket, they once more assembled round the fire, relit
their pipes, and puffed away the cheering weed as composedly as
if no such being as a Redskin, thirsting for their lives, was within
a thousand miles of their perilous encampment.
—_— -
FPF
24 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
“Tf ever thar was bad Injuns on these plains,’’ at last growled
Killbuck, biting hard the pipe-stem between his teeth, “it’s these
Rapahos, and the meanest kind at that.”
“Can’t beat the Blackfeet, any how,” chimed in one La Bonté,
from the Yellow Stone country, a fine handsome specimen of a
mountaineer. ‘‘ However, one of you quit this arrow out of my
hump,” he continued, bending forward to the fire, and exhibiting
an arrow sticking out under his right shoulder-blade, and a stream
of blood trickling down his buckskin coat from the wound.
This his nearest neighbor essayed to do; but finding, after a
tug, that it ‘“‘ would not come,” expressed his opinion that the
offending weapon would have to be “butchered” ont. This was
accordingly effected with the ready blade of a scalp-knife; and a
handful of beaver-fur being placed on the wound, and secured by
a strap of buckskin round the body, the wounded man donned his
hunting-shirt once more, and coolly set about lighting his pipe, his
rifle lying across his lap, cocked and ready for use.
It was now near midnight—dark and misty; and the clouds,
rolling away to the eastward from the lofty ridges of the Rocky
Mountains, were gradually obscuring the dim starlight. As the
lighter vapors faded from the mountains, a thick black cloud suc-
ceeded them, and settled over the loftier peaks of the chain, faintly
visible through the gloom of night, while a mass of fleecy scud
soon overspread the whole sky. A hollow moaning sound crept
through the valley, and the upper branches of the cotton woods,
with their withered leaves, began to rustle with the first breath
of the coming storm. Huge drops of rain fell at intervals, hissing
as they dropped into the blazing fires, and pattering on the skins
with which the hunters hurriedly covered the exposed baggage.
The mules near the camp cropped the grass with quick and greedy
bites round the circuit of their pickets, as if conscious that the
storm would soon prevent their feeding, and already humped their
backs as the chilling rain fell upon their flanks. The prairic
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 25
wolves crept closer to the camp, and in the confusion that ensued
from the hurry of the trappers to cover the perishable portions of
- their equipment, contrived more than once to dart off with a piece
of meat, when their peculiar and mournful chiding would be
heard as they fought for the possession of the ravished morsel.
‘When every thing was duly protected, the men set to work to
spread their beds, those who had not troubled themselves to erect
a shelter getting under the lee of the piles of packs and saddles ;
while Killbuck, disdaining even such care of his carcass, threw
his buffalo robe on the bare ground, declaring his intention to
“take” what was coming at all hazards, and “any how.” Se-
lecting a high spot, he drew his knife and proceeded to cut drains
round it to prevent the water running into him as he lay; then
taking a single robe he carefully spread it, placing under the end
farthest from the fire a large. stone brought from the creek.
Having satisfactorily adjusted this pillow, he added another robe
to the one already laid, and placed over all a Navajo blanket,
supposed to be impervious to rain. Then he divested himself
of his pouch and powder-horn, ec with his rifle, he placed in-
side his bed, and quickly covered up, lest the wet should reach
them. Having performed these operations to his satisfaction, he
lighted his pipe by the hissing ee of the halfextinguished firé
(for by this time the rain poured in torrents), and went the rounds
of the picketed animals, cautioning the guard round the camp to
keep their “ a skinned, for there would be ‘ powder burned’
before morning.” Then returning to the fire, and licking with
his moccasined foot the slumbering ashes, he squatted down. before
it, and thus soliloquized :—
« Thirty year have I been knocking about these mountains from
Missoura’s head as far sothe as the starving Gila. I’ve trapped a
‘heap,’ * and many a hundred pack of beaver I’ve traded in my
* An Indian is always a “heap” hingry or thirsty—loves a “heap’—is a
“heap” brave—in fact, “heap” is tantamount to very much.
B ext
.
¥
5 .
26 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
time, wagh! What has come of it, and whar’s the dollars as
ought to be in my possibles? Whar’s the ind of this, I say?
Is a man to be hunted by Injuns all his days? Many’s the
time I’ve said I’d strike for Taos and trap a squaw, for this
child’s getting old, and feels like wanting a woman’s face about
his lodge for the balance of lis days; but when it comes to cach-
ing of the old traps, I’ve the smallest kind of heart, I have. Cer-
tain, the old state come across my mind now and again, but who's
thar to remember my old body? But them diggings get too over
crowded nowadays, and it is hard to fetch breath amongst them
big bands of corncrackers to Missoura. Beside, it goes against.
natur to leave bufler meat and feed on hog; and them white gals
are too much like picturs, and a deal too ‘fofaraw’ (fanfaron).
No; darn the settlements, I say. It won’t shine, and whar’s the
dollars? Howsever, beaver’s ‘ bound to rise ;) human natur ean’t
go on selling beaver a dollar a pound; no, no, that arn’t a-going
to shine much longer, I know. Them was the times when this
child first went to the mountains: six dollars the plew—old ’un
or kitten. Wagh! but it’s bound to rise, I says agin ; and hyar’s
a coon knows whar to lay his hand on a dozen pack right handy,
and then he’ll take the Taos trail, wagh !”
Thus soliloquizing, Killbuck knocked the ashes from his pipe,
_ and placed it in the gayly ornamented case that hung round his
neck, drew his knife-belt a couple of holes tighter, resumed his
pouch and powder-horn, took his rifle, which he carefully covered
with the folds of his Navajo blanket, and striding into the dark-
ness, cautiously reconnoitered the vicinity of the camp. When he
returned to the fire he sat himself down as before, but this time
with his rifle across his lap; and at intervals his keen gray eye
glanced piercingly around, particularly toward an old, weather- .
beaten, and grizzled mule, who now, old stager as she was, having
filled her belly, stood lazily over her picket pin, with her head bent
down and her long ears flapping over her face, her limbs gathered
1
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 27
under her, and her back arched to throw off the rain, tottering from
side to side as she rested and slept.
“Yep, old gal!’ cried Killbuck to the animal, at the same time
picking a piece of burnt wood from the fire and throwing it at her,
at which the mule gathered itself up and cocked her ears as she
recognized her master’s voice. ‘‘ Yep, old gal! and keep your nose
open ; thar’s brown skin about, I’m thinkin,’ and maybe you'll get
‘roped’ (lasso’d) by a Rapaho, afore mornin’.”” Again the old trap-
per settled himself before the fire; and soon his head began to nod,
as drowsiness stole over him. Already he was in the land of
dreams ; reveling among bands of “ fat cow,” or hunting along a
stream well peopled with beaver; with no Indian “sign” to dis-
turb him, and the merry rendezvous in close perspective, and his
peltry selling briskly at six dollars the plew, and galore of alcohol
to ratify the trade. Or, perhaps, threading the back trail of his
memory, he passed rapidly through the perilous vicissitudes of his
hard, hard life—starving one day, reveling in abundance the next ;
now beset by whooping savages thirsting for his blood, baying his
enemies like the hunted deer, but with the unflinching courage of
a man; now, all care thrown aside, secure and forgetful of the past,
a welcome guest in the hospitable trading fort ; or back, as the trail
gets fainter, to his childhood’s home in the brown forests of old
Kentuck, tended and cared for—his only thought to enjoy the
hornminy and johnny cakes of his thrifty mother. Once more, in
warm and well remembered homespun, he sits on the snake fence
round the old clearing, and munching his hoe-cake at set of sun,
listens to the mournful note of the whip-poor-will, or the harsh cry
of the noisy cat-bird, or watches the agile gambols of the squirrels
as they chase each other, chattering the while, from branch to
branch of the lofty tamarisks, wondering how long it will be before
he will be able to lift his father’s heavy rifle, and use it against
the tempting game. Sleep, however, sat lightly on the eyes of the
wary mountaineer, and a snort from the old mule in an instant
28 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
stretched his every nerve. Without a movement of his body, his
keen eye fixed itself upon the mule, which now stood with head
bent round, and eyes and ears pointed in one direction, snuffing the
night air, and snorting with apparent fear. A low sound from the
wakeful hunter roused the others from their sleep; and raising
their bodies from their well-soaked beds, a single word apprized
them of their danger.
* Tnjuns !”
Scarcely was the word out of Killbuck’s lips when, above the
howling of the furious wind, and the pattering of the rain, a hun-
dred savage yells broke suddenly upon their ears from all directions
round.the camp; a score of rifle-shots rattled from the thicket, and
a cloud of arrows whistled through the air, while a crowd of Indians
charged upon the picketed animals, ‘“Owgh, owgh—owgh—
owgh—g-h-h.’” “ Afoot, by gor!’ shouted Killbuck, “and the old
mule gone at that. On ’em, boys, for old Kentuck !’ And he
rushed toward his mule, which jumped and snorted, mad with
fright, as a naked Indian strove to fasten a lariat round her nose,
having already cut the rope which fastened her to the picket pin.
“Quit that, you cussed devil!” roared the trapper, as he jumped
upon the savage, and without raising his rifle to his shoulder, made
a deliberate thrust with the muzzle at his naked breast, striking
him full, and at the same time pulling the trigger, actually driving
the Indian two paces backward with the shock, when he fell in a
heap, and dead. But at the same moment, an Indian, sweeping
his club round his head, brought it with fatal force down upon
Killbuck ; for a moment the hunter staggered, threw out his arms
wildly into the air, and fell headlong to the ground.
“Owgh! owgh, owgh-h-h!” cried the Rapaho, and, striding
over the prostrate body, he seized with his left hand the middle
lock of the trapper’s long hair, and drew his knife round the head
to separate the scalp from the skull. As he bent over to his work,
the trapper named La Bonté saw his companion’s peril, rushed
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 29
quick as thought at the Indian, and buried his knife to the hilt
between his shoulders. With a gasping shudder the Rapaho fell
dead upon the prostrate body of his foe.
The attack, however, lasted but a few seconds. The dash at
the animals had been entirely successful, and, driving them before
them, with loud cries, the Indians disappeared quickly in the
darkness. Without waiting for daylight, two of the three trappers
who alone were to be seen, and who had been within the shanties
at the time of attack, without a moment’s delay commenced pack-
ing two horses, which having been fastened to the shanties had
escaped the Indians, and placing their squaws upon them, shower-
ing curses and imprecations on their enemies, left the camp, fearful
of another onset, and resolved to retreat and cache themselves until
the danger was over. Not so La Bonté, who, stout and true, had
done his best in the fight, and now sought the body of his old
comrade, from which, before he could examine the wounds, he had
first to remove the corpse of the Indian he had slain. Killbuck
still breathed. He had been stunned ; but, revived by the cold
rain beating upon his face, he soon opened his eyes, and recognized.
his trusty friend, who, sitting down, lifted his head into his lap,
and wiped away the blood that streamed from the wounded
scalp. ’
“Ts the top-knot gone, boy?” asked Killbuck ; ‘for my head
feels queersome, I tell you.”
“'Thar’s the Injun as felt like lifting it,” answered the other,
kicking the dead body with his foot.
“Wagh! boy, you’ve struck a coup; so scalp the nigger right
off, and then fetch me a drink.”’
The morning broke clear and cold. With the exception of a
light cloud which hung over Pike’s Peak, the sky was spotless ;
and a perfect calm had succeeded the boisterous storm of the
previous night. The creek was swollen and turbid with the
rains ; and as La Bonté proceeded a little distance down the bank
30 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
to find a passage to the water, he suddenly stopped short, and an
involuntary cry escaped him. Within a few feet of the bank lay
the body of one of his companions, who had formed the guard at
the time of the Indians’ attack. It was lying on the face, pierced
through the chest with an arrow which was buried to the very
feathers, and the scalp torn from the bloody skull. Beyond, but
all within a hundred yards, lay the three others, dead, and similarly
mutilated. So certain had been the aim, and so close the enemy,
that each had died without a struggle, and consequently had been
unable to alarm the camp. La Bonté, with a glance at the bank,
saw at once that the wily Indians had crept along the creek, the
noise of the storm facilitating their approach undiscovered, and
crawling up the bank, had watched their opportunity to shoot
simultaneously the four hunters on guard.
Returning to Killbuck, he apprized him of the melancholy fate
of their companions, and held a council of war as to their proceed-
ings. The old hunter's mind was soon made up. ‘“ First,” said
he, “I get back my old mule; she’s carried me and my traps
these twelve years, and I aint a goin’ to lose her yet. Second, I
feel like taking hair, and some Rapahos has to ‘ go under’ for this
night’s work. 'Third, We have got to cache the beaver. Fourth,
We take the Injun trail, wharever it leads.”
No more daring mountaineer than La Bonté ever trapped a
beaver, and no counsel could have more exactly tallied with his
own inclination than the law laid down by old Killbuck.
‘‘ Agreed,” was his answer, and forthwith he set about forming
a cache. In this instance they had not sufficient time to construct
a regular one, so they contented themselves with securing their
packs of beaver in buffalo robes, and tying them in the forks of
several cotton-woods, under which the camp had been made.
This done, they lit a fire, and cooked some buffalo meat: and,
while smoking a pipe, carefully cleaned their rifles and filled their
horns and pouches with good store of ammunition.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 31
A prominent feature in the character of the hunters of the far
west is their quick determination and resolve in cases of extreme
difficulty and peril, and their fixedness of purpose, when any plan
of operations has been laid, requiring bold and instant action in
carrying out. It is here that they so infinitely surpass the savage
Indian, in bringing to a successful issue their numerous hostile ex-
peditions against the natural foe of the white man in the wild and
barbarous regions of the west. Ready to resolve as they are
prompt to execute, and combining far greater dash and daring
with equal subtlety and caution, they possess great advantage
over the vacillating Indian, whose superstitious mind in a great
degree paralyzes the physical energy of his active body; and who,
by waiting for propitious signs and seasons before he undertakes
an enterprise, often loses the opportunity by which his white and
more civilized enemy knows so well how to profit.
Killbuck and La Bonté were no exceptions to this characteristic
rule ; and before the sun was a hand’s-breadth above the eastern
horizon, the two hunters were running on the trail of the victori-
_ ous Indians. Striking from the creek where the night attack was
made, they crossed to another, known as Kioway, running parallel
to Bijou, a few hours’ journey westward, and likewise heading in
the “divide.” Following this to its forks, they struck ito the
upland prairies lying at the foot of the mountains; and crossing
to the numerous water-courses which feed the creek called “ Ver-
milion” or “ Cherry,” they pursued the trail over the mountain-
spurs until it reached a fork of the Boiling Spring. Here the
war-party had halted and held a consultation, for from this point
the trail turned at a tangent to the westward, and entered the
rugged gorges of the mountains. It was now evident to the two
trappers that their destination was the Bayou Salade—a mount-
ain valley which is a favorite resort of the buffalo in the winter
season, and which, and for this reason, is often frequented by the
Yuta Indians as their wintering ground. That the Rapahos were
32 LIFE IN THE FAR. WEST.
on a war expedition against the Yutas, there was little doubt ;
and Killbuck, who knew every inch of the ground, saw at once,
by the direction the trail had taken, that they were making for
the Bayou in order to surprise their enemies, and, therefore, were
not following the usual Indian trail up the canon of the Boiling
Spring River. Having made up his mind to this, he at once
struck across the broken ground lying at the foot of the mountains,
steering a course a little to the eastward of north, or almost in the
direction whence he had come: and then, pointing westward,
about noon he crossed a mountain chain, and descending into a
ravine through which a little rivulet tumbled over its rocky bed,
he at once proved the correctness of his judgment by striking the
Indian trail, now quite fresh, as it wound through the canon along
the bank of thestream. The route he had followed, impracticable
to pack-animals, had saved at least half a day’s journey, and brought
them within a short distance of the object of their pursuit ; for,
at the head of the gorge, a lofty bluff presenting itself, the hunters
ascended to the summit, and, looking down, descried at their very
feet the Indian camp, with their own stolen cavallada feeding
quietly round.
‘““Wagh!” exclaimed both the hunters in a breath. “ And
thar’s the old gal at that,” chuckled Killbuck, as he recognized
his old grizzled mule making good play at the rich buffalo grass
with which these mountain valleys abound.
“Tf we don’t make ‘a raise’ afore long, I wouldn’t say so.
Thar plans is plain to this child as beaver sign. They’re after
Yuta hair, as certain as this gun has got hind-sights; but they _
arn’t a-goin’ to pack them animals after ’°em, and have crawled
like ‘rattlers’ along this bottom to cache ’em till they come back
trom the Bayou—and maybe they’ll leave half a dozen ‘ soldiers’*
with ’em.”
* The young untried warriors of the Indians are thus called.
Ee SE
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. . 33
How right the wily trapper was in his conjectures will be
shortly proved. Meanwhile, with his companion, he descended
the bluff, and pushing his way into a thicket of dwarf pine and
cedar, sat down on a log, and drew from an end of the blanket,
strapped on his shoulder, a portion of a buffalo’s liver, which they
both discussed, yaw, with infinite relish ; eating in lieu of bread
(an unknown luxury in these parts) sundry strips of dried fat. To
have kindled a fire would have been dangerous, since it was not
impossible that some of the Indians might leave their camp to
hunt, when the smoke would at once have betrayed the presence
of enemies. A light was struck, however for their pipes, and after
enjoying this true consolation for some time, they laid a blanket on
the ground, and, side by side, soon fell asleep.
If Killbuck had been a prophet, or the most prescient of “ medi-
cine men,’ he could not have more exactly predicted the move-
ments inthe Indian camp. About three hours before “‘ sun-down,”
he rose and shook himself, which movement was sufficient to
awaken his companion. ‘Telling La Bonté to lie down again and
rest, he gave him to understand that he was about to reconnoiter
the enemy’s camp; and after carefully examining his rifle, and
drawing his knife-belt a hole or two tighter, he proceeded on his
dangerous errand. Ascending the same bluff whence he had first
discovered the Indian camp, he glanced rapidly around, and made
himself master of the features of the ground—choosing a ravine
by which he might approach the camp more closely, and without
danger of being discovered. ‘This was soon effected ; and in half
an hour the trapper was lying on his belly on the summit of a
pine-covered bluff, which overlooked the Indians within easy rifle-
shot, and so perfectly concealed by the low spreading branches of
the cedar and arbor-vite, that not a particle of his person could be
detected; unless, indeed, his sharp twinkling gray eye contrasted
too strongly with the green boughs that covered the rest of his face.
Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting upon his trail, for
B®
34 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
he had been careful to pick his steps on the rock-covered ground,
so that not a track of his moccasin was visible. Here he lay,
still as a carcagien in wait for a deer, only now and then shak-
ing the boughs as his body quivered with a suppressed chuckle,
when any movement in the Indian camp caused him to laugh
inwardly at his (af they had known it) unwelcome propinquity.
He was not a little surprised, however, to discover that the
party was much smaller than he had imagined, counting only
‘forty warriors ; and this assured him that the band had divided,
one half taking the Yuta trail by the Boiling Spring, the other
(the one before him) taking a longer circuit in order to reach the
Bayou, and make the attack on the Yutas in a different direc-
tion.
At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. Seated in a
large circle round a very small fire,* the smoke from which as-
cended in a thin straight column, they each in turn puffed a huge
cloud of smoke from three or four long cherry-stemmed pipes, which
went the round of the party; each warrior touching the ground
with the heel of the pipe-bowl, and turning the stem upward and
away from him as “medicine” to the Great Spirit, before he him-
self inhaled the fragrant kinnik-kinnik. The council, however,
was not general, for only fifteerf“of the older warriors took part in
it, the others sitting outside and at some little distance from the
circle. Behind each were his arms—bow and quiver, and shield
hanging from a spear stuck in the ground, and a few guns in
ornamented covers of buckskin were added to some of the equip-
ments.
Near the fire, and in the center of the inner circle, a spear was
fixed upright in the ground, and on this dangled the four scalps of
* There is a great difference between an Indian's fire and a white’s. The
former places the ends of logs to burn gradually ; the latter, the center, besides
making such a bonfire that the Indians truly say, ‘‘ The white makes a fire so hot
that he can not approach to warm himself by it.”
————E
LIFE iN THE FAR WEST. 35
the trappers killed the preceding night ; and underneath them,
affixed to the same spear, was the mystic “medicine bag,” by
which Killbuck knew that the band before him was under the
command of the chief of the tribe.
Toward the grim trophies on the spear, the warriors, who in
turn addressed the council, frequently pointed—more, than one, as
he did so, making the gyratory motion of the right hand and arm,
which the Indians use in describing that they have gained an
advantage by skill or cunning. Then pointing westward, the
speaker would thrust out his arm, extending his fingers at the
same time, and closing and reopening them repeatedly, meaning,
that although four scalps already ornamented the “ medicine’”’ pole,
they were as nothing compared to the numerous trophies they
would bring from the Salt Valley, where they expected to find.
their hereditary enemies the Yutas. “That now was not the
time to count their coups,” (for at this moment one of the warriors
rose from his seat, and, swelling with pride, advanced toward the
spear, pointing to one of the scalps, and then striking his open
hand on his naked breast, jumped into the air, as if about to go
through the ceremony.) ‘That before many suns all their spears
together would not hold the scalps they had taken, and that they
would return to their village and spend a moon relating their
achievements, and-eounting coups.”
All this Killbuck learned; thanks to his knowledge of the
language of signs—a master of which, if even he have no ears or
tongue, never fails to understand, and be understood by, any of the
hundred tribes whose languages are perfectly distinct and different.
He learned, moreover, that at sundown the greater part of the
band would resume the trail, in order to reach the Bayou by the
earliest dawn; and also, that no more than four or five of the
younger warriors would remain with the captured animals. Still
the hunter remained in his position until the sun had disappeared
behind the ridge ; when, taking up their arms, and throwing their —
36 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST:
buffalo robes on their shoulders, the war party of Rapahos, one
behind the other, with noiseless step, and silent as the dumb,
moved away from the camp. When the last dusky form had
disappeared behind a point of rocks which shut in the northern
end of the little valley or ravine, Killbuck withdrew his head from
its screen, crawled backwards on his stomach from the edge of the
bluff, and, rismg from the ground, shook and stretched himself;
then gave one cautious look around, and immediately proceeded to
rejoin his companion.
“ Lave (get up), boy,” said Killbuck, as soon as he reached
him. ‘“Hyar’s grainin’ to do afore long—and sun’s about down,
Pm thinking.”
“Ready, old hos,” answered La Bonté, giving himself a shake.
* What’s the sien like, and how many’s the lodge ?”
“Fresh, and five, boy. How do you feel?”
“ Half froze for hair. Wagh!”
‘We'll have moon to-night, and as soon as she gets up, we'll
make ’em ‘come.’”’
Killbuck then described to his companion what he had seen,
and detailed his plan. ‘This was simply to wait until the moon
afforded sufficient light, then to approach the Indian camp and
charge into it, “lift” as much “hair” as they could, recover their
animals, and start at once to the Bayou and join the friendly
Yutas, warning them of the coming danger. The risk of falling
in with either of the Rapaho bands was hardly considered ; to
avoid this, they trusted to their own foresight, and the legs of
their mules, should they encounter them.
Between sundown and the rising of the moon, they had leisure
to eat their supper, which, as before, consisted of raw buflalo-
liver; after discussing which, Killbuck pronounced himself “a
‘heap’ better,” and ready for “ huggin.”
In the short interval of almost perfect darkness which preceded
the moonlight, and taking advantage of one of the frequent squalls
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 37
of wind which howl down the narrow gorges of the mountains,
these two determined men, with footsteps noiseless as the panther’s,
crawled to the edge of the little plateau of some hundred yards’
square, where the five Indians in charge of the animals were
seated round the fire, perfectly unconscious of the vicinity of danger.
Several clumps of cedar bushes dotted the small prairie, and
among these the well-hobbled mules and horses were feeding.
These animals, accustomed to the presence of whites, would not
notice the two hunters as they crept from clump to clump nearer
to the fire, and also served, even if the Indians should be on the
watch, to conceal their movements from them.
This the two men at once perceived; but old Killbuck knew
that if he passed within sight or smell of his mule, he would be
received with a hinny of recognition, which would at once alarm
the enemy. He therefore first ascertained where his own animal
was feeding, which luckily was at the farther side of the prairie,
and would not interfere with his proceedings.
Threading their way among the feeding mules, they approached
a clump of bushes about forty yards from the spot where the un-
conscious savages were seated smoking round the fire; and here
they awaited, scarcely drawing breath the while, the moment
when the moon rose above the mountain into the clear cold sky,
and gave them light sufficient to make sure their work of bloody
retribution. Not a pulsation in the hearts of these stern, deter-
mined men beat higher than its wont; not the tremor of a nerve
disturbed their frame. They stood with lips compressed and rifles
ready, their pistols loosened in their belts, their scalp-knives handy
to their gripe. The lurid glow of the coming moon already shot
into the sky above the ridge, which stood out in bold relief
against the light; and the luminary herself just peered over the
mountain, illuminating its pine-clad summit, and throwing her
beams on an opposite peak, when Killbuck touched his compan-
ion’s arm, and whispered, ‘“‘ Wait for the full light, boy.”
38 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
At this moment, however, unseen by the trapper, the old grizzled
mule had gradually approached, as she fed along the plateau; and,
when within a few paces of their retreat, a gleam of moonshine
revealed to the animal the erect forms of the two whites. Sud-
denly she stood still and pricked her ears, and stretching out her
neck and nose, snuffed the air. Well she knew her old master.
Kallbuck, with eyes fixed upon the Indians, was on the point
of giving the signal of attack to his comrade, when the shrill hinny
of his mule reverberated through the gorge. The Indians jumped
to their feet and seized their arms, when Killbuck, with a loud
shout of ‘ At "em, boy ; give the niggurs h—!” rushed from his
concealment, and with La Bonté by his side, yelling a fierce war-
whoop, sprung upon the startled savages.
Panic-struck with the suddenness of the attack, the Indians
scarcely knew where to run, and for a moment stood huddled to-
gether like sheep. Down dropped Killbuck on his knee, and
stretching out his wiping-stick, planted it on the ground at the
extreme length of his arm. As methodically and as coolly as if
about to aim at a deer, he raised his rifle to this rest and pulled
the trigger. At the report an Indian fell forward on his face, at
the same moment that La Bonté, with equal certainty of aim and
like effect, discharged his own rifle.
The three surviving Indians, seeing that their assailants were
but two, and knowing that their guns were empty, came on with
loud yells. With the left hand grasping a bunch of arrows, and
holding the bow already bent and arrow fixed, they steadily ad-
vanced, bending low to the ground to get their objects between
them and the light, and thus render their aim more certain. The
trappers, however, did not care to wait for them. Drawing their
pistols, they charged at once ; and although the bows twanged, and.
the three arrows struck their mark, on they rushed, discharging
their pistols at close quarters. La Bonté threw his empty one at the
head of an Indian who was pulling his second arrow to its head at a
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 39
yard’s distance, drew his knife at the same moment, and made at
him.
But the Indian broke and ran, followed by his surviving compan-
ion; and assoon as Killbuck could ram home another ball, he sent a
shot flying after them as they scrambled up the mountain side, leav-
ing in their fright and hurry their bows and shields on the ground.
The fight was over, and the two trappers confronted each other :
—‘‘ We've given ’em h—!”’ laughed Killbuck.
‘Well, we have,” answered the other, pulling an arrow out of
his arm.—‘‘ Wagh!”
“ We'll lift the hair, any how,” continued the first, ‘‘ afore the
scalp’s cold.”
Taking his whetstone from the little sheath on his knife-belt,
the trapper proceeded to ‘edge’ his knife, and then stepping to the
first prostrate body, he turned it over to examine if any symptom of
vitality remained. “ Thrown cold !’’ he exclaimed, as he dropped the
lifeless arm he had lifted. ‘“ I sighted him about the long ribs, but
the light was bad, and I couldn’t get a ‘bead’ ‘off hand’ any how.”
Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the
center of the Indian’s head, he passed the point edge of his keen
butcher-knife round the parting, turning it at the same time under,
the skin to separate the scalp from the skull; then, with a quick and
sudden jerk of his hand, he removed it entirely from the head, and
giving the reeking trophy a wring upon the grass to free it from
the blood, he coolly hitched it under his belt, and proceeded to the
next; but seeing La Bonté operating upon this, he sought the
third, who lay some little distance from the others. This one was
still alive, a pistol-ball having passed through his body, without
touching a vital spot.
“Gut-shot is this niggur,” exclaimed the trapper; ‘“ them pis-
tols never throws ’em in their tracks ;” and thrusting his knife, for
mercy’s sake, into the bosom of the Indian, he likewise tore the
scalp-lock from his head, and placed it with the other.
40 : LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
-
La Bonte had received two trivial wounds, and Killbuck till
now had been walking about with. an arrow sticking through the
fleshy part of his thigh, the point bemg perceptible near the surface
of the other side. ‘To free his leg from the painful encumbrance,
he thrust the weapon completely through, and then, cutting off the
arrow-head below the barb, he drew it out, the blood flowing freely
from the wound. A tourniquet of buckskin soon stopped this, and,
heedless of the pain, the hardy mountaineer sought for his old
mule, and quickly brought it to the fire (which La Bonté had re-
kindled), lavishing many a caress, and most comical terms of en-
dearment, upon the faithful companion of his wanderings. They
found all the animals safe and well; and after eating heartily of
some venison which the Indians had been cooking at the moment
of the attack, made instant preparations to quit the scene of their
exploit, not wishing to trust to the chance of the Rapahos being
too frightened to again molest them.
Having no saddles, they secured buffalo robes on the backs of
two mules—Killbuck, of course, riding his own—and lost no time
in proceeding on their way. They followed the course of the In-
dians up the stream, and found that it kept the canons and gorges
of the mountains, where the road was better; but it was with no
little difficulty that they made their way, the ground being much
broken, and covered with rocks. Killbuck’s wound became very
painful, and his leg stiffened and swelled distressingly, but he still
pushed on all night, and at daybreak, recognizing their position, he
left the Indian trail, and followed a little creek which rose in a
mountain chain of moderate elevation, and above which, and to the
south, Pike’s Peak towered high into the clouds. With great dif-
ficulty they crossed this ridge, and ascending and descending sev-
eral smaller ones, which gradually smoothed away as they met the
valley, about three hours after sunrise they found themselves in the
southeast corner of the Bayou Salade.
The Bayou Salade, or Salt Valley, is the most southern of three
2
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 41
very extensive valleys, forming a series of table-lands in the very
center of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, known to the
trappers by the name of the “ Parks.’’ The numerous streams by
which they are watered abound in the valuable fur-bearing beaver,
while every species of game common to the west is found here in
great abundance. The Bayou Salade especially, owing to the
salitrose nature of the soil and springs, is the favorite resort of all
the larger animals common to the mountains; and, in the sheltered
prairies of the Bayou, the buffalo, forsaking the barren and inclem-
ent regions of the exposed plains, frequent these upland valleys,
in the winter months; and feeding upon the rich and nutritious
buffalo grass which, on the bare prairies, at that season, is either
dry and rotten, or entirely exhausted, not only sustain life, but re-
tain a great portion of the “condition” that the abundant fall and
summer pasture of the lowlands has laid upon their bones. ‘There-
fore is this valley sought by the Indians as a wintering ground. Its
occupancy has been disputed by most of the mountain tribes, and
long and bloody wars have been waged to make good the claims
set forth by Yuta, Rapaho, Sioux, and Shians. However, to the
first of these it may be said now to belong, since their “ big vil-
lage” has wintered there for many successive years; while the
Rapahos seldom visit it, unless on war expeditions against the
Yutas.
Judging, from the direction the Rapahos were taking, that the
friendly tribe of Yutas were there already, the trappers had re-
solved to joi them as soon as possible; and, therefore, without
resting, pushed on through the uplands, and, toward the middle
of the day, had the satisfaction of descrying the conical lodges of
the village, situated on a large level plateau, through which ran
a mountain stream. A numerous band of mules and horses were
scattered over the pasture, and round them several mounted In-
dians kept guard. As the trappers descended the bluffs into the
plain, some straggling Indians caught sight of them; and in-
42 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
stantly one of them, lassoing a horse from the herd, mounted it,
barebacked, and flew like wind to the village to spread the news.
Soon the lodges disgorged their inmates; first the women and
children rushed to the side of the strangers’ approach; then the
younger Indians, unable to restrain their curiosity, mounted their
horses, and galloped forth to meet them. ‘The old chiefs, envel-
oped in buffalo robes (softly and delicately dressed as the Yutas
alone know how), and with tomahawk held in one hand and rest-
ing in the hollow of the other arm, sallied last of all from their
lodges, and squatting in a row on a sunny bank outside the village,
awaited with dignified composure, the arrival of the whites.
Killbuck was well known to most of them, having trapped in their
country and traded with them years before at Roubideau’s fort at
the head waters of the Rio Grande. After shaking hands with
all who presented themselves, he at onee gave them to understand
that their enemies, the Rapahos, were at hand, with a hundred
warriors at least, elated by the coup they had just struck against
the whites, bringing, moreover, four white scalps to incite them to
brave deeds.
At this news the whole village was speedily in commotion : the
war-shout was taken up from lodge to lodge; the squaws began to
lament and tear their hair; the warriors to paint and arm them-
selves. The elder chiefs immediately met in council, and, over
the medicine-pipe, debated as to the best course to pursue—whether
to wait the attack, or sally out and meet the enemy, In the mean
time, the braves were collected together by the chiefs of their re-
spective bands, and scouts, mounted on the fastest horses, dis-
patched in every direction to procure intelligence of the enemy.
The two whites, after watering their mules and picketing them
in some good grass near the village, drew near the council fire,
without, however, joining in the “ talk,’ until they were invited to
take their seats by the eldest chief. Then Killbuck was called
upon to give his opinion as to the direction in which he judged the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 43
Rapahos to be approaching, which he delivered in their own lan-
guage, with which he was well acquainted. In a short time the
council broke up, and, without noise or confusion, a band of one
handred chosen warriors left the village, immediately after one of
the scouts had galloped in and communicated some intelligence to
the chiefs. Killbuck and La Bonté volunteered to accompany
the war-party, weak and exhausted as they were; but this was
negatived by the chiefs, who left their white brothers to the care
of the women, who tended their wounds; now stiff and painful :
and spreading their buffalo robes in a warm and roomy lodge, left
them to the repose they so much needed.
CHAPTER II.
Tue next morning, Killbuck’s leg was greatly inflamed, and he
was unable to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring
the old mule to the door, that he might give her a couple of ears
of Indian corn, the last remains of the slender store brought by
the Indians from the Navajo country. The day passed, and sun-
down brought no tidings of the war-party. This caused no little
wailing on the part of the squaws, but was interpreted by the
whites as a favorable augury. A little after sunrise, on the second
morning, the long line of the returning warriors was discerned
winding over the prairie, and a scout having galloped in to bring
the news of a great victory, the whole village was soon in a fer-
ment of paint and drumming. A short distance from the lodges,
the warriors halted to await the approach of the people. Old
men, children, and squaws sitting astride their horses, sallied out
to escort the victorious party in triumph to the village. With
loud shouts and songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian
time, they advanced and encircled the returning braves, one of
whom, his face covered with black paint, carried a pole on which
dangled thirteen scalps, the trophies of the expedition. As he
lifted these on high, they were saluted with deafening whoops and
cries of exultation and savage joy. In this manner they entered
the village, almost before the friends of those fallen in the fight
had ascertained their losses. Then the shouts of delight were
converted into yells of grief; the mothers and wives of those
braves who had been killed (and seven had ‘“ gone under’) pres-
ently returned with their faces, necks, and harids blackened, and
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. . 45
danced and howled round the scalp-pole, which had been deposited
a
in the center of the village, in front of the lodge of the great chief.
Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence
that the two bands of Rapahos were hastening to form a junction,
as soon as they learned that their approach was discovered, the
Yutas had successfully prevented it ; and attacking one party, had
entirely defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The
other party had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of
the Yuta warriors were now pursuing them.
To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations sounded
their notes through the village. Paints—vermilion and ochers—
red and yellow—were in great request; while the scrapings of
charred wood, mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for
black, the medicine color.
The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or
more, were erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of
the level prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the center, how-
ever, the space which half a dozen lodges in length would have
taken up was left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted
buffalo skins, tatooed with the mystic totems of the “ medicine”
peculiar to the nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole.
like a decayed tree trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind ;
and on another pole, at a few feet distance, was hung the “ bag”’
with its mysterious contents. Before each lodge a tripod of spears
supported the arms and shields of the Yuta chivalry, and on many
of them, smoke-dried scalps rattled in the wind, former trophies of
the dusky knights who were arming themselves within. Heraldic
devices were not wanting—not, however, graved upon the shield,
but hanging from the spear-head, the actual “totem” of the
warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcagien,
the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the kon-qua-kish, the por-
cupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed skins, displaying
the guardian “medicine” of the warriors they pertained to, and
46. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
representing the mental and corporeal qualities which were sup-
posed to characterize the braves to whom they belonged.
From the center lodge, two or three ‘‘ medicine men,” fantas-
tically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long
peeled wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to
tend a very small fire which they had kindled in the center of
the open space ; and, when a thin column of smoke arose, one of
them planted the scalp-pole obliquely across the fire. Squaws in
robes of white dressed buckskin, garnished with beads and por-
cupines’ quills, and their faces painted bright red and black, then
appeared. ‘These ranged themselves round the outside of the
square, the boys and children of all ages, mounted on bare-backed
horses, galloping round and round, and screaming with eagerness,
excitement and curiosity.
Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and
squatted round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged
on the expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine
man sat under the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees,
which he tapped at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the in-
strument a hollow, monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoul-
der to shoulder, then advanced from the four sides of the square,
and some, shaking a rattle-drum in time with their steps, com-
menced a jumping, jerking dance, now lifting one foot from the
ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the dance with
a chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost extent
of their voices—now dying away, and again bursting into vocifer-
ous measure. Thus they advanced to the center and retreated
to their former positions ; when six squaws, with their faces paint-
ed a dead black made their appearance from the crowd, chanting,
in soft and sweet measure, a lament for the braves the nation had
lost in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole,
their melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified
revenge. In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 47°
but a little distance from the ground, they made their way,
through an interval left in the cirele of warriors, to the grim pole,
and encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it for a few mo-
ments. Then they burst forth with an extempore song, laudatory
of the achievements of their victorious braves. They addressed
the scalps as “sisters” (to be called a squaw is the greatest insult
that can be offered to an Indian), and, spitting at them, upbraided
them with rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta hus-
bands; “that the Yuta warriors and young men despised them,
and chastised them for their forwardness and presumption, bring:
ing back their scalps to their own women.”
After sufficiently proving that they had any thing but lost the
use of their tongues, but possessed, on the contrary, as fair a
length of that formidable weapon as any of their sex, they with-
drew, and left the field in undisputed possession of the men: who,
accompanied by tap of drum, and by the noise of many rattles,
broke out into a war-song in which their own valor was by no
means hidden in a bushel, or modestly refused the light of day.
After this came the more interesting ceremony of a warrior
“‘eounting his coups.” ;
A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a
white horse mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the
breech-clout, holding in his hand a long, taper lance, rode into the
circle, and paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on
high, he darted to the sealp-pole, round which the warriors were
now seated in a semicircle ; and in a loud voice, and with furious
gesticulations, related his exploits, the drums tapping at the con-
elusion of each. On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it
vertically above his head, and commencing with the top one, he
told the feats in which he had raised the trophy hair. When he
had run through these, the drums tapped loudly, and several of
the old chiefs shook their rattles, in corroboration of the truth of
his achievements. The brave, swelling with pride, then pointea
48 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the pole. 'T'wo of these
had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by his own hand,
and this feat, the exploit of the day, had entitled him to the honor
of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into the ground
by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his brawny
and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the antelope,
galloped into the plain : as if overcome by the shock his modesty
had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding
deeds. 4
‘“Wagh !” exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, point-
ing his pipe-stem toward the fast-fading figure of the brave, “ that
Injun’s heart’s about as big as ever it will be, I’m thinking.”
With the Yutas, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the
winter ; and when the spring sun had opened the ice-bound crecks,
and melted the snow on the mountains, and its genial warmth
had expanded the earth and permitted the roots of the grass to
“live” once more, and throw out green and tender shoots, the two
trappers bade adieu to the hospitable Indians, who broke up their
village in order to start for the valleys of the Del Norte. As
they followed the trail from the bayou at sundown, just as they
thought of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary horse-
man riding along, followed by three mules. His huntine-frock of
(riged buckskin, and the rifle resting across the horn of his sad-
dle, at once proclaimed him white; but as A saw the mountain-
eers winding through the canon, driving before them half a_
dozen horses, he judged they might possibly be Indians and ene-
mies, the more so, as their dress was not the usual costume of the
whites. ‘The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise the rifle
in the hollow of his arm, and, gathering up his horse, ride stead-
uly to meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; two
to one in mountain calculation being scarcely considered odds, if
red skin to white.
However, on nearing them, the stranger discovered his mis-
7 a.
. »
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 49
take ;. and, throwing his rifle across the saddle once more, reined
in his horse and waited their approach; for the spot where he
_ then stood, presented an excellent camping-ground, with abun-
“edance of dry wood and convenient water.
fay Where from, stranger ?” a .
. “The divide, and to the bayou for meat; and you are from
there, I see. Any buffalo come in yet ?” |
_“ Heap, and ‘seal-fat at that. What's the sign out on the
plains ?”
War-party of pahos passed Squirrel at sun-down yesterday,
and nearly raised my animals. Sign, too, of more on left fork of
Boiling Spring. No buffalo between this and Bijou. Do you
feel like camping ?”
“Well, we do. But whar’s your companyeros ?”
“Tm alone.”
“Alone! Wagh! how do you get your animals along ?”
“IT go ahead, and they follow the horse.”
“Well, that beats all! That’s a smart-looking hos now; and
runs some, I’m thinking.”
* Well, it does.” a
“Whar’s them mules from? They look like Californy.”
‘“‘ Mexican country—away down south.”
« F{i—! Whar’s yourself from ?”
“There away, too.”
“ What's beaver worth in Taos ?”
Dollar.”
“Tn Saint Louy ?”
“ Same.”
“H—! Any call for buckskin ?”
“A heap! The soldiers in Santa Fé are half-froze for leather ;
and moccasins fetch two dollars, easy.”
Wah! How’s trade on Arkansa, and what's doin to the
emeort t Fay ae
a.
50 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
“Shians at Big Timber, and Bent’s people trading smart.
On North Fork, Jim Waters got a hundred pack right off, and
Sioux making more.”’
“ Whar’s Bill Williams ?”
‘Gone under, they say: the. Diggers took his hair.”
‘“ How’s powder goin ?”
‘“‘'T'wo dollars a pint.”
“ Bacee 2"
“ A plew a plug.”
“ Got any about you ?”
“« Have so.”
‘Give us a chaw; and now let’s camp.”
While unpacking their own animals, the two trappers could
aot refrain from glancing, every now and then, with no little as-
tonishment, at the solitary stranger they had so unexpectedly en-
countered. If truth be told his appearance not a little perplexed
them. His hunting-frock of buckskin, shming with grease, and
fringed pantaloons, over which the well-greased butcher-knife had
evidently been often wiped after cutting his food, or butchering
the carcass of deer and buffalo, were of genuine mountain make.
His face, clean shaved, exhibited in its well-tanned and weather-
seaten complexion, the effects of such natural cosmetics as sun
and wind ; and under the mountain hat of felt which covered his
head, long uncut hair hung in Indian fashion on his shouiders.
All this would have passed muster, had it not been for the most
extraordinary equipment of a double-barreled rifle ; which, when it
-
had attracted the eyes of the mountaineers, elicited no little aston-
ishment, not to say derision. But, perhaps, nothing excited their
admiration so much as the perfect docility of the stranger’s ani-
mals; which, almost lke dogs, obeyed his voice and call; and
albeit that one, in a small sharp head and pointed ears, expanded
nostrils, and eye twinkling and malicious, exhibited the personi-
fication of a “ lurking devil,” yet they could not but admire the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 51
perfect ease with which even this one, in common with the rest,
permitted herself to be handled.
Dismounting, and unhitching from the horn of his saddle the
coil of skin rope, one end of which was secured round the neck of
the horse, he proceeded to unsaddle; and while so engaged, the
three mules, two of which were packed, one with the unbutchered
carcass of a deer, the other with a pack of skins, &c., followed
leisurely into the space chosen for the camp, and, cropping the
grass at their ease, waited until a whistle called them to be un-
packed.
The horse was a strong square-built bay ; and, although the se-
verities of a prolonged winter, with scanty pasture and long and
trying travel, had robbed his bones of fat and flesh, tucked up his
flank, and ‘““ewed’’ his neck ; still his clean and well-set legs, ob-
lique shoulder, and withers fine as a deer’s, in spite of his gaunt
half-starved appearance, bore ample testimony as to what he had
been ; while his clear cheerful eye, and the hearty appetite with
which he fell to work on the coarse grass of the bottom, proved
that he had something in him still, and was game as ever. His
tail, gnawed by the mules in days of strait, attracted the observant
mountaineers.
‘Hard doins when it come to that,” remarked La Bonté. '
Between the horse and two of the mules a mutual and great af-
fection appeared to subsist, which was no more than natural, when
their master observed to his companions that they had traveled to-
gether upwards of two thousand miles. '
One of these mules was a short thick-set, stumpy animal, with
an enormous head surmounted by proportionable ears, and a pair
of unusually large eyes, beaming the most perfect good temper and
docility (most uncommon qualities in a mule). Her neck was
thick, and rendered more so in appearance by reason of her mare
not being roached (or, in English, hogged), which privilege she
alone enjoyed of the trio; and her short, strong legs, ending in
52 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
small, round, cat-like hoofs, were feathered with a profusion of
dark brown hair.
As she stood-stock-still, while the stranger removed the awk-
wardly packed deer from her back, she flapped her huge ears back-
ward and forward, occasionally turning her head, and laying her
cold nose against her master’s cheek. When the pack was re-
moved, he advanced to her head, and resting it on his shoulder,
rubbed her broad and grizzled cheeks with both his hands for sev-
eral minutes, the old mule laying her ears, like a rabbit, back
upon her neck, and with half-closed eyes enjoyed mightily the ma-
nipulation. Then, giving her a smack upon the haunch, and a
“hep-a” well known to the mule kind, the old favorite threw up
her heels and cantered off to the horse, who was busily cropping
the buffalo grass on the bluff above the stream.
Great was the contrast between the one just described and the
next which came up to be divested of her pack. She, a tall beau-
tifully shaped Mexican mule, of a light mouse color, with a head
like a deer’s, and long springy legs, trotted up obedient to the call,
but with ears bent back and curled up nose, and tail compressed
between her legs. As her pack was being removed, she groaned
and whined like a dog, as a thong or loosened strap touched her
ticklish body, lifting her hind-quarters in a succession of jumps or
preparatory kicks, and looking wicked as a panther. When nothing
but the fore pack-saddle remained she had worked herself into the
last stage; and as the stranger cast loose the girth of buffalo hide,
and was about to lift the saddle and draw the crupper from the
tail she drew her hind legs under her, more tightly compressed her
tail, and almost shrieked with rage.
“Stand clear,’ he roared (knowing what was coming), and
raised the saddle, when out went her hind legs, up went the pack
into the air, and, with it dangling at her heels, away she tore,
kicking the offending saddle as she ran. Her master, however,
took this as matter of course, followed her and brought back the
.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 53
saddle, which he piled on the others to windward of the fire one of
the trappers was kindling. Fire-making is a simple process with
the mountaineers. ‘Their bullet-pouches always contain a flint,
and steel, and sundry pieces of “ punk’* or tinder; and pulling a
handful of dry grass, which they screw into a nest, they place the
lighted punk in this, and, closing the grass over it, wave it in the
air, when it soon ignites, and readily kindles the dry sticks forming
the foundation of the fire.
The tit-bits of the deer the stranger had brought in, were soon
roasting over the fire ; while, as soon as the burning logs had de-
posited a sufficiency of ashes, a hole was raked in them, and the
head of the deer, skin, hair, and all, placed in this primitive oven,
and carefully covered with the hot ashes.
A “heap” of “fat meat” in perspective, our mountaineers en-
joyed their ante-prandial pipes, recounting the news of the respect-
ive regions whence they came; and so well did they like each
other’s company, so sweet was the “ honey-dew” tobacco of which
the strange hunter had good store, so plentiful the game about the
creek, and so abundant the pasture for their winter-starved ani-
mals, that before the carcass of the ‘two-year’ buck had been
more than four-fifths consumed ; and, although rib after rib had
been picked and chucked over their shoulders to the wolves, and
one fore leg and the “bit” of all, the head, were still cooked before
them,—the three had come to the resolution to join company, and
hunt in their present locality for a few days at least—the owner
of the ‘‘two-shoot” gun volunteering to fill their horns with pow:
der, and find tobacco for their pipes.
Here, on plenty of meat, of venison, bear, and antelope, they
merrily luxuriated ; returning after their daily hunts to the bright-
ly burning camp-fire, where one always remained to guard the an-
imals, and unloading their packs of meat, (all choicest portions),
* A pithy substance found ‘in dead pine-trees.
o4 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
ate late into the night, and, smoking, wiled away the time in nar-
rating scenes in their hard-spent lives, and fighting their battles
oer again,
The younger of the trappers he who has figured under the name
of La Bonté, had excited, by scraps and patches from his history,
no little curiosity in the stranger’s mind to learn the ups and
downs of his career; and one night, when they assembled earlier
than usual at the fire, he prevailed upon the modest trapper to
“unpack”? some passages in his wild, adventurous life.
‘‘ Maybe,” commenced the mountaineer, ‘‘ you both.remember
when old Ashley went out with the biggest kind of band to trap the
Columbia, and head-waters of Missoura and Yellow Stone. Well,
that was the time this nigeur first felt ike taking to the mountains.”
This brings us back to the year of our Lord 1825; and perhaps
it will be as well, in order to render La Bonté’s mountain language
intelligible, to translate it at once into tolerable English, and to
tell in the third person, but from his own lips, the scrapes which
befell him in a sojourn of more than twenty years in the Far West,
and the causes that impelled him to quit the comfort and civiliza-
tion of his home, to seek the perilous but engaging life of a trapper
of the Rocky Mountains.
La Bonté was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from
Memphis, on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river.
His father was a Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of
Tennessee. When a boy, our trapper was “some,” he said, with
the rifle, and always had a hankering for the west; particularly
when, on accompanying his father to Saint Louis every spring, he
saw the different bands of traders and hunters start upon their an-
nual expeditions to the mountains. Greatly did he envy the inde-
pendent, zsowciant trappers, as, in all the glory of beads and
buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawkin’s door (the
rifle maker of St. Louis), and bade adieu to the cares and tram-
mels of civilized life.
LIFE IN THE.FAR WEST. 55
However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into
a trap one fine day, set by Mary Brand, a neighbor’s daughter,
and esteemed “some punkins,” or in other words, toasted as the
beauty of Memphis County, by the susceptible Mississippians.
From that moment he was “ gone beaver ;” “he felt queer,” he
said, “all over, like a buffalo shot in the lights; he had no relish
for mush and molasses ; homminy and johnny cakes failed to excite
his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran by him unscathed ; he didn’t
know, he said, whether his rifle had hind-sights or not. He felt
bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him he didn’t know.”
Mary Brand—Mary Brand—Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock
ticked it. Mary Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down
to sleep. Mary Brand! his mfle-lock spoke it plainly when he
cocked it, to raise a shaking sight at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary
Brand! the whip-poor-will sung it, instead of her own well-known
note; the bull-frogs croaked it in the swamp, and musquitoes
droned it in his ear as he tossed about his bed at night, wakeful,
and striving to think what ailed him.
Who could that strapping young fellow, who passed the door
just now, be going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And
who can Big Pete Herring be dressing that silver fox-skin so care-
fully for? For whom but Mary Brand? And who is it that
jokes, and laughs, and dances, with all the “ boys’ but him ; and
why ?
Who but Mary Brand: and because the love-sick booby care-
fully avoids her.
‘And Mary Brand herself—what is she like ?”
“She’s ‘some’ now; that zs a fact, and the biggest kind of
punkin at that,” would have been the answer from any man,
woman, or child in Memphis County, and truly spoken too; always
understanding that the pumpkin is the fruit by which the me-plus-
ultra of female perfection is expressed amu. the figuratively-
speaking westerns. a
a
56 LIFE. IN. THE: FAR WEST.
Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight
and slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded
bust, and neck white and slender as the swan’s. Her features
were small, but finely chiseled ; and in this, it may be remarked,
the lower orders of the American women differ from, and far sur-
pass the same class in England, or elsewhere, where the features,
although far prettier, are more vulgar and common-place. Mary
Brand had the bright blue eye, thin nose, and small but sweetly-
formed mouth, the too fair complexion, and dark brown hair,
which characterize the beauty of the Anglo-American, the heavy
masses (hardly curls), that fell over her face and neck, contrasting
with their polished whiteness. Such was Mary Brand: and
_ when to her good looks are added a sweet disposition, and all the
best qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be allowed that she
fully justified the eulogiums of the good people of Memphis.
Well, to cut a love-story short, in domg which not a little
moral courage is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately in love
with the pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to
her, for he was a proper lad of twenty—-six feet in his moccasins—
the best hunter and rifle-shot in the country, with many other ad-
vantages too numerous to mention. But when did the course,
&c. e’er run smoooth? When the affair had become a recognized
‘courting’ (and Americans alone know the horrors of such pro-
longed purgatory), they became, to use La Bonté’s words, “awful
fond,” and consequently about once a week had their tiffs and
makes-up.
However, on one occasion, at a “ husking,” and during one of
these tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescrib-
able feeling, brought to her aid jealousy—that old serpent who
has caused such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over
the corn-cobs with Big Pete, La Bonté’s former and only rival,
struck so hard a Blow at the latter’s heart, that on the moment
his brain caught fire, blood danced before his eyes, and he became
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 57
like one possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling
emotion—-better for him had he minded his corn shelling alone ;—
and the more to annoy his rival, paid the most sedulous attention
to pretty Mary.
Young La Bonté stood it as long as human nature, at boiling
heat, could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his ap-
parent triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist
of the girl with his arm, and snatching a sudden kiss, he jumped
upright from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood
in the center of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and
crying to him, hoarse with passion, ‘“‘ to follow if he was a man,”
he left the house.
At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the west-
ern country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between
the hot-blooded youths ; and of such frequent occurrence and in-
variably bloody termination did these encounters become, that they
scarcely produced sufficient excitement to draw together half-a-
dozen spectators.
In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so
well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who
had witnessed the affair, but all the neighborhood, thronged to the
scene of action, in a large field in front of the house, where the -
preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonté were bein&
arranged by their respective friends.
Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness
was likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but
she knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The
poor girl, who was most ardently attached to La Bonté, was
carried, swooning, into the house, where all the women congregat-
ed, and were locked in by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer,
thought but. little of bloodshed, but refused to let the ‘“ women
folk” witness the affray.
Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
ot
58 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles,
and had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hang-
ing over the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on
the ground, they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing
away a few paces only on each side, left one man to give the
word. ‘This was the single word “fire ;”’ and, after this signal
was given, the combatants were at liberty to fire away until one
or the other dropped.
At the word, both the men quickly raised their rifles to the
shoulder, and, while the sharp cracks instantaneously rang, they
were seen to flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet
entering his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few mo-
ments, the blood running down La Bonté’s neck from a wound
under the left jaw, while his opponent was seen to place his hand
once to his right breast, as if to feel the position of his wound,
they commenced reloading their rifles. But, as Pete was in the
act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick,
he suddenly dropped his right arm—the rifle slipped from his
grasp—and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man—he fell
dead to the ground.
Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another,
and the consequences of the duel were, that the constables were
soon on the trail of a Bonté to arrest him. He easily avoided
them, and taking to the woods, lived for several days in as wild a
state as the beasts he hunted and killed for his support.
Tired of this, he at last resolved to quit the country, and betake
himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an in-
clination.
When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had grown
slack in their search of him, and that the coast was comparatively
clear, he determined to start on his distant expedition to the Far
West.
~LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. . 59
Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he
sought and obtained a last interview with Mary Brand.
“Mary,” said he, “I’m about to break. They’re hunting me
like a fall buck, and I’m bound to quit. Don’t think any more
about me, for I shall never come back.”
Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her head on the table near
which she sat. When she again raised it, she saw La Bonté, his
long rifle upon his shoulder, striding with rapid steps from the
house. Year after year rolled on, and he did not return.
CHAPTER III.
A Few days after his departure, La Bonté found himself at St.
Louis, the emporium of the fur trade, and the fast-rising metrop-
olis of the precocious settlements of the west. Here, a prey to
the agony of mind which jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix
into a very puchero of misery, he got into the company of certain
‘“‘rowdies,’ a class that every western city particularly abounds
in ; and, anxious to drown his sorrows in any way, and quite un-
scrupulous as to the means, he plunged into all the vicious ex-
citements of drinking, gambling, and fighting, which form the
every-day amusements of the rising generation of St. Louis.
Perhaps in no other part of the United States, where indeed
humanity is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual
phases, is there a population so marked in its general character,
and at the same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the
above-named city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yester-
day—for what are thirty years in the growth of a metropolis ?—
its founders are now scarcely passed middle life, regarding with
astonishment the growing works of their hands; and while gazing
upon its busy quays, piled with grain and other produce of the
west, its fleets of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside
the wharves, its well-stored warehouses, and all the bustling con-
comitants of a great commercial depot, they can scarcely realize
the memory of a few short years, when on the same spot nothing
was to be seen but the miserable hovels of a French village—the
only sign of commerce being the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian
traders, laden with peltries from the distant regions of the Platte
al
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 61
and Upper Missouri. Where now intelligent and wealthy mer-
chants walk erect, in conscious substantiality of purse and credit,
and direct the commerce of a vast and well-peopled region, there
stalked but the other day, in dress of buckskin, the Indian trader
of the west ; and all the evidences of life, mayhap, consisted of
the eccentric vagaries of the different bands of trappers and hardy
mountaineers, who accompanied, some for pleasure and some ‘as
escort, the periodically arriving bateaux, laden with the beaver
skins and buffalo robes collected during the season at the different
trading posts in the Far West.
These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened
to commerce and the plow the vast and fertile regions of the West.
Rough and savage though they were, they were the true pioneers
of that extraordinary tide of civilization which has poured its re-
sistless current through tracts large enough for kings to govern,
over a country now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short
years ago, countless herds of buffalo reamed unmolested, where the
bear and deer abounded, and the savage Indian skulked through
the woods and prairies, lord of the unappreciated soil that now
yields its prolific treasures to the spade and plow of civilized
man. To the wild and half-savage trapper, who may be said to
exemplify the energy, enterprise, and hardihood characteristic of
the American people, divested of all the false and vicious glare
with which a high state of civilization, too rapidly attained, has
obscured their real and genuine character, in which the above
traits are eminently prominent—to these men alone is due the em-
pire of the West, destined in a few short years to become the most
important of those confederate states composing the mighty union
of North America.
Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur trade, St.
Louis, still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves
even now, in the character of its population, many of the marked
peculiarities distinguishing its early founders, who were identified
7
62 LIFE IN THE .FAR.WEST.
f
with the primitive Indian in hardihood and instinctive wisdom
While the French portion of the population retain the thoughtless
levity and frivolous disposition of their original source, the Ameri-
cans of St. Louis, who may lay claim to be native, as it were, are
as strongly distinguished for determination and energy of character
as they are for physical strength and animal courage ; and are re-
markable, at the same time, for a singular aptitude in carrying out
commercial enterprises to successful terminations, apparently in-
compatible with the thirst of adventure and excitement which
forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St. Louis and
with her merchants have originated many commercial enterprises
of gigantic speculation, not confined to the immediate locality or
to the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of the
continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it
must be remembered that St. Louis is situated inland, at a dis-
tance of upward of one thousand miles from the sea, and three
thousand from the capital of the United States.
Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little aris-
tocracy even here, a large portion of her population, still connected
with the Indian and fur trade, preserve all their original charac-
teristics, unacted upon by the influence of advancing civilization.
There is, moreover, a large floating population of foreigners of all
nations, who must possess no little amount of enterprise to be
tempted to this spot, whence they spread over the remote western
tracts, still infested by the savage ; so that, if any of their blood
is infused into the native population, the characteristic energy and
enterprise is increased, and not tempered down by the foreign cross.
But, perhaps, the most singular of the casual population are
the mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping,
and with good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their ad-
ventures, wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves for a
time, in all the gayety and dissipation of the western city. In
one of the back streets of the town is a tavern well known as the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 63
>
and hither the trappers resort, drink-
ing and fighting as long as their money lasts, which, as they are
generous and lavish as Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such
scenes, both tragic and comic, as are enacted in the Rocky-Mount-
ain House, are beyond the powers of pen to describe ; and when
a fandango is in progress, to which congregate the coquettish
belles from ‘‘ Vide Poche,” as the French portion of the suburb
is nicknamed, the grotesque endeavors of the bear-like mount-
aineers to sport a figare on the light fantastic toe, and their in-
sertions into the dance of the mvstic jumps of Terpsichorean In-
* Rocky-Mountain House,’
dians when engaged in the “ medicine” dances in honor of bear,
of buffalo, or ravished scalp, are such startling innovations on the
choreographic art as would make the shade of Gallini quake and
gibber in his pumps.
Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House,
the stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and bango twang
upon his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises—sounding un-
earthly to the greenhorn listener, but recognized by the initiated
as an Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs of a mount-
aineer, who, patting his stomach with open hands to improve the
necessary shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant—
Hi—Hi—Hi—Hi,
Hi-i—Hi-i—Hi-i—Hi-i
Hi-ya—hi-ya—hi-ya—hi-ya
Hi-ya—hi-ya—hi-ya—hi-ya
Hi-ya—hi-ya—hi—hi,
acG., OCC),..00C.
and polishes off the high notes with a whoop which makes the
old wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the
street.
Here, over fiery “‘monaghahela,” Jean Batiste, the sallow half-
breed voyageur from the north—and who, deserting the service
of the ‘“ North West” (the Hudson’s Bay Company), has come
64 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
down the Mississippi, from the “ Falls,” to try the sweets and
liberty of “free” trapping—hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad
“boy,” just returning from trapping on the waters of Grand River,
on the western side the mountains, who interlards his mountain
jargon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California.
In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving regions
of the Yellow Stone, has just recognized an old companyero, with
whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of the Black-
feet.
“Why, John, old hos, how do you come on ?”
“What! Meek, old ’coon! I thought you were under !”
One from Arkansas stalks into the center of the room, with a
pack of cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat.
Squatting cross-legzed on a buflalo robe, he smacks down the
money, and cries out—‘ Ho, boys, hyar’s a deck, and hyar’s the
beaver (rattling the coin), who dar set his hos? Wagh!”
Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of
hairbreadth ’scapes and curious “ fixes.” Transcendent are the
qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters ; “ plum”’
is the ‘“‘centre’ each vaunted barrel shoots; suflicing for a hun-
dred wigs is the “ hair’ each hunter has lifted from Indians’
scalps ; multitudinous the ‘coups’ he has “struck.” As they
drink so do they brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their
squaws, and lastly of themselves: and when it comes to that,
“ware steel.”
La Bonté, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day
in no less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with
an old trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to
hunt on the head waters of Platte and Green River. With this
man he resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars
in cash, he immediately set about equipping himself for the ex
pedition. To effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of
Hawken, whose rifles are renowned in the mountains, and ex-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 65
changed his own piece, which was of very small bore, for a regu-
lar mountain rifle. This was of very heavy metal, carrying about
thirty-two balls to the pound, stocked to the muzzle, and mounted
with brass, its only ornament being a buffalo bull, looking exceed-
ingly ferocious, which was not very artistically engraved upon the
trap in the stock. Here, too, he laid in a few pounds of powder
and lead, and all the necessaries for a long hunt.
His next visit was to a smith’s store, which smith was black
by trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover;
celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St. Louis,
and of him he purchased six new traps, paying for the same
twenty dollars; procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack,
made of stout buffalo skin, in which to carry them.
We next find La Bonté and his companion—one Luke, better
known as Gray-Eye, one of his eyes having been “ gouged” in a
mountain fray—at Independence, a little town situated on the
Missouri, several hundred miles above St. Louis, and within a
short distance of the Indian frontier.
Independence may be termed the “ prairie port” of the western
country. Here the caravans destined for Santa Fé, and the in-
terior of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment.
Mules and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and*
outfit laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of
prairie ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky
Mountain trappers rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to
insure their safe passage through the Indian country. At the
seasons of departure and arrival of these bands, the little town
presents a lively scene of bustle and confusion. The wild and
dissipated mountaineers get rid of their last dollars’ in furious
orgies, treating all comers to galore of drink, and pledging each
other, in horns of potent whisky, to successful hunts, and “ heaps
of beaver.’’ When every cent has disappeared from their pouches,
the free trapper often makes away with rifle, traps, and animals,
66 \ . LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
to gratify his “dry” (for your mountaineer is never “ thirsty’’) ;
and then, “hos and beaver” gone, is necessitated to hire himself
to one of the leaders of big bands, and hypothecate his services
for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus La Bonté picked
up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their accompany-
ing pack-saddles, apishamores,* and lariats, and the next day,
with Luke, ‘“ put out’’ for Platte.
As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped
on a little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian
was struck with the novelty of the scene. Upward of forty huge
wagons, of Conostoga and Pittsburg build, and covered with snow-
white tilts, were ranged in a semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe
form, on the flat, open prairie, their long ‘“ tongues’’ (poles) point-
ing outward ; with the necessary harness for four pairs of mules,
or eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside them, spread in
ready order for “hitching up.” Round the wagons groups of
teamsters, tall, stalwart young Missourians, were engaged in busy
preparation for the start ; greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing
harness, smoothing ox-bows, or overhauling their own moderate
kits or ‘ possibles.”” They were all dressed in the same fashion :
a pair of “‘ homespun” pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reach-
ing nearly to the knee, and confined round the waist by a broad
leathern belt, which supported a strong butcher-knife in a sheath.
A coarse, checked shirt was their only other covering, with a fur
cap on the head.
Numerous camp-fires surrounded the wagons, and near them
lounged wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the
“oreenhorn’” teamsters by their dresses of buckskin, and their
weather-beaten faces. Without an exception, these were under
the influence of the rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of
misery, at a fire by himself—staring into the blaze with vacant
* Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 67
countenance, his long matted hair hanging in unkempt masses
over his face, begrimed with the dirt of a week, and pallid with
the effects of ardent drink—was suffering from the usual conse-
quences of having “kept it up” beyond the usual point, paying the
penalty in a fit of “horrors” —as delirvwm tremens is most aptly
termed by sailors and the unprofessional.
In another part, the merchants of the caravan and the Indian
traders superintended the lading of the wagons, or mule packs.
They were dressed in civilized attire, and some were even be-
dizened in St. Louis or Eastern City dandyism, to the infinite dis-
gust of the mountain men, who look upon a burge-way (bourgeois)
with most undisguised contempt, despising the very simplest forms
of civilization. ‘The picturesque appearance of the encampment
was not a little heightened by the addition of several Indians from
the neighboring Shawnee settlement, who, mounted on their small
active horses, on which they reclined, rather than sat, in negligent
attitudes, quietly looked on at the novel scene, indifferent to the
“chaff” in which the thoughtless teamsters indulged at their ex-
pense. Numbers of mules and horses were picketed at hand,
while a large herd of noble oxen were being driven toward the
camp—the wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far and near, as they
collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up.
As most of the mountain men were utterly unable to move from
camp, Luke and La Bonté, with three or four of the most sober,
>
started in company, intending to wait on “ Blue,” a stream which
runs into the Caw or Kanzas River, until the ‘“ balance” of the
band came up. Mounting their mules, and leading the loose
animals, they struck at once into the park-like prairie, and were
speedily out of sight of civilization.
It was the latter end of May, toward the close of the season of
heavy rains, which in early spring render the climate of this coun-
try almost intolerable, at the same time that they fertilize and
thaw the soil, so long bound up by the winter’s frosts. The grass
68 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
Cal dee ES ee ee eS EE i a a SL ee
was every where luxuriantly green, and gaudy flowers dotted the
surface of the prairie. This term, however, should hardly be ap-
plied to the beautiful undulating scenery of this park-like country.
Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand Plains, here well-wooded
uplands, clothed with forest trees of every species, and picturesque
dells, through which run clear bubbling streams belted with gay-
blossomed shrubs, every where present themselves ; while on the
level meadow-land, topes of trees with spreading foliage afford a
shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered knolls rise at in-
tervals from the plain.
Many clear streams, dashing over their pebbly beds, intersect
the country, from which, in the noonday’s heat, the red-deer jump,
shaking their wet sides, as the noise of approaching man disturbs
them; and booming grouse rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at
every step. Where the deep escarpments of the river banks ex-
hibit the section of the earth, a rich alluvial soil of surpassing
depth courts the cultivation of civilized man ; and in every feature
it is evident that here nature has worked with kindliest and most
bountiful hand.
For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the
Missouri does a country extend, with which, for fertility and
natural resources, no part of Europe can stand comparison.
Sufficiently large to containean enormous population, it has, be-
sides, every advantage of position, and all the natural capabilities
which should make it the happy abode of civilized man. Through
this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy thou-
sands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble neighbor.
Camping the first night on “ Black Jack,” our mountaineers
here cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle ; and
La Bonté, who was the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a
savage ebullition of rage on the part of one of his companions,
exhibiting the perfect unrestraint which these men impose upon
their passions, and the barbarous anger which the slightest opposi-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 69
tion to their will excites. One of the trappers, on arriving at the
camping-place, dismounted from his horse, and, after divesting it
of the saddle, endeavored to lead his mule by the rope up to the
spot where he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however,
the more he pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her tracks,
planting her fore-legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with
provoking obstinacy. Truth to tell, it does require the temper of
a thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the willful
mulishness of the animal stir up one’s choler more than in the very
trick this one played, and which is a daily occurrence. After
tugging ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope round
his badly, and throwing himself suddenly forward with all his
strength, the trapper actually foamed with passion; and although
he might have subdued the animal at once by fastening the rope
with a half-hitch round its nose, this, with an obstinacy equal to
that of the mule itself, he refused to attempt, preferring to vanquish.
her by main strength. Failing so to do, the mountaineer, with a
volly of blasphemous imprecations, suddenly seized his rifle, and
leveling it at the mule’s head, shot her dead.
Passing the Wa-ka-rdsha, a well-timbered stream, they met a #7
band of Osages going “to buffalo.” These Indians, in common
with some tribes of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the ex-
ception of a ridge from the forehead to the center of the scalp,
which is ‘“‘ roached” or hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands
erect; plastered with unguents, and ornamented with feathers of
the hawk and turkey. The naked scalp is often painted in mosaic
with black and red, the face with shining vermilion. This band
were all naked to the breech-clout, the warmth of the sun having
made them throw their dirty blankets from their shoulders. These
Indians not unfrequently levy contributions on the strangers they
accidentally meet; but they easily distinguish the determined
mountaineer from the incautious greenhorn, and think it better to
let the former alone.
70 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
Crossing Vermilion, the trappers arrived on the fifth day at
“Blue,” where they encamped in the broad timber belting the
creek, and there awaited the arrival of the remainder of the party.
It was two days before they came up; but the following day
they started for the mountains, fourteen in number, striking a trail
which follows the “ Big Blue” in its course through the prairies,
which, as they advanced to the westward, gradually smoothed
away into a vast unbroken expanse of rolling plain. Herds of
antelope began to show themselves, and some of the hunters, leav-
ing the trail, soon returned with plenty of their tender meat.
The luxuriant but coarse grass they had hitherto seen now
changed into the nutritious and curly buffalo grass, and their
animals soon improved in appearance on the excellent pasture.
In a few days, without any adventure, they struck the Platte
River, its shallow waters (from which it derives its name) spread
ing over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand bars obstructing the
sluggish current, nowhere sufficiently deep to wet the forder’s knee.
By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party ran
entirely out of meat; and, one whole day and part of another
having passed without so much as a stray rabbit presenting itself,
not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips of
the hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the land of
plenty. La Bonté killed a fine deer, however, in the river bottom,
after they had encamped, not one particle of which remained after
supper that night, but which hardly took the rough edge off their
keen appetites. Although already in the buffalo range, no traces
of these animals had yet been seen; and as the country afforded
but little game, and the party did not care to halt and lose time
in hunting for it, they moved alone hungry and sulky, the theme
of conversation being the well remembered merits of good buffalo
meat—of “fat fleece,” ‘“hump-rib,” and “ tender-loin ;” of deli-
cious ‘‘ boudins,” and marrow bones too good to think of La
Bonté had never seen the lordly animal, and consequently but half
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 71
believed the accounts of the mountaineers, who described their
countless bands as covering the prairie far as the eye could reach,
and requiring days of travel to pass through; but the visions of
such dainty and abundant feeding as they descanted on set his
mouth watering, and danced before his eyes as he slept supperless,
night after night, on the banks of the hungry Platte.
One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and
was riding a mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one
side the trail, looming in the refracted glare which mirages the
plains, three large dark objects without shape or form, which rose
and fell in the exaggerated light like ships at sea. Doubting what
it could be, he approached the strange objects; and as the refrac-
tion disappeared before him, the dark masses assumed a more dis-
tinct form, and clearly moved with life. A little nearer, and he
made them out—they were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish him-
self, the greenhorn dismounted from his mule, and quickly hobbled
her, throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when he
wished to catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the
huge animals, and, being a good hunter, knew well to take advant-
age of the inequalities of the ground and face the wind ; by which
means he crawled at length to within forty yards of the buflalo,
which quietly cropped the grass, unconscious of danger. Now,
for the first time, he gazed upon the noble beast he had so often
heard of, and longed to see. With coal-black beard sweeping the
ground as he fed, an enormous bull was in advance of the others,
his wild brilliant eyes peering from an immense mass of shaggy
hair, which covered his neck and shoulder. From this point his
skin was smooth as one’s hand, a sleek and shining dun, and his
ribs were well covered with shaking flesh. While leisurely crop-
ping the short curly grass he occasionally lifted his tail into the
air, and stamped his foot as a fly or musquito annoyed him—flap-
ping the intruder with his tail, or snatching at the itching part
with his ponderous head.
72 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
When La Bonté had sufficiently admired the buffalo, he lified
his rifle, and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled
the trigger, expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report.
What was his surprise and consternation, however, to see the.
animal only flinch when the ball struck him, and then gallop
off followed by the others, apparently unhurt. As is generally
the case with greenhorns, he had fired too high, ignorant that
the only certain spot to strike a buffalo is but a few inches
above the brisket, and that a higher shot is rarely fatal. When
he rose from the ground, he saw all the party halting in full
view of his discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud
were the laughs, and deep the regrets of the hungry at his first
attempt.
However, they now knew that they were in the country of
meat; and a few miles farther, another band of stragglers pre-
senting themselves, three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonté
taking a mule to pack in the meat. He soon saw them crawling
toward the band, and shortly two pufis of smoke, and the sharp
cracks of their rifles, showed that they had got within shot ; and
when he rode up, two fine buffaloes were stretched upon the ground.
Now, for the first time, he was initiated in the mysteries of ‘‘ butch-
ering.” He watched the hunters as they turned the carcass on
the belly, stretching out the legs to support it on each side. A
transverse cut was then made at the nape of the neck, and, gath-
ering the long hair of the boss in one hand, the skin was separated
from the shoulder. It was then laid open from this point to the
tail, along the spine, and then, freed from the sides and pulled
down to the brisket, but still attached to it, was stretched upon
the ground to receive the dissected portions. Then the shoulder
was severed, the fleece removed from along the back-bone, and the
hump-ribs cut off with a tomahawk. All this was placed upon
the skin; and after the “ boudins” had been withdrawn from the
stomach, and the tongue—a great dainty—taken from the head,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 73
the meat was packed upon the mule, and the whole party hurried
to camp rejoicing.
There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way
they indulged their appetites—or, in their own language, ‘“throw’d”
the meat “ cold’”’—would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap
for joy or burst with envy. Far into the “still watches of the
tranquil night” the fat-clad ‘‘ depouille”’ saw its fleshy mass grow
small by degrees and beautifully less, before the trenchant blades
of the hungry mountaineers; appetizing yards of well-browned
“ boudin” slipped glibly down their throats ; rib after rib of tender
hump was picked and flung to the wolves; and when human
nature, with helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of
super-excellent comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy
knife that had done such good service—a skillful hunter was seen
to chuckle to himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and
drew therefrom a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so
sweet, and of such exquisite flavor, that a vail is considerately
drawn over the effects their discussion produced in the mind of
our greenhorn La Bonté, and the raptures they excited in the
bosom of that, as yet, most ignorant mountaineer. -Still, as he ate
he wondered, and wondering admired, that nature, in giving him
such profound gastronomic powers, and such transcendent capa-
bilities of digestion, had yet bountifully provided an edible so pe-
culiarly adapted to his ostrich-like appetite, that after consuming
nearly his own weight in rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as easy
and as little incommoded as if he had lightly supped on straw-
berries and cream.
Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast; soft was the
sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers
that night. It feit lke the old thing, they said, to be once more
7
among the “meat ;’’ and, as they were drawing near the danger-
ous portion of the trail, they felt at home ; although they now
could never be confident, when they lay down at night upon their
D
74 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
buffalo robes, of awaking again in this life, knowing as they did,
full well, that savage men lurked near, thirsting for their blood.
However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they pro-
ceeded quietly up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the
plains around them, affording them more than abundance of the
choicest meat; but, to their credit be it spoken, no more was
killed than was absolutely required—unlike the cruel slaughter
made by most of the white travelers across the plains, who wan-
tonly destroy these noble animals, not even for the excitement of
sport, but in cold-blooded and insane butchery. La Bonté had
practiced enough to perfect him in the art, and, before the buffalo
range was passed, he was ranked as a first-rate hunter. One
evening he had left the camp for meat, and was approaching a
band of cows for that purpose, crawling toward them along the
bed of a dry hollow in the prairie, when he observed them sud-
denly jump toward him, and unmediately afterward a score of
mounted Indians appeared, whom, by their dress, he at once knew
to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking they might not discover
him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a noise behind caused
him to turn his head, and he saw some five or six advancing up
the bed of the dry creek, while several more were riding on the
blufls. The cunning savages had cut of his retreat to his mule,
which he saw in the possession of one of them. His presence of mind,
however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to remain
where he was would be like being caucht in a trap (as the Indians
could advance to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from above),
he made for the open prairie, determined at least to sell his scalp
dearly, and make “a good fight.” With a yell the Indians
charged, but halted when they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately
kneel, and, resting his rifle on the wiping-stick, take a steady aim
as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees know to their cost,
that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without sending a
bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall, they
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 75
hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated
with his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the
instant that one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping
round, firing the few guns they had among them at long distances,
but without effect. One young “brave,” more daring than the
rest, rode out of the crowd, and dashed at the hunter, throwing
himself, as he passed within a few yards, from the saddle, and
hanging over the opposite side of his horse, thus presenting no
other mark than his left foot. As he crossed La Bonté, he dis-
charged his bow from under his horse’s neck, and with such good
aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the stock of
the hunter’s rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing off,
pierced his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound. Again
the Indian turned in his course, the others encouraging him with
loud war-whoops, and, once more passing at still less distance, he
drew his arrow to the head. This time, however, the eagle eye
of the white detected the action, and suddenly rising from his knee
as the Indian approached (hanging by his foot alone over the
opposite side of the horse), he jumped toward the animal with out-
stretched arms and a loud yell, causing it to start suddenly, and
swerve from its course. The Indian lost his foot-hold, and, after
a fruitless struggle to regain his position, fell to the ground; but
instantly rose upon his feet and gallantly confronted the mouut-
aineer, striking his hand upon his brawny chest and shouting a
loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the rifle of La Bonté
had poured forth its contents; and the brave savage, springing
into the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other trappers,
who had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot. At sight of
them the Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily
retreated.
That night La Bonté first lifted hair!
A few days later the mountaineers reached the pomt where the
Platte divides into two great forks: the northern one, stretchinz
76 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
to the northwest, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and
sweeping round to the south rises in the vicinity of the mountain
valley called the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine
Bow, and Sweet Water creeks. The other, or “ South Fork,”
strikes toward the mountains in a southwesterly direction, hug-
ging the base of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains; and,
fed by several small creeks, rises in the uplands of the Bayou Sa-
lade, near which is also the source of the Arkansas. To the forks
of the Platte the.valley of that river extends from three to five
miles on each side, inclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the summits
of which the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse to
the north and south. The “ bottom,” as it is termed, is but thinly
covered with timber, the cotton-woods being scattered only here
and there ; but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream
are well wooded, leading to the inference that the trees on the
banks have been felled by Indians who formerly frequented the
neighborhood of this river as a chosen hunting-ground. As, dur-
ing the long winters, the pasture in the vicinity is scarce and
withered, the Indians feed their horses on the bark of the sweet
cotton-wood, upon which they subsist and even fatten. Thus,
wherever a village has encamped, the trunks of these trees strew
the ground, their upper limbs and smaller branches peeled of their
bark, and looking as white and smooth as if scraped with a
knife.
On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater va-
riety, some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry,
which break the monotony of the everlasting cotton-wood.
Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains,
and numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the
vast herds, singling out the sick and wounded animals, and prey-
ing upon such calves as the_rifles and arrows of the hunters had
bereaved of their mothers. The white wolf is the invariable at-
tendant upon the buffalo; and when one of these persevering ani-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. T
“mals is seen, it is certain sign that buffalo are not far distant.
Besides the buffalo wolf, there are four distinct varieties common
to the plains, and all more or less attendant upon the buffalo.
These are, the black, the gray, the brown, and last and least, the
coyote, or cayeute of the mountaimeers, the “ wach-unkamanet,”
or ‘‘ medicine wolf’’ of the Indians, who hold the latter animal in
reverential awe. This little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness
and beauty, is of diminutive size, but wonderfully sagacious, mak-
ing up by cunning what it wants in physical strength. In bands
of from three to thirty they not unfrequently station themselves
along the “runs” of the deer and the antelope, extending their
line for many miles—and the quarry being started, each wolf fol-
lows in pursuit until tired, when it relinquishes the chase to another
relay, following slowly after until the animal is fairly run down, when
all hurry to the spot and speedily consume the carcass. The cayeute,
however, is often made a tool of by his larger brethren, unless, in-
deed, he acts from motives of spontaneous charity. When a hunt-
er has slaughtered game, and is in the act of butchering it, these
little wolves sit patiently at a short distance from the scene of op-
erations, while at a more respectful one the larger wolves (the
white or gray) lope hungrily around, licking their chops in hungry
expectation. Not unfrequently the hunter throws a piece of meat
toward the smaller one, who seizes it immediately, and runs off
with the morsel in his mouth. Before he gets many yards with
his prize, the large wolf pounces with a growl upon him, and the
cayeute, dropping the meat, returns to his former position, and will
continue his charitable act as long as the hunter pleases to supply
him. ‘ :
Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains,
that the hunter never cares to throw away a charge of ammuni-
tion upon them, although the ravenous animals are a constant
source of annoyance to him, creeping to the camp-fire at night,
and gnawing his saddles and apishamores, eating the skin ropes
78 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST:
which secure the horses and mules to their pickets, and even their
very hobbles, and not unfrequently killing or entirely disabling the
animals themselves.
Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremit-
ting watch, and the traveler not unfrequently starts from his bed
with afiright, as the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf
breaks suddenly upon his ear; the long-drawn howl being taken
up by others of the band, until it dies away in the distance, or
some straggler passing within hearing answers to the note, and
howls as he lopes away.
Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its junc-
ture with the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck
the north fork a day’s travel from the other. At the mouth of an
ash-timbered creek they came upon Indian “sign,” and, as now
they were in the vicinity of the treacherous Sioux, they moved
along with additional caution, Frapp and Gonneville, two expe-
rienced mountaineers, always heading the advance.
About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork,
intending to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver
“sign” had attracted the attention of some of the trappers; and
as, on further examination, it appeared that two or three lodges
of that animal were not far distant, it was determined to remain
here a day or two and set their traps.
Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonté had started up the creek,
and were carefully examining the banks for “ sign,” when the for-
mer, who was in front, suddenly paused, and looking intently up
the stream, held up his hand to his companions to signal them to
stop.
Luke and La-Bonté both followed the direction of the trapper’s
intent and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone
the expressive exclamation, Wagh !—the latter saw nothing but
a wood-duck swimming swiftly down the stream, followed by her
downy progeny.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 79
Gonnevile turned his head, and extending his arm twice with
a forward motion up the creek, whispered—‘ Les sauvages ” »
‘‘Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that,” answered Luke. _
Still La Bonté looked, but nothing met his view but the duck
with her brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the
bird suddenly took wing, and flapping on the water, flew a short
distance down the stream, and once more settled on it.
‘Tnjuns ?” he asked ; “‘ where are they ?”
‘“ Whar ?” repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and
opening the pan to examine the priming. ‘ What brings a duck
a-streaking it down stream if humans ain’t behint her? and who’s
thar in these diggins but Injuns, and the worst kind? and we'd
better push to camp, I’m thinking, if we mean to save our hair.”
“Sign” sufficient indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on
being apprized of it, instantly drove in their animals, and picketed
them ; and hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made
their appearance on the banks of the creek, from whence they gal-
loped to the bluff which overlooked the camp at the distance of
about six hundred yards ; and crowning this, in number some for-
ty or more, commenced brandishing their spears and guns, and
whooping loud yells of defiance. The trappers had formed a little
breastwork of their packs, forming a semicircle, the chord of which
was made by the animals standing in a line, side by side, closely
picketed and hobbled. Behind this defense stood the mountain=
eers, rifle in hand, and silent and determined. The Indians pres-
ently descended the bluff on foot, leaving their animals in charge of
a few of the party, and, scattering, advanced under cover of the sage
bushes which dotted the bottom, to about two hundred yards of.
the whites. Then a chief advanced before the rest, and made
the sign for a talk with the Long-knives, which led to a consulta-
tion among the latter as to the policy of acceding to it. They
were in doubt as to the nation these Indians belonged to, some bands
of the Sioux being friendly, and others bitterly hostile to the whites.
80 LIFE IN THE FAR: WEST.
Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well ac-
quainted with the nation, affirmed that they belonged to a band
called the Yanka-taus, well known to be the most evil-disposed of
that treacherous nation; another of the party maintained they
were Brulés, and that the chief advancing toward them was the
well-known Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of
that tribe. The majority, however, trusted to Gonneville, and
he volunteered to go out to meet the Indian, and hear what he
had to say. Divesting himself of all arms save his butcher-knife,
he advanced toward the savage, who awaited his approach envel-
oped in the folds of his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be
a Yanka-tau, from the peculiar make of his moccasins, and the
way in which his face was daubed with paint.
‘ Howeh !” exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence
of a few moments, the Indian spoke, asking—‘ Why the Long-
knives hid behind their packs, when his band approached? Were
they afraid, or were they preparing a dog-feast to entertain their
friends? ‘The whites were passing through his country, burning
his wood, drinking his water, and killing his game; but he knew
they had now come to pay for the mischief they had done, and
that the mules and horses they had brought with them were in-
tended as a present to their red friends.
“He was Mah-to-ga-shane,”’ he said, “the Brave Bear : his
tongue was short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak
with his bow and his lance than with the weapon of asquaw. He
had said it: the Long-knives had horses with them and mules ;
and these were for him, he knew, and for his ‘ braves.’ Let the
White-face go back to his people and return with the animals, or
he, the ‘ Brave Bear,’ would have to come and take them; and
his young men would get mad, and would feel blood in their eyes ;
and then he would have no power over them; and the whites would
have to ‘go under.’ ”
The trapper answered shortly.—‘‘ The Long-knives,”’ he said,
ee
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 81
“had brought the horses for themselves—their hearts were big,
but not toward the Yanka-taus: and if they had to give up their
animals, it would be to men and not sguaws. 'They were not
‘wah-keitcha,’* (French engagés), but Long-knives; and, however |
short were the tongues of the Yanka-taus, theirs were still shorter,
and their rifles longer. The Yanka-taus, were dogs and squaws,
and the Long-knives spat upon them.”
Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his com-
panions; while the Indian slowly proceeded to his people, who, on
learning the contemptuous way in which their threats had been
treated, testified their anger with loud yells; and, seeking whatever
cover was afforded, commenced a scattering volley upon the camp
of the mountaineers. The latter reserved their fire, treating with
cool indifference the balls which began to rattle about them ; but
as the Indians, emboldened by this apparent inaction, rushed for a
closer position, and exposed their bodies within a long range, half-
a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed, and two Indians fell dead,
one or two more being wounded. As yet, not one of the whites
had been touched, but several of the animals had received wounds
from the enemies’ fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the Indians re-
mained at too great a distance to render the volleys from their crazy
fusees any thing like effectual, and had to raise their pieces cort
siderably to make their bullets reach as faras the camp. After three
of their band had been killed outright, and many more wounded,
their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater distance,
evidently resolved to beat a retreat. Retiring to the bluff, they dis-
charged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their horses and gal-
loped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last volley,
however, although intended as amere bravado, unfortunately proved.
fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was stand-
* The French Canadians are called wah-keitcha—“ bad medicine’’—by the In-
dians, who account them treacherous and vindictive, and at the same time less
daring than the American hunters.
p*
82 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
ing on a pack to get an uninterrupted sight for a last shot, when
one of the random bullets struck him in the breast. La Bonté
caught him in his arms as he was about to fall, and laying the
wounded trapper gently on the ground, stripped him of his buck-
skin hunting-frock, to examine the wound. A glance was sufli-
cient to convince his companions that the blow was mortal. The
ball had passed through the lungs : and in a few moments the throat
of the wounded man swelled and turned to a livid blue color, as
the choking blood descended. Only a few drops of purple blood
trickled from the wound—a fatal sign—and the eyes of the moun-
taineer were already glazing with death’s icy touch. His hand
still grasped the barrel of his rifle, which had done good service in
the fray. Anon he essayed to speak, but, choked with blood, only
a few inarticulate words reached the ears of his companions, as
they bent over him.
“ Rubbed—out—at—last,” they heard him say, the words
gurgling in his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once
more, and turning them upward for a last look at the bright sun,
the trapper turned gently on his side and. breathed his last sigh.
With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a
grave on the banks of the creek; and while some were engaged in
this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain
in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps, the
trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was wrapped
in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on his breast, and the dead .
man was then laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered—
without a word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his
companions may have felt, not a word escaped them. ‘The bitten
lip and frowning brow told of anger rather than of sorrow, as they
vowed—what they thought would better please the spirit of the
dead man than vain regrets—bloody and lasting revenge.
Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they raised
upon it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 83.
and taking a last look at their comrade’s lonely resting-place, they
turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been
known as ‘ Gonneville’s Creek.”
If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the
western country, which detail the features of the regions embrac-
ing the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he
will not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams
which feed the larger rivers—as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansas
—are called by familiar proper names, both English and French,
These are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper,
killed there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the
lurking savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream.
Thus alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least
of those whose fate is ascertained : for many, in every season, never
return from their hunting expeditions, but meet a sudden death
from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease in
some lonely gorge of the mountains, where no footfall save their
own, or the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the unbroken
silence of the awful solitude. Then, as many winters pass without
some old familiar faces making their appearance at the merry ren-
dezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps elicit a remark,
as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have betaken
himself, to which the casual rejoinder of, “ Gone under, maybe,”
too often gives a short but certain answer.
In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned
from the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La
Bonté, however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect
indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye,
as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He
could not forget so soon the comrade he had lost, the companion in
the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a
tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, thirst, and un-
tended wounds, of Indian perils, and other vicissitudes. One tear
84 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
dropped from the young hunter’s eye, and rolled down his cheek—
the last for many a long year.
In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the
junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux
encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here
the party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an
impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the |
vicinity, while La Bonté, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline,
started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water
and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all
the rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this
season (August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians
having come in with several packs of last year’s robes, and being
anxious to start speedily on their return, a trader from one of the
forts had erected his lodge in the village.
Here he set to work immediately, to induce the Indians to trade. ;
First, a chief appoints three “soldiers” to guard the trader’s lodge
from intrusion ; and these sentries among the thieving fraternity
can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians are invited to have
a drink—a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them
to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge,
and those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed savage
who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way, with his
mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through the throng,
and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends. Drawing
the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small quan-
tity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he
returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.
When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the
liquor in a tin half-pint cup, thrust the thumb or the four fingers of
the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the less,
or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat, with
the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never dis-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 85
cover the cheat, and, once under the influence of the liquor, can
not distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong spirit,
and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent., and poison-
ously drugged to boot.
Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade is
over. In the winter it occupies several weeks, during which period
the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralizing influ-
ence of the liquor, of demons rather than of men.
CHAPTER IV.
La Bonté and his companions proceeded up the river, the
- Black Hills on their left hand, from which several small creeks or
feeders swell the waters of the North Fork. Along these they
hunted unsuccessfully for beaver “sign,” and it was evident the
spring hunt had almost exterminated the animal in this vicinity.
Following Deer Creek to the ridge of the Black Hills, they crossed
the mountain on to the waters of the Medicine Bow, and here
they discovered a few lodges, and La Bonté set his first trap. He
and old Luke finding “cuttings” near the camp, followed the
~ “sign” along the bank until the practiced eye of the latter discoy-
ered a ‘slide,’ where the beaver had ascended the bank to chop
the trunk of a cotton wood, and convey the bark to its lodge.
Taking a trap from “sack,” the old hunter, after setting the trig-
ger, placed it carefully under the water, where the “slide’’ entered
the stream, securing the chain to the stem of a sapling on the
bank; while a stick, also attached to the trap by a thong, floated
down the stream, to mark the position of the trap, should the ani-
mal carry it away. A little farther on, and near another “ run,”
three traps were set; and over these Luke placed a little stick,
which he first dipped into a mysterious-looking phial containing
his ‘‘ medicine.”’ *
The next morning they visited the traps, and had the satisfac-
tion of finding three fine beaver secured in the first three they
visited, and the fourth, which had been carried away, they dis-
* A substance obtained from a gland in the scrotum of the beaver, and used to
attract that animal to the trap.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 87
covered by the float-stick, a little distance down the stream, with
a large drowned beaver between its teeth.
The animals being carefully skinned, they returned to camp
with the choicest portions of the meat, and the tails, on which
they most luxuriously supped ; and La Bonté was fain to confess
that all his ideas of the super-excellence of buflalo were thrown in
the shade by the delicious beaver tail, the rich meat of which he
»)
was compelled to allow was “great eating,” unsurpassed by
“‘tender-loin” or “ boudin,”’ or other meat of whatever kind he had
eaten of before.
The country where La Bonté and his companions were trapping,
is very curiously situated in the extensive bend of the Platte which
incloses the Black Hill range on the north, and which bounds the
large expanse of broken tract known as the Laramie Plains, their
southern limit being the base of the Medicine Bow Mountains.
From the northwestern corner of the bend, an inconsiderable
range extends to the westward, gradually decreasing in height
until it reaches an elevated plain, which forms a break in the
stupendous chain of the Rocky Mountains, and affords the easy
passage now known as the Great, or South Pass. So gradual is
the ascent of this portion of the mountain, that the traveler can
scarcely believe he is crossing the dividing ridge between the
waters which flow into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and that
in a few minutes he can fling two sticks into two neighboring
streams, one to be carried thousands of miles, traversed by the
eastern waters in their course to the Gulf of Mexico, the other to
be borne a lesser distance to the Gulf of California.
The country is frequented by the Crows and Snakes, who are
at perpetual war with the Shians and Sioux, following them ofien
far down the Platte, where many bloody battles have taken place.
The Crows are esteemed friendly to the whites; but when on
war expeditions, and “ hair’’ their object, it is always dangerous
to fall in with Indian war-parties, and particularly in the remote
88 LIFE IN THE’ FAR WEST.
regions of the mountains, where they do not anticipate retalia-
tion.
Trapping with tolerable: success in this vicinity, the hunters
crossed over, as soon as the premonitory storms of approaching
Winter warned them to leave the mountains, to the waters of
Green River, one of the affluents of the Colorado, intending to
winter at a rendezvous to be held in ‘“‘ Brown’s Hole’—an in-
closed valley so called—which, abounding in game, and sheltered
on every side by lofty mountains, is a favorite wintering-ground of
the mountaineers. Here they found several trapping bands already
arrived ; and a trader from the Uintah country, with store of
powder, lead, and tobacco, prepared to ease them of their hardly-
earned peltries.
Singly, and in bands numbering from two to ten, the trappers
dropped into the rendezvous; some with many pack-loads of
beaver, others with greater or less quantity, and more than one on
foot, having lost his animals and peltry by Indian thieving. Here
were soon congregated many mountaineers, whose names are
famous in the history of the Far West. Fitzpatrick and Hatcher,
and old Bill Williams, well known leaders of trapping parties,
_soon arrived with their bands. Sublette came in with his men
from Yellow Stone, and many of Wyeth’s New Englanders were
there. Chabonard with his half-breeds, Wah-keitchas all, brought
his peltries from the lower country; and half-a-dozen Shawnee
and Delaware Indians, with a Mexican from Taos, one Marcelline,
a fine strapping fellow, the best trapper and hunter in the mount:
ains, and ever first in the fight. Here, too, arrived the ‘ Bour-
geois” traders of the “ North West’ * Company, with their supe-
rior equipments, ready to meet their trappers, and purchase the
beaver at an equitable value ; and soon the trade opened, and the
encampment assumed a busy appearance. _
A curious assemblage did the rendezvous present, and represent-
“ The Hudson’s Bay Company is so called by the American trappers.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 89
atives of many a land met there. A son of La belle France here
lit his pipe from one proffered by a native of New Mexico. An
Englishman and a Sandwich Islander cut a quid from the same
plug of tobacco. A Swede and an “old Virginian” puffed to-
gether. A Shawnee blew a peaceful cloud with a scion of the
“Six Nations.” One from the Land of Cakes—a canny chiel—
sought to ‘“‘get round” (in trade) a right “smart” Yankee, but
couldn’t “shine.”
The beaver went briskly, six dollars being the price paid per Ib.
in goods—for money is seldom given in the mountain market,
where ‘beaver’ is cash, for which the articles supplied by the
traders are bartered. In a very short time peltries of every de-
scription had changed hands, either by trade, or by gambling with
cards and betting. With the mountain men bets decide every
question that is raised, even the most trivial; and if the Editor
of Bell's Life were to pay one of these rendezvous a winter visit,
he would find the broad sheet of his paper hardly capacious enough
to answer all the questions which would be referred to his decision.
Before the winter was over, La Bonté had lost all traces of
civilized humanity, and might justly claim to be considered as
“hard a case” as any of the mountaineers then present. Long
before the spring opened, he had lost all the produce of his hunt .
and both his animals, which, however, by a stroke of luck, he re- |
covered, and wisely “‘ held on to” for the future. Right glad when
spring appeared, he started from Brown’s Hole, with four compan-
ions, to hunt the Uintah or Snake country, and the affluents of
the larger streams which rise in that region and fall into the Gulf
of California.
In the valley of the Bear River they found beaver abundant,
and trapped their way westward until they came upon the famed
locality of the Beer and Soda Springs—natural fountains of mine-
ral water, renowned among the trappers as being “ medicine” of
the first order.
90 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST:
Arriving one evening, about sun-down, at the Bear Spring, they
found a solitary trapper sitting over the rocky basin, intently re-
garding, with no httle awe, the curious phenomenon of the bub-
bling gas. Behind him were piled his saddles and a pack of skins,
and at a little distance a hobbled Indian pony fed among the
cedars which formed a grove round the spring. As the three
hunters dismounted from their animals, the lone trapper scarcely
noticed their arrival, his eyes being still intently fixed upon the
water. Looking round at last, he was instantly recognized by one
of La Bonté’s companions, and saluted as ‘Old Rube.” Dressed
‘from head to foot in buckskin, his face, neck, and hands appeared
to be of the same leathery texture, so nearly did they assimilate
in color to the materials of his dress. He was at least six feet
two or three in his moccasins, straight-limbed and wiry, with long
arms ending in hands of tremendous grasp, and a quantity of
straight black hair hanging on his shoulders. His features, which
were undeniably good, wore an expression of comical gravity, never
relaxing ‘into a smile, which a broad good-humored mouth could
have grinned from ear to ear.
‘What, boys,” he said, ‘ will you * sumple enough to camp
here, alongside these springs ? Nothing good ever came of sleep-
ing here, I tell you, and the worst kind of devils are in those
dancing waters.”
“ Why, old hos,” cried La Bonté, ‘“‘ what brings you hyar then,
and camp at that ?”
answered Rube, solemnly, “has been down’d
upon a sight too often to be skeared by what can come out from
them waters; and thar arn’t a devil as hisses thar, as can ‘ shine’
with this child, I tell you. Ive tried him onest, an’ fout him to
clawin’ away to Eustis,* and if I draws my knife again on such
varmint, I'll raise his hair,.as sure as shootin.’ ”’
ee)
“This niggur,
* A small lake near the head waters of the Yellow Stone, near which are some
curious thermal springs of ink-black water.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 91
Spite of the reputed dangers of the locality, the trappers carnped
on the spot, and many a draught of the delicious, sparkling water
they quaffed in honor of the “medicine” of the fount. Rube,
however, sat sulky and silent, his huge form bending over his legs,
which were crossed, Indian fashion, under him, and his long bony
fingers spread over the fire, which had been made handy to the
spring. At last they elicited from him that he had sought this
spot for the purpose of “making medicine,’ having been perse-
cuted by extraordinary ill luck, even at this early period of his
hunt—the Indians having stolen two out of his three animals, and
three of his half-dozen traps. He had, therefore, sought the
springs for the purpose of invoking the fountain spirits, which, a
perfect Indian in his simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit
their mysterious waters. When the others had, as he thought,
fallen asleep, La Bonté observed the ill-starred trapper take from
his pouch a curiously carved red stone pipe, which he carefully
charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then approachife the
spring, he walked three times round it, and gravely sat himself
down. Striking fire with his flint and steel, he lit his pipe, and,
bending the stem three several times toward the water, he inhaled
a vast quantity of smoke, and bending back his neck and looking
upward, puffed it into the air. He then blew another puff toward
the four points of the compass, and emptying the pipe into his
hand, cast the consecrated contents into the spring, saying a few
Indian “ medicine” words of cabalistic import. Having performed
the ceremony to his satisfaction, he returned to the fire, smoked a
pipe on his own hook, and turned into his buffalo robe, conscious
of having done a most important duty. ;
In the course of their trapping expedition, and accompanied by
Rube, who knew the country well, they passed near the Great
Salt Lake, a vast inland sea, whose salitrose waters cover an ex-
tent of upward of one hundred and forty miles in length, by eighty
in breadth. Fed by several streams, of which the Big Bear
92 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
River is the most considerable, this lake presents the curious pheno-
_menon of a vast body of water without any known outlet. Accord-
ing to the trappers, an island, from which rises a chain of lofty
mountains, nearly divides the northwestern portion of the lake,
while a smaller one, within twelve miles of the northern shore,
rises six hundred feet from the level of the water. Rube declared
to his companions that the larger island was known by the Indians
to be inhabited by a race of giants, with whom no communica
tion had ever been held by mortal man; and but for the casual
wafting to the shores of the lake of logs of gigantic trees, cut by
axes of extraordinary size, the world would never have known that
such a people existed. They were, moreover, white as themselves,
and lived upon corn and fruits, and rode on elephants, &c.
While following a small creek at the southwest extremity of
the lake, they came upon a band of miserable Indians, who, from
the fact of their subsisting chiefly on roots, are called the Diggers.
At first sight of the whites they immediately fled from their wretch-
ed huts, and made toward the mountain; but one of the trappers,
galloping up on his horse, cut off their retreat, and drove them like
sheep before him back to their village. A few of these wretched
creatures came into camp at sundown, and were regaled with such
meat as the larder afforded. They appeared to have no other food
in their village but bags of dried ants and their larve, and a few
roots of the yampah. ‘Their huts were constructed of a few bushes”
of grease-wood, piled up as a sort of bre¢kwind, in which they
huddled in their filthy skins. During the night, they crawled up
to the camp and stole two of the horses, and the next morning not
a sign of them was visible. Now La Bonté witnessed a case of
mountain law, and the practical effects of the “lex talionis’” of the
Far West.
The trail of the runaway Diggers bore to the northwest, or
along the skirt of a barren waterless desert, which stretches far
away from the southern shores of the Salt Lake to the borders of
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 93
Upper California. La Bonté, with three others, determined to
follow the thieves, recover their animals, and then rejoin the other
two (Luke and Rube) on a creek two days’ journey from their
present camp. Starting at sunrise, they rode on at a rapid pace all
day, closely following the trail, which led directly to the northwest,
through a wretched sandy country, without game or water. From
the appearance of the track, the Indians must still have been sev-
eral hours ahead of them, when the fatigue of their horses, suffering
from want of grass and water, compelled them’ to camp near the
head of a small water-course, where they luckily found a hole con-
taining a little water, whence a broad Indian trail passed, appa-
rently frequently used. Long before daylight they were again in
the saddle, and, after proceeding a few miles, saw the lights of
several fires a short distance ahead of them. Halting here, one of
the party advanced on foot to reconnoiter, and presently returned
with the intelligence that the party that they were in pursuit of
had joined a village numbering thirty or forty huts.
Loosening their girths, they permitted their tired animals to feed
m the scanty herbage which presented itself, while they refreshed
themselves with a pipe of tobacco—for they had no meat of any
description with them, and the country afforded no game. As the
first streak of dawn appeared in the east, they mounted their
horses, after first examining their rifles, and moved cautiously
toward the Indian village. As it was scarcely light enough for
their operations, they waited behind a sandhill in the vicinity,
until objects became more distinct, and then, emerging from their
cover with loud war-whoops, they charged abreast into the midst
of the village.
As the frightened Indians were scarcely risen from their beds, no
opposition was given to the daring mountaineers, who, rushing upon
the flying crowd, discharged their rifles at close quarters, and then,
springing from their horses, attacked them knife in hand, and only
ceased the work of butchery when nine Indians lay dead upon the
94 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
ground. All this time the women, half dead with fright, were
huddled together on the ground, howling piteously ; and the moun-
taineers advancing to them, whirled their lassos round their heads,
and throwing the open nooses into the midst, hauled out three of
them, and securing their arms in the rope, bound them to a tree, and
then proceeded to scalp the dead bodies. While they were en-
gaged in this work, an old Indian, withered and grisly, and hardly
bigger than an ape, suddenly emerged from a rock, holding in his
left hand a bow and a handful of arrows, while one was already
drawn to the head. Running toward them, and almost before the
hunters were aware of his presence, he discharged an arrow at a
few yards’ distance, which buried itself in the ground not a foot
from La Bonté’s head as he bent over the body of the Indian he
was scalping ; and hardly had the whiz ceased, when whirr flew
another, striking him in his right shoulder. Before the Indian
could fit a third arrow to his bow, La Bonté sprang upon him,
seized him by the middle, and spinning his pigmy form round his
head, as easily as he would have twirled a tomahawk, he threw
him with tremendous force upon the ground at the feet of one of
his companions, who, stooping down, coolly thrust the knife into the
Indian’s breast, and quickly tore off his scalp. |
The slaughter over, without casting an eye to the captive
squaws, the trappers proceeded to search the village for food, of
which they stood much in need. Nothing, however, was found
but a few bags of dried ants, which, after eating voraciously of,
but with wry mouths, they threw aside, saying the food was
worse than ‘poor bull.’”’ They found, however, the animals they
had been robbed of, and two more besides—wretched, half-starved
creatures ; and on these mounting their captives, they hurried
away on their journey back to their companions, the distance
being computed at three days’ travel from their present position.
However, they thought, by taking a more direct course, they might
find better pasture for their animals, and water, besides saving at
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 95
least half a day by the short cut. To their cost they proved the
old saying, that ‘a short cut is always a long road,” as will be
presently shown.
It has been said that from the southwestern extremity of the
Great Salt Lake, a vast desert extends for hundreds of miles, un-
broken by the slightest vegetation, destitute of game and water,
and presenting a cheerless expanse of sandy plain, or rugged
mountain, thinly covered with dwarf pine or cedar, the only evi-
dence of vegetable life. Into this desert, ignorant of the country,
the trappers struck, intending to make their short cut; and, trav-
eling on all day, were compelled to camp at night, without water
or pasture for their exhausted animals, and themselves ravenous
with hunger and parched with thirst. The next day three of
their animals “gave out,’ and they were fain to leave them be-
hind ; but imagining that they must soon strike a creek, they
pushed on until noon, but still no water presented itself, nor a sign
of game of any description. The animals were nearly exhausted,
and a horse which could scarcely keep up with the slow pace of
the others was killed, and its blood greedily drunk ; a portion of
the flesh being eaten raw, and a supply carried with them for
future emergencies.
The next morning two of the horses lay dead at their pickets, »
and one only remained, and this in such a miserable state that it
could not possibly have traveled six miles further. It was, there-
fore, killed, and its blood drunk, of which, however, the captive
squaws refused to partake. ‘The men began to feel the effects of
their consuming thirst, which the hot horse’s blood only served
to increase ; their lips became parched and swollen, their eyes
bloodshot, and a giddy sickness seized them at intervals. About
mid-day they came in sight of a mountain on their right hand,
which appeared to be more thickly clothed with vegetation ; and
arguing from this that water would be found there, they left
their course and made toward it, although some eight or ten
96 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
miles distant. On arriving at the base, the most minute search
failed to discover the slightest traces of water, and the vegetation
merely consisted of dwarf pifion and cedar. ‘With their sufferings
increased by the exertions they had used in reaching the mountain,
they once more sought the trail, but every step told on their ex-
hausted frames. The sun was very powerful, the sand over which
they floundered was deep and heavy, and, to complete their suffer-
ings, a high wind blew it in their faces, filling their mouths and
noses with its searching particles. —
Still they struggled onward manfully, and not a murmur was.
heard until their hunger had entered the second stage upon the
road to starvation. ‘They had now been three days without food
or water; under which privation nature can hardly: sustain her-
self for a much longer period. On the fourth morning the men
looked wolfish, their captives following behind in sullen and per-
fect indifference, occasionally stooping down to catch a beetle if
one presented itself, and greedily devouring it. A man named
‘ Forey, a Canadian half-breed, was the first to complain. “If
this lasted another sundown,” he said, “ some of them would “be
rubbed out ;? that meat had to be raised anyhow; and for his
part, he knew where to look for a feed, if no game was seen be--
fore they put out of peep on the morrow; and meat was meat,
anyhow they fixed it.”
No answer was made to this, though his companions well un-
derstood him: their natures as yet revolted against the last expe-
dient. As for the three squaws, all of them young girls, they
followed behind their captors without a word of complaint, and
with the stoical indifference to pain and suffermg which alike
characterizes the haughty Delaware of the north, and the misera-
ble, stunted Digger of the deserts of the Far West. On the morn-
ing of the fifth day, the party were seated round a small fire of
pition, hardly able to rise and commence their journey, the squaws
squatting over another at a little distance, when Forey commenced
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 97
again to suggest that, if nothing offered, they must either take the
alternative of starving to death, for they could not hope to last
another day, or have recourse to the revolting extremity of sacri-
ficing one of the party to save the lives of all. To this, however,
there was a murmur of dissent, and it was finally resolved that
all should sally out and hunt; for a deer track had been dis-
covered near the camp, which, although it was not a fresh one,
proved that there must be game in the vicinity. Weak and ex-
hausted as they were, they took their rifles and started for the
neighboring uplands, each taking a diflerent direction.
It was nearly sunset when La Bonté returned to the camp,
where he already espied one of his companions engaged in cooking
something over the fire. Hurrying to the spot, overjoyed with
the anticipations of a feast, he observed that the squaws were
gone ; but, at the same iene thought it was not improbable they
had escaped during their absence. Approaching the fire, he ob-
served Forey broiling some meat on the embers, while at a little
distance lay what he fancied was the carcass of a deer.
“Hurrah, boy!’ he exclaimed, as he drew near the fire.
ee You ve ‘made’ a ‘raise,’ I see.”
“yt Well, I have,” rejoined the other, turning his meat with the
point of his butcher knife. ‘‘'There’s the meat, hos—help yourself.’
La Bonté drew the knife from his scabbard, and approached
the spot his companion was pointing to ; but what was his horror
to see the yet quivering bbdy of one of the Indian squaws, with a
large portion of the flesh butchered from it, part of which Forey
was already greedily devouring. The knife dropped from his
hand, and his heart rose to his throat.
The next day he and his companion elle the creek where
Rube and the other trapper had agreed to await them, and found
them in camp with plenty of meat, and about to start again on
their hunt, having given up the others for lost. From the day
they parted, nothing was ever heard of La Bonté’s other two
E
98 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
companions, who doubtless fell a prey to utter exhaustion, and
were unable to return to the camp. And thus ended the Digger
expedition.
It may appear almost incredible that. men having civilized
plood in their veins could perpetrate such wanton and cold-
blooded acts of aggression on the wretched Indians, as that de-
tailed above ; but it is a fact that the mountaineers never lose an
opportunity of slaughtering these miserable Diggers, and attack-
ing their villages, often for the purpose of capturing women, whom
they carry off, and not unfrequently sell to other tribes, or to each
other. In these attacks neither sex nor age is spared ; and your
mountaineer has as little compunction in taking the life of an
Indian woman, as he would have m sending his rifle-ball through
the brain of a Crow or Blackfoot warrior. _
La Bonté now found himself without animals, and fairly
“afoot ;” consequently nothing remained for him but to seek some
of the trapping bands, and hire himself for the hunt. Luckily for
him, he soon fell in with Roubideau, on his way to Uintah, and
was supplied by him with a couple of animals; and thus equipped,
he started again with a large band of trappers, who were going to
hunt on the waters of Grand River and the Gila. Here they fell
in with another nation of Indians, from which branch out the
innumerable tribes inhabiting Northern Mexico and part of
California. They were in general friendly, but lost no opportunity
of stealing horses or any articles left lying about the camp. On
one occasion, the trappers bemg camped on a northern affluent of
the Gila, a volley of arrows was discharged among them, severely
wounding one or two of the party, as they sat round the camp
fires. The attack, however, was not renewed, and the next day
the camp was moved further down the stream; where beaver was
tolerably abundant. Before sundown a number of Indians made
their appearance, and making signs of peace, were admitted into
the camp.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 99
The trappers were all sitting at their suppers over the fires, the
Indians looking gravely on, when it was remarked that now would
be a good opportunity to retaliate upon them for the trouble their
incessant attacks had entailed upon the camp. The suggestion
was highly approved of, and instantly acted upon. Springing to
their feet, the trappers seized their rifles, and commenced the
slaughter. ‘The Indians, panic-struck, fled without resistance, and
numbers fell before the death-dealing rifles of the mountaineers.
A chief, who had been sitting on a rock near the fire where the
leader of the trappers sat, had been singled out by the latter as
the first mark for his rifle.
Placing the muzzle to his heart, he pulled the trigger, but the
Indian, with extraordinary tenacity of life; rose and grappled with
his assailant. 'The white was a tall, powerful man, but, notwith-
standing the deadly wound the Indian had received, he had his
equal in strength to contend against. The naked form of the
Indian twisted and writhed in his grasp, as he sought to avoid the
trapper’s uplifted knife. Many of the latter’s companions advanced
to administer the cowp-de-grice to the savage, but the trapper
cried to them to keep off; ‘If he couldn’t whip the Injun,” he
said, “ he’d go under.”
At length he succeeded in throwing him, and, plunging his knifé
no less than seven times into his body, he tore off his scalp, and
went in pursuit of the flying savages. In the course of an hour or
two, all the party returned, and sitting by the fires, resumed their
suppers, which had been interrupted in the manner just described.
Walker, the captain of the band, sat down by the fire where he
had been engaged in the struggle with the Indian chief, whose
body was lying within a few paces of it. He was in the act of
fighting the battle over again to one of his companions, and was
saying that the Indian had as much life in him as a buflalo bull,
when, to the horror of all present, the savage, who had received
wounds sufficient for twenty deaths, suddenly rose to a sitting
100 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
posture, the fire shedding a glowing light upon the horrid spectacle.
The face was a mass of clotted blood, which flowed from the
lacerated scalp, while gouts of blood streamed from eight gaping
wounds in the naked breast.
Slowly this frightful figure rose to a sitting posture, and, bending
slowly forward to the fire, the mouth was seen to open wide, and a
hollow gurgling—owg-h-h—broke from it.
“ H—!” exclaimed the trapper—and jumping up, he placed a
pistol to the ghastly head, the eyes of which sternly fixed them-
selves on his, and pulling the trigger, blew the poor wretch’s skull
to atoms. ;
The Gila passes through a barren, sandy country, with but little
game, and sparsely inhabited by several different tribes of the
great nation of the Apache. Unlike the rivers of this western
region, this stream is, in most parts of its course, particularly
toward its upper waters, entirely bare of timber, and the bottom,
through which it runs, aflords but little of the coarsest grass.
While on this stream, the trapping party lost several animals for
want of pasture, and many more from the predatory attacks of the
cunning Indians. These losses, however, they invariably made
good whenever they encountered a native village—taking care,
moreover, to repay themselves with interest whenever occasion
offered.
Notwithstanding the sterile nature of the country, the trappers,
during their passage up the Gila, saw with astonishment that the
arid and barren valley had once been peopled by a race of men far
superior to the present nomade tribes who roam over it. With no
little awe they gazed upon the ruined walls of Jarge cities, and the
remains of houses, with their ponderous beams and joists, still
testifying to the skill and industry with which they were con-
structed; huge ditches and irrigating canals, now filled with rank
vegetation, furrowed the plains in the vicinity, marking the spot
where once green waving maize and smiling gardens covered what
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 101
now is a bare and sandy desert. Pieces of broken pottery, of
domestic utensils, stained with bright colors, every where strewed
the ground; and spear and arrow-heads of stone, and quaintly
carved idols, and women’s ornaments of agate and obsidian, were
picked up often by the wondering trappers, examined with child-
like curiosity, and thrown carelessly aside.*
A Taos Indian, who was among the band, was evidently im-
pressed with a melancholy awe, as he regarded these ancient mon-
uments of his fallen people. At midnight he arose from his blan-
ket and left the camp, which was in the vicinity of the ruined
city, stealthily picking his way through the line of slumbering
forms which lay around; and the watchful sentinel observed him
approach the ruins with a slow and reverential gait. Entering
the moldering walls, he gazed silently around, where in ages past
his ancestors trod proudly, a civilized race, the tradition of which,
well known to his people, served but to make their present de-
graded position more galling and apparent. Cowering under the
shadow of a crumbling wall, the Indian drew his blanket over his
head, and conjured to his mind’s eye the former power and gran-
deur of his race—that warlike people who, forsaking their own
country for causes of which no tradition, however dim, now exists,
sought in the fruitful and teeming valleys of the south a soil and
climate which their own lands did not afford ; and, displacing the
wild and barbarous hordes inhabiting the land, raised there a
mighty empire, great in riches and civilization.
The Indian bowed his head, and mourned the fallen greatness
of his tribe. Rising, he slowly, drew his tattered blanket round
his body, and prepared to leave the spot, when the shadow of a
moving figure, creeping past a gap in the ruined wall, through
* The Aztecs are supposed to have built this city during their migration to the
- south; there is little doubt, however, but that the region extending from the Gila
to the Great Salt Lake, and embracing the province of New Mexico, was the
locality from which they emigrated.
102 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
>
>
which the mooubeams played, suddenly arrested his attention.
Rigid as a statue, he stood transfixed to the spot, thinking a for-
mer inhabitant of the city was visiting, in a ghostly form, the
scenes his body once knew so well. The bow in his right hand
shook with fear as he saw the shadow approach, but was as tightly
and steadily grasped when, on the figure emerging from the shade
of the wall, he distinguished the form of a naked Apache, armed
with bow and arrow, crawling stealthily through the gloomy
ruins.
Standing undiscovered within the shadow of the wall, the T'aos
raised his bow, and drew an arrow to the head, until the other,
who was bending low to keep under cover of the wall, and thus
approach the sentinel standing at a short distance, seeing suddenly
the well-defined shadow on the ground, rose upright on his legs,
and, knowing escape was impossible, threw his arms down his
sides, and, drawing himself erect, exclaimed, in a suppressed tone,
“ Wa-e-h !”
“ Wagh!” exclaimed the Taos likewise, but quickly dropped
his arrow point, and eased the bow.
‘What does my brother want ?” he asked, “that he lopes like
a wolf round the fires of the white hunters ?”
“Ts my brother’s skin not red?” returned the Apache, “and
yet he asks a question that needs no answer. Why does the
‘medicine wolf’ follow the buffalo and deer? For blood—and
for blood the Indian follows the treacherous white from camp to
camp, to strike blow for blow, until the deaths of those so basely
killed are fully avenged.”
“My brother speaks with a big heart, and his words are true ;
aud though the Taos and Pimo (Apache) black their faces toward
each other (are at war), here, on the graves of their common
fathers, there is peace between them. Let my brother go.”
The Apache moved quickly away, and the Taos once more
sought the camp-fires of his white companions.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 103
Following the course of the Gila to the eastward, they crossed.
a range of the Sierra Madre, which is a continuation of the Rocky
Mountains, and struck the waters of the Rio Del Norte, below
the settlements of New Mexico. On this stream they fared well,
besides trapping a great quantity of beaver; gare of all kinds
abounded, and the bluffs near the well-timbered banks of the river
were covered with rich grarmma grass, on which their half-starved
animals speedily improved in condition.
They remained for some weeks encamped on the right bank of
the stream, during which period they lost one of their number,
shot with an arrow while lying asleep within a few feet of the
camp-fire.
The Navajos continually prowl along that portion of the
river which runs through the settlements of New Mexico, preying
upon the cowardly inhabitants, and running off with their cattle
whenever they are exposed in sufficient numbers to tempt them.
While ascending the river, the trappers met a party of these In-
dians returning to their mountain homes with a large band of mules
and horses which they had taken from one of the Mexican towns,
besides several women and children, whom they had captured, as
slaves. ‘The main body of the trappers halting, ten of the band
followed and charged upon the Indians, who numbered at least
sixty, killed seven of them, and retook the prisoners and the whole
cavallada of horses and mules. Great were the rejoicings when
they entered Socorro, the town whence the women and children
had been taken, and as loud the remonstrances, when, handing
them over to their families, the trappers rode on, driving fifty of
the best of the rescued animals before them, which they retained
as payment for their services. Messengers were sent on to Albu-
querque with intelligence of the proceeding ; and as troops were
stationed there, the commandant was applied to, to chastise the
insolent whites.
That warrior, on learning that the trappers numbered less than
104 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
fifteen, became alarmingly brave, and ordering out the whole of his
disposable force, some two hundred dragoons, sallied out to inter-
cept the audacious mountaineers. About noon one day, just as
the latter had emerged from a little town between Socorro and
Albuquerque, they descried the imposing force of the dragoons
winding along a plain ahead. As the trappers advanced, the
officer in command halted his men, and sent out a trumpeter to
order the former to await his coming. ‘Treating the herald to a
roar of laughter, on they went, and, as they approached the sol-
diers, broke into a tret, ten of the number forming a line in front
of the packed and loose animals, and, rifle in hand, charging with
loud whoops. This was enough for the New Mexicans. Before
the enemy were within shooting distance, the gallant fellows
turned tail, and splashed into the river, dragging themselves up
the opposite bank like half-drowned rats, and saluted with loud
peals of laughter by the victorious mountaineers, who, firing a vol-
ley into the air, in token of supreme contempt, quietly continued
“their route up the stream.
Before reaching the capital of the province, they struck again
to the westward, and following a small creek to its junction with
the Green River, ascended that stream, trapping ex route to the
« Uintah or Snake Fork, and arrived at Roubideau’s rendezvous
early in the fall, where they quickly disposed of their peltries, and
were once more on “ the loose.”’
Here La Bonté married a Snake squaw, with whom he crossed
the mountains and proceeded to the Platte through the Bayou
Salade, where he purchased of the Yutas a commodious lodge,
with the necessary poles, &c.; and being now “rich” in mules
and horses, and in all things necessary for otiwm cum dignitate,
he took unto himself another wife, as by mountain law allowed ;
and thus equipped, with both his better halves attired in all the
glory of fofarraw he went his way rejoicing.
In a snug little valley lying under the shadow of the mountains,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. | 105
watered by Vermilion Creek, and in which abundance of bufialo,
elk, deer, and antelope fed and fattened on the rich grass, La
Bonté raised his lodge, employing himself in hunting, and fully oc-
cupying his wives’ time in dressing the skins of the many animals
he killed. Here he enjoyed himself amazingly until the com-
mencement of winter, when he determined to cross to the North
Fork and trade his skins, of which he had now as many packs as
his animals could carry. It happened that he one day left his
camp to spend a couple of days hunting buffalo in the mountains,
whither the bulls were now resorting, intending to ‘“ put out” for
Platte on his return. His hunt, however, led him farther into the
mountains than he anticipated, and it was only on the third day
that sundown saw him enter the little valley where his camp was
situated.
Crossing the creek, he was not a little disturbed at seeing fresh
Indian sign on the opposite side, which led in the direction of his
lodge ; and his worst fears were realized when, on coming within
sight of the little plateau where the conical top of his white lodge
had always before met his view, he saw nothing but a blackened
mass strewing the ground, and the burnt ends of the poles which
had once supported it.
Squaws, animals, and peltry, all were gone—an Arapaho moe-
easin lying on the ground told him where. He neither fumed nor
fretted, but, throwing the meat off his pack animal, and the sad-
dle from his horse, he collected the blackened ends of the lodge poles
and made a fire—led his beasts to water and hobbled them, threw
a piece of buffalo meat upon the coals, squatted down before the
fire, and lit his pipe. La Bonté was a true philosopher. Not-
withstanding that his house, his squaws, his peltries, were gone
‘at one fell swoop,” the loss scarcely disturbed his equanimity ;
and before the tobacco in his pipe was half smoked out he had
ceased to think of his misfortune. Certes, as he turned his apolla
of tender-loin, he sighed as he thought of the delicate manipula-
E*
106 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
tions with which his Shoshone squaw, Sah-qua-manish, was wont
to beat to tenderness the toughest bull meat—and missed the tend-
ing care of Yute Chil-co-the, or the “‘ reed that bends,’ in patch-
ing the holes worn in his neatly fitting moccasins, the work of
her nimble fingers. However, he ate and smoked, and smoked
and ate, and slept none the worse for his mishap; thought, before
he closed his eyes, a little of his lost wives, and more perhaps of
the “Bending Reed” than of Sah-qua-manish, or ‘she who runs
with the stream,” drew his blanket tightly round him, felt his rifle
handy to his grasp, and was speedily asleep.
While the tired mountaineer breathes heavily in his dream,
careless and unconscious that a living soul is near, his mule on a
sudden pricks her ears and stares into the gloom, whence a figure
soon emerges, and with noiseless steps draws near the sleeping
hunter. Taking one look at the slumbering form, the same figure
approaches the fire and adds a log to the pile; which done, it quiet-
ly seats itself at the feet of the sleeper, and remains motionless as
a statue. Toward morning the hunter awoke, and, rubbing his
eyes was astonished to feel the glowing warmth of the fire striking
on his naked feet, which, in Indian fashion, were stretched toward
it ; as by this time he knew, the fire he left burning must long
since have expired. Lazily raising himself on his elbow, he saw a
figure sitting near it with the back turned to him, which, although
his exclamatory wagh was loud enough in all conscience, remain-
ed perfectly motionless, until the trapper, rising, placed his hand
upon the shoulder: then turning up its face, the features displayed
to his wondering eye were those of Chil-co-the, his Yuta wife.
Yes, indeed, ‘‘ the reed that bends” had escaped from her Arapa-
ho captors, and made her way back to her white husband, fasting
and alone.
The Indian women who follow the fortunes of the white hunt-
ers are remarkable for their affection and fidelity to their hus-
bands, the which virtues, it must be remarked, are all on their
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 107
~
own side; for, with very few exceptions, the mountaineers seldom
scruple to abandon their Indian wives, whenever the fancy takes
them to change their harems ; and on such occasions the squaws,
thus cast aside, wild with jealousy and despair, have been not un-
frequently known to take signal vengeance both on their faithless
husbands and on the successful beauties who have supplanted
them in their affections. There are some honorable’ exceptions,
however, to such cruelty, and many of the mountaineers stick to
their red-skinned wives for better and for worse, often suffering
them to gain the upper hand in the domestic economy of the lodges,
and being ruled by their better halves in all things pertaining to
family affairs; and it may be.remarked, that, when once the lady
dons the unmentionables, she becomes the veriest termagant that
ever henpecked an unfortunate husband.
Your refined trappers, however, who, after many years of bach-
elor life, incline to take to themselves a better half, often under-
take an expedition into the settlements of New Mexico, where not
unfrequently they adopt a very “ Young Lochinvar” system in
procuring the required rib; and have been known to carry off, vz
et armis, from the midst of a fandango in Fernandez, or El Rancho
of Taos, some dark-skinned beauty—with or without her own con-
sent 1s a matter of unconcern—and bear the ravished fair one
across the mountains, where she soon becomes inured to the free
and roving life fate has assigned her.
American women are valued at a low figure in the mountains.
They are too fine and “ fofarraw.” Neither can they make moc-
casins, or dress skins; nor are they so schooled to perfect obedience
to their lords and masters as to stand a “lodge-poling,”’ which
the western lords of the creation not unfrequently deem it their
bounden duty to inflict upon their squaws for some dereliction of
domestic duty.
To return, however, to La Bonté. That worthy thought him-
self a lucky man to have lost but one of his wives, and she the
108 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
worst of the two. ‘‘Here’s the beauty,” he philosophized “of
having two ‘ wiping-sticks’ to your rifle ; if one breaks while ram-
ming down a ball, there’s still hickory left to supply its place.”
Although, with animals and peltry, he had lost several hundred
dollars’ worth of “ possibles,’ he never groaned or grumbled.
“ There’s redskin will pay for this,” he once muttered, and was
done. .
Packing all that was left on the mule, and mounting Chil-co-
the on his buffalo horse, he shouldered his rifle and struck the
Indian trail for Platte. On Horse Creek they came upon a party
of French * trappers and hunters, who were encamped with their
lodges and Indian squaws, and formed quite a village. Several
old companions were among them; and, to celebrate the arrival
of a “camarade,” a splendid dog-feast was prepared in honor of
the event. To effect this, the squaws sallied out of their lodges to
seize upon sundry of the younger and plumper of the pack, to fill
the kettles for the approaching feast. With a presentiment of
the fate in store for them, the curs slunk away with tails between
their legs, and declined the pressing invitations of the anxious
squaws. These shouldered their tomahawks and gave chase ; but
the cunning pups outstripped them, and would have fairly beaten
the kettles, if some of the mountaineers had not stepped out with
their rifles and quickly laid half-a-dozen ready to the knife. A
cayeute, attracted by the scent of blood, drew near, unwitting of
the canine feast in progress, and was likewise soon made dog of,
and thrust into the boiling kettle with the rest.
The feast that night was long protracted; and so savory was
the stew, and so agreeable to the palates of the hungry hunters,
that at the moment the last morsel was drawn from the pot, when
all were regretting that a few more dogs had not been slaughtered,
a wolfish-looking cur, who incautiously poked his long nose and
* Creoles of 5 ak and French Canadians.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST: 109
head. under the lodge skin, was pounced upon by the nearest
hunter, who in a moment drew his knife across the animal's
throat, and threw it to a squaw to skin and prepare for the pot.
The wolf had long since been vigorously discussed, and voted by
all hands to be “ good as dog.”
“ Meat’s meat,” 1s a common saying in the mountains, and from
the buffalo down to the rattlesnake, including every quadruped
‘that runs, every fowl: that flies, and every reptile that creeps,
nothing comes amiss to the mountaineer. Throwing aside all the
qualms and conscientious scruples of a fastidious stomach, it must
be confessed that dog-meat takes a high rank in the wonderful
variety of cuisine afforded to the gourmand and the gourmet by
the prolific “ mountains.”” Now, when the bill of fare offers such
tempting viands as buffalo beef, venison, mountain mutton, turkey,
grouse, wildfowl, hares, rabbits, beaver and their tails, &c., &c., the
?
station assigned to “ dog” as No. 2 in the list can be well appre-
ciated—No. 1, in delicacy of flavor, richness of meat, and other
good qualities, being the flesh of panthers, which surpasses every
other, and all put together.
‘« Painter meat can’t ‘shine’ with this,” says a hunter, to ex-
press the delicious flavor of an extraordinary cut of “ tender-loin,”
or delicate fleece. ‘
La Bonté started with his squaw for the North Fork early in
November, and arrived at the Laramie at the moment that the
big village of the Sioux came up for their winter trade. Two
other villages were encamped lower down the Platte, including
the Brulés and the Yanka-taus, who were now on more friendly
terms with the whites. The first band numbered several hundred
lodges, and presented quite an imposing appearance, the village
being laid out in parallel lines, the lodge of each chief being marked
with his particular totem. The traders had a particular portion
of the village allotted to them, and a Ime was marked out which
was strictly kept by the soldiers appointed for the protection of _
-
“a
110 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
the whites. -As there were many rival traders, and numerous
coureurs des bois, or peddling ones, the market promised to be
brisk, the more so as a large quantity of ardent spirits was in their
possession, which would be dealt with no unsparing hand to put
down the opposition of so many competing traders.
In opening a trade a quantity of liquor is first given “on the
prairie,’ * as the Indians express it in words, or by signs in rub-
bing the palm of one hand quickly across the other, holding both
flat. Having once tasted the pernicious liquid, there is no fear
but they will quickly come to terms; and not unfrequently the
spirit is drugged, to render the unfortunate Indians still more help-
less. Sometimes, maddened and infuriated by drink, they commit
the most horrid atrocities on each other, murdering and muti-
lating in a barbarous manner, and often attempting the lives of
the traders themselves. On one occasion a band of Sionx, while
under the influence of liquor, attacked and took possession of a
trading fort of the American Fur Company, stripping it of every
thing it contained, and roasting the trader himself over his own fire.
The principle on which the nefarious trade is conducted is this,
that the Indians, possessing a certain quantity of buffalo robes,
have to be cheated out of them, and the sooner the better. Al-
though it is explicitly prohibited by the laws of the United States
to convey spirits across the Indian frontier, and its introduction
among the Indian tribes subjects the offender to a heavy penalty ;
yet the infraction of this law is of daily occurrence, perpetrated
almost in the very presence of the government officers, who are
stationed along the frontier for the purpose of enforcing the laws
for the protection of the Indians.
The misery entailed upon these unhappy people by the illicit
traffic must be seen to be fully appreciated. Before the effects
of the poisonous “‘ fire-water,” they disappear from the earth like
“ “Qn the prairie,” is the Indian term for a free gift.
LIFE IN- THE FAR WEST. 111
“‘snow before the sun.’’ Although aware of the destruction it
entails spon them, the poor wretches have not moral courage to
shun the fatal allurement it holds out to them, of wild excitement
and a temporary oblivion of their many suflerings and privations.
With such palpable effects, it appears only likely that the illegal
trade is connived at by those whose policy it has ever been, grad-
ually but surely, to exterminate the Indians, and by any means to
extinguish their title to the few lands they now own on the out-
skirts of civilization. Certain it is that large quantities of liquor
find their way annually into the Indian country, and as certain
are the fatal results of the pernicious system, and that the Amer-
ican government takes no steps to prevent it. There are some
tribes who have as yet withstood the great temptation, and have
resolutely refused to permit liquor to be brought into their villages.
The marked diflerence between the improved condition of these,
and the moral and physical abasement of those which give way to
the fatal passion for drinking, sufficiently proves the pernicious
effects of the liquor trade on the unfortunate and abused aborig-
ines ; and it is matter of regret that no philanthropist has sprung
up in the United States to do battle for the rights of the Red
men, and call attention to the wrongs they endure at the hands of
their supplanters in the lands of their fathers. :
Robbed of their homes and hunting-grounds, and driven by the
encroachments of the whites to distant regions, which hardly sup-
port existence, the Indians, day by day, gradually decrease before
the accumulating evils, of body and soul, which their civilized
persecutors entail upon them. With every man’s hand against
them, they drag on to their final destiny ; and the day is not far
distant when the American Indian will exist only in the traditions
of his pale-faced conquerors.
The Indians trading at this time on the Platte were mostly of
the Sioux nation, including the tribes of Burnt-woods, Yanka-taus,
Pian-Kashas, Assinaboins, Oglallahs, Broken Arrows, all of which
11% LIFE IN- THE FAR WEST.
belong to the great Sioux nation, or La-cotahs, as they call them-
selves, and which means cut-throats. ‘There were also some
Cheyennes allied to the Sioux, as well as a small band of Re-
publican Pawnees.
Horse-racing, gambling, and ball-play, served to pass away the
time until the trade commenced, and many packs of dressed robes
changed hands among themselves. When playing at the usual
9
game of “hand,” the stakes, comprising all the valuables the
players possess, are piled in two heaps close at hand, the winner
at the conclusion of the game sweeping the goods toward him,
p)
and often returning a small portion ‘on the prairie,” with which
the loser may again commence operations with another player.
The game of “hand” is played by two persons. One, who
commences, places a plum or cherry-stone in the hollow formed
by joming the concaved palms of the hands together, then shak-
ing the stone for a few moments, the hands are suddenly sepa-
rated, and the other player must guess which hand now contains
the stone. .
Large bets are often wagered on the result of this favorite
game, which is also often played by the squaws, the men stand-
ing round encouraging them to bet, and laughing loudly at their
grotesque excitement.
A Burnt-wood Sioux, Tah-tunganisha, one of the bravest chiefs
of his tribe, was out, when a young man, on a solitary war expe-
dition against the Crows. One evening he drew near a certain
“medicine” spring, where, to his astonishment, he encountered a
Crow warrior in the act of quenching his thirst. He was on the
point of drawing his bow upon him, when he remembered the
sacred nature of the spot, and making the sign of peace, he fear-
lessly drew near his foe, and proceeded likewise to slake his thirst.
.A pipe of kinnik-kinnik being produced, it was proposed to pass
away the early part of the might in a game of “hand.” They
accordingly sat down beside the spring, and commenced the game.
LIFE IN- THE FAR WEST. 113
Fortune favored the Crow. He won arrow after arrow from
the Burnt-wood brave; then his bow, his club, his knife, his robe,
all followed, and the Sioux sat naked on the plain. Still he pro-
posed another stake against the other’s winnings—his scalp. He
played, and lost ; and bending forward his head, the Crow warrior
drew his knife, and quickly removed the bleeding prize. Without
a murmur the luckless Sioux rose to depart, but first exacted a
- promise from his antagonist that he would meet him once more
at the same spot, and engage in another trial of skill.
On the day appointed, the Burnt-wood sought the spot, with a
new equipment, and again the Crow made his appearance, and
they sat down to play. This time fortune changed sides; the
Sioux won back his former losses, and in his turn the Crow was
stripped to his skin.
Scalp against scalp was now the stake, and this time the Crow
submitted his head to the victorious Burnt-wood’s knife; and both
the warriors stood scalpless on the plain.
And now the Crow had but one single stake of value to offer,
and the offer of it he did not hesitate to make. He staked his
life against the other’s winnings. They played; and fortune still
being adverse, he lost. He offered his breast to his adversary.
The Burnt-wood plunged his knife into his heart to the very hilts
and, laden with his spoils, returned to his village, and to this day
wears suspended from his ears his own and enemy’s scalp.
The village presented the usual scene of confusion as long as
the trade lasted. Fighting, brawling, yelling, dancing, and all
the concomitants of intoxication, continued to the last drop of the
liquor-keg, when the reaction after such excitement was almost
worse than the evil itself. During this time, all the work de-
volved upon the squaws, who, in tending the horses, and in pack-
ing wood and water from a long distance, had their time sufficiently
occupied. As there was little or no grass in the vicinity, the ani-
mals were supported entirely on the bark of the cotton-wood ; and
114 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
to procure this, the women were daily engaged in felling huge trees,
or climbing them fearlessly, chopping off the upper limbs—spring-
ing like squirrels from branch to branch, which, in their confined
costume, appeared matter of considerable difficulty.
The most laughter-provoking scenes, however, were when a
number of squaws sallied out to the grove, with their long-nosed,
wolfish-looking dogs harnessed to their travées or trabogans, on
which loads of cotton-wood were piled. The dogs, knowing full
well the duty required of them, refuse to approach the coaxing
squaws, and at the same time are fearful of provoking their
anger by escaping and running off. They therefore squat on
their haunches, with tongues hanging out of their long mouths,
the picture of indecision, removing a short distance as the irate
squaw approaches. When once harnessed to the travée, how-
ever, which is simply a couple of lodge-poles lashed on either side
of the dog, with a couple of cross-bars near the ends to support
the freight, they follow quietly enough, urged by bevies of chil-
dren, who invariably accompany the women. Once arrived at
the scene of their labors, the reluctance of the curs to draw near
the piles of cotton-wood is most comical. They will le down
stubbornly at a little distance, whining their uneasiness, or some-
times scamper off bodily, with their long poles trailing after them,
pursued by the yelling and half frantic squaws.
When the travées are laden, the squaws, bent double under
loads of wood sufficient to break a porter’s back, and calling to
the dogs, which are urged on by the buffalo-fed urchins in rear,
lead the line of march. The curs, taking advantage of the help-
less state of their mistresses, turn a deaf ear to their coaxings,
lying down every few yards to rest, growling and fighting with
each other; in which encounters every cur joins the mélée, charg-
ing pell-mell into the yelping throng, upsetting the squalling chil-
dren, and making confusion worse confounded. Then, armed with
lodge-poles, the squaws, throwing down their loads, rush to the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 115
rescue, dealing stalwart blows on the pugnacious curs, and finally
restoring something like order to the march.
“ 'T'szoo—tszoo !” they cry, “wah, kashne, ceitcha—get on,
you devilish beasts—tszoo—tszoo !” and belaboring them without
mercy, they start them into a gallop, which, once commenced, is
generally continued till they reach their destination.
The Indian dogs are, however, invariably well treated by the
squaws, since they assist materially the every-day labors of these
patient, over-worked creatures, in hauling firewood to the lodge,
and, on the line of march, carrying many of the household goods
and chattels, which otherwise the squaw herself would have to
carry on her back. Every lodge possesses from half-a-dozen to a
score ; some for draught and others for eating—for dog meat forms
part and parcel of an Indian feast. The former are stout, wiry
animals, half wolf half sheep-dog, and are regularly trained to
draught ; the latter are of a smaller kind, more inclined to fat,
and embrace every variety of the genus cur. Many of the
southern tribes possess a breed of dogs entirely divested of hair,
which evidently have come from South America, and are highly
esteemed for the kettle. Their meat, in appearance and flavor,
resembles young pork, but far surpasses it in richness and delicacy.
The Sioux are very expert in making their lodges comfortable,
taking more pains in their construction than most Indians. They
are all of conical form: a framework of straight, slender poles,
resembling hop-poles, and from twenty to twenty-five feet long,
is first erected, round which is stretched a sheeting of buffalo
robes, softly dressed, and smoked to render them water-tight.
The apex, through whieh the ends of the poles protrude, is left
open to allow the stmoke to escape. A small opening, sufficient
to permit the entrance of a man, is made on one side, over which
is hung a door of buffalo hide. A lodge of the common size con-
tains about twelve or fourteen skins, and contains comfortably a
family of twelve in number. The fire is made in the center, im-
a
116 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
mediately under the aperture in the roof, and a flap of the upper
skins is closed or extended at pleasure, serving as a cowl or chim-
ney-top to regulate the draught, and permit the smoke to escape
freely. Round the fire, with their feet toward it, the inmates
sleep on skins and buffalo rugs, which are rolled up during the
day, and stowed at the back of the lodge.
In traveling, the lodge-poles are secured half on each side a
horse, and the skins placed on transversal bars near the ends,
which trail along the ground—two or three squaws or children
mounted on the same horse, or the smallest of the latter borne in
the dog travées. A set of lodge-poles will last from three to
seven years, unless the village is constantly on the move, when
they are soon worn out in trailing over the gravelly prairie. They
are usually of ash, which grows on many of the mountain creeks,
and regular expeditions are undertaken when a supply is required,
either for their own lodges, or for trading with those tribes who
inhabit the prairies at a great distance from the locality where
the poles are procured.
There are also certain creeks where the Indians resort to lay in
a store of kinnik-kinnik (the inner bark of the red willow), which
they use as a substitute for tobacco, and which has an aromatic
and very pungent flavor. It is prepared for smoking by being
scraped in thin curly flakes from the slender saplings, and crisped
before the fire, after which it is rubbed between the hands into a
form resembling leaf-tobacco, and stored in skin bags for use. It
has a highly narcotic effect on those not habituated to its use, and
produces a heaviness sometimes approaching stupefaction, alto-
gether different from the soothing effects ef tobacco.
Every year, owing to the disappearance of the buffalo from their
former haunts, the Indians are compelled to encroach upon each
other’s hunting-grounds, which is a fruitful cause of war between
the different tribes. It is a curious fact, that the buffalo retire
before the whites, while the presence of Indians in their pastures
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 117
appears in no degree to disturb them. Wherever a few white
hunters are congregated in a trading post, or elsewhere, so sure it
is that, if they remain in the same locality, the buffalo will desert
the vicinity, and seek pasture elsewhere. In this, the Indians
?
affirm, the wah-keitcha, or ‘“‘ bad medicine,” of the pale-faces is
very apparent; and they ground upon it their well-founded com-
plaints of the encroachments made upon their hunting-grounds by
the white hunters.
In the winter, many of the tribes are reduced to the very verge
of starvation—the buflalo having passed from their country into
that of their enemies, when no other alternative is offered them,
but to remain where they are and starve, or to follow the game
into a hostile region, a move entailing war and all its horrors.
Reckless, moreover, of the future, in order to prepare robes for
the traders, and to procure the pernicious fire-water, they wantonly
slaughter, every year, vast numbers of buffalo cows (the skins of -
which sex only are dressed), and thus add to the evils in store for
them. When questioned on this subject, and reproached with
such want of foresight, they answer, that however quickly the
buffalo disappears, the Red man “ goes under” more quickly still ;
aud that the Great Spirit has ordained that both shall be “rubbed
out” from the face of nature at one and the same time—“ that
arrows and bullets are not more fatal to the buffalo than the
small-pox and fire-water to them, and that before many winters’
snows have disappeared, the buffalo and the Red man will only be
remembered by their bones, which will strew the plains.”—‘ They
look forward, however, to a future state, when, after a long jour-
ney, they will reach the happy hunting-grounds, where buffalo
will once more blacken the prairies ; where the pale-faces dare not
come to disturb them; where no winter snows cover the ground,
and the buffalo are always plentiful and fat.”
As soon as the streams opened, La Bonté, now reduced to two
animals and four traps, sallied forth again, this time seeking the
118 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
dangerous country of the Blackfeet, on the head waters of the ©
Yellow Stone and Upper Missouri. He was accompanied by
three others, a man named Wheeler, and one Cross-Eagle, a
Swede, who had been many years in the western country. Reach-
ing the forks of a small creek, on both of which appeared plenty
of beaver sign, La Bonté followed the left-hand one alone, while
the others trapped the right in company, the former leaving his_
squaw in the company of a Sioux woman, who followed the for-
tunes of Cross-Eagle, the party agreeing to rendezvous at the
junction of the two forks as soon as they had trapped to their
heads and again descended them. ‘The larger party were the first
to reach the rendezvous, and camped on the banks of the main
stream to await the arrival of La Bonté.
The morning after their return, they had just risen from their
blankets, and were lazily stretching themselves before the fire,
when a volley of fire-arms rattled from the bank of the creek, and
two of their number fell dead to the ground, while at the same
moment the deafening yells of Indians broke upon the ears of the
frightened squaws. Cross-Eagle seized his rifle, and, though
_ severely wounded, rushed to the cover of a hollow tree which
stood near, and crawling into it, defended himself the whole day
with the greatest obstinacy, killing five Indians outright, and
wounding several more. Unable to drive the gallant trapper from
his retreat, the savages took advantage of a favorable wind which
suddenly sprang up, and fired the long dry grass surrounding the
tree. The rotten log catching fire, at length compelled the hunter
to leave his retreat. Clubbing his rifle, he charged among the
Indians, and fell at last, pierced through and through with wounds,
but not until two more of his assailants had fallen by his hand.
The two squaws were carried off; and one was sold shortly
afterward to some white men at the trading posts on the Platte ;
but La Bonté never recovered the ‘Bending Reed,” nor even
heard of her existence from that day. So once more was the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 119
» mountaineer bereft of his better half; and when he returned to
the rendezvous, a troop of wolves were feasting on the bodies of
his late companions, and of the Indians killed in the affray, of
which he only heard the particulars a long time after from a trap-
per, who had been present when one of the squaws was offered at
the trading post for sale, and had heard her recount the miserable
fate of her husband and his companions on the forks of the creek
which, from the fact of La Bonté being the leader of the party has
since borne his name.
Undaunted by this misfortune, the trapper continued his solitary
hunt, passing through the midst of the Crow and Blackfeet coun-
try ; encountering many perils, often hunted by the Indians, but
always escaping. He had soon loaded both his animals with
beaver, and then thought of bending his steps to some of the trading
rendezvous on the other side of the mountains, where employés of
the Great Northwest Fur Company meet the trappers with the
produce of their hunts, on Lewis’s fork of the Columbia, or one of
its numerous affluents. His intention was to pass the winter at
some of the company’s trading posts in Oregon, into which country
he had never yet penetrated.
_ CHAPTER V.
We have said that La Bonté was a philosopher: he took the
streaks of ill luck which checkered his mountain life with perfect
carelessness, if not with stoical mdifference. Nothing ruffled his
danger-steeled equanimity of temper ; no sudden emotion disturbed
his mind. We have seen how wives were torn from him without
eliciting a groan or grumble (but such contretemps, it may be said,
can scarcely find a place in the category of ills) ; how the loss of
mules and mustangs, harried by horse-stealing Indians, left him in
the ne-plus-ultra of mountain misery—‘ afoot ;” how packs and
peltries, the hard-earned ‘“ beaver’ of his perilous hunts, were
“raised” at one fell swoop by freebooting bands of savages. Hun-
ger and thirst, we know, were common-place sensations to the
mountaineer. His storm-hardened flesh scarce felt the pinging
wounds of arrow-point or bullet ; and when in the midst of Indian
fight, it is not probable that any tender qualms of feeling would
allay the itching of his fingers for his enemy’s scalp-lock, nor
would any remains of civilized fastidiousness prevent his burying
his knife again and again in the life-blood of an Indian savage.
Still, in one dark corner of his heart, there shone at intervals a
faint spark of what was once a fiercely-burning fire. Neither time,
that corroder of all things, nor change, that ready abettor of obliv-
ion, nor scenes of peril and excitement, which act as dampers to
more quiet memories, could smother this little smoldering spark,
which now and again—when rarely-coming calm succeeded some
stirring passage in the hunter’s life, and left him, for a brief time,
devoid of care, and victim to his thoughts—would flicker suddenly,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 121
and light up all the nooks and corners of his rugged breast, and
discover to his mind’s eye that one deep-rooted memory clung there
still, though long neglected ; pei that, spite of time and change,
of life and fortune.
, On revient toujours a ses premiers 3
Often and éften: as La Bonté sat cross-legged pie his solitary
camp-fire, and, pipe in mouth, watched the blue smoke curling
upward in the clear cold sky, a well- remembered form appeared
to gaze upon him from the vapory wreaths. Then would old
recollections crowd before him, and old emotions, long a stranger
to his breast, shape themselves, as it were, into long-forgotten but
now familiar pulsations. Again he felt the soft, subduing influence
which once, in days gone by, a certain passion exercised over his
mind and body; and often a trembling seized him, the same he
used to experience at the sudden sight of one Mary Brand, whose
dim and dreamy apparition so often watched his lonely bed, or,
unconsciously conjured up, cheered him in the dreary watches oi
the Jong and stormy winter nights.
At first he only knew that one face haunted his dreams by night,
and the few moments by day when he thought of any thing, and
this face smiled lovingly upon him, and cheered him mightily.
Name he had quite forgotten, or recalled it vaguely, and, setting
small store by it, had thought of it no more.
For many years after he had deserted his home, ex Bonté had
cherished the idea of again re turning to his country. During this
period he had never forgotten his old flame, and many a choice
fur he had carefully laid by, intended as a present for Mary Brand ;
and many a gage d’amour of cunning shape and device, worked in
stained quills, of porcupine and bright-colored beads—the handi-
work of nimble-fingered squaws—he had packed in his possible
sack for the same destination, hoping a time would come when he
might lay them at her feet.
F
122 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
Year after year wore on, however, and still found him, with
traps and rifle, following his perilous avocation ; and each succeed-
ing one saw him more and more wedded to the wild mountain-life.
He was conscious how unfitted he had become again to enter the
galling harness of conventionality and civilization. He thought,
too, how changed in manners and appearance he now must be,
and could not believe that he would again find favor in the eyes of
his quondam love, who, he judged, had long since forgotten him ;
and imexperienced as he was in such matters, yet he knew enough
of womankind to feel assured that time and absence had long since
done the work, if even the natural fickleness of woman’s nature
had lain dormant. Thus it was that he came to forget Mary
Brand, but still remembered the all-absorbing feeling she had once
created in his breast, the shadow of which still remained, and often
took form and: feature in the smoke-wreaths of his solitary eamp-
fire.
If truth be told, La Bonté had his failings as a mountaineer,
and—sin unpardonable in hunter law—still possessed, in holes and
corners of his breast seldom explored by his inward eye, much of
the leaven of kindly human nature, which now and again involun-
tarily peeped out, as greatly to the contempt of his comrade trap-
pers as it was blushingly repressed by the mountaineer himself.
Thus, in his various matrimonial episodes, he treated his dusky
sposas with all the consideration the sex could possibly demand
from hand of man. No squaw of his ever humped shoulder to re-
ceive a castigatory and marital “ lodge-poling’’ for offense domes-
tic ; but often has his helpmate blushed to see her pale-face lord
and master devote himself to the feminine labor of packing huge
piles of fire-wood on his back, felling trees, butchering unwieldy
bufialo—all which are included in the Indian category of female
duties. ‘Thus he was esteemed an excellent pavid by all the mar-
riageable young squaws of Blackfoot, Crow, and Shoshone, of
/Yutah, Shian, and Arapaho; but after his last connubial catastro-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 123
phe, he steeled his heart against all the charms and coquetry of
Indian belles, and persevered in unblessed widowhood for many
a long day.
From the point where we left him on his way to the waters of
the Columbia, we must jump with him over a space of nearly two
years, during which time he had a most uninterrupted run of good
luck; trapping with great success on the head streams of the Co-
lumbia and Yellow Stone—the most dangerous of trapping ground
—and finding good market for his peltries at the ‘‘ Northwest”
posts—beaver fetching as high a price as five and six dollars a
“‘ plew’’—the “ golden age’’ of trappers; now, alas, never to return,
and existing only in the fond memory of the mountaineers. This
glorious time, however, was too good to last. In mountain lan-
guage, “such heap of fat meat was not going to ‘shine’ much
longer.”
La Bonté was at this time one of a band of eight trappers,
whose hunting ground was about the head waters of the Yellow
Stone, which we have before said is in the country of the Black-
feet. With him were Killbuck, Meek, Marcellin, and three others ;
and the leader of the party was Bill Williams, that old “hard
case’ who had spent forty years and more in the mountains, until
he had become as tough as the parfléche soles of his moccasins.
They were all good men and true, expert hunters, and well-trained
mountaineers. After having trapped all the streams they were
acquainted with, it was determined to strike into the mountains,
at a point where old Williams affirmed, from the “run” of the
hills, there must be plenty of water, although not one of the party
had before explored the country, or knew any thing of its nature,
or of the likelihood of its affording game for themselves or pasture
for their animals. However, they packed their peltry, and put
out for the land in view—a lofty peak, dimly seen above the more
regular summit of the chain, being their landmark.
For the first day or two their rout lay between two ridges of
124 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
mountains, and by following the little valley which skirted a creek,
they kept on level ground, and saved their animals considerable
labor and fatigue. Williams always rode ahead, his body bent
over his saddle-horn, across which rested a long heavy rifle, his
keen gray eyes peering from under the slouched brim of a flexible
felt-hat, black and shining with grease. His buckskin hunting-
shirt, bedaubed until it had the appearance of polished leather,
hung in folds over his bony carcass; his nether extremities being
clothed in pantaloons of the same material (with scattered fringes
down the outside of the lee—which ornaments, however, had been
pretty well thinned to supply “ whangs” for mending moccasins or
pack-saddles), which, shrunk with wet, clung tightly to his long,
spare, sinewy legs. His feet were thrust into a pair of Mexican
stirrups made of wood, and as big as coal-scuttles ; and iron spurs
of incredible proportions, with tinkling drops attached to the
rowels, were fastened to his heel—a bead-worked strap, four inches
broad, securing them over the instep. In the shoulder-belt which
sustained his powder-horn and bullet-pouch, were fastened the
various instruments essential to one pursuing his mode of life. An
awl, with deer-horn handle, and the point defended by a case of
cherry-wood carved by his own hand, hung at the back of the belt,
side by side with a worm for cleaning the rifle; and under this
was a squat and quaint-looking bullet-mold, the handles guarded
by strips of buckskin to save his fingers from burning when running
balls, having for its companion a little bottle made from the point
of an antelope’s horn, scraped transparent, which contained the
“medicine” used in baiting the traps. The old coon’s face was
sharp and thin, a long nose and chin hob-nobbing each other ; and
his head was always bent forward giving him the appearance of
- being hump-backed. He appeared to look neither to the right nor
left, but, in fact, his little twinkling eye was every where. He
looked at no one he was addressing, always seeming to be thinking
of something else than the subject of his discourse, speaking in a
-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 125
whining, thin, cracked voice, and in a tone that left the hearer in
doubt whether he was laughing or crying. On the present occa-
sion he had joined this band, and naturally assumed the leadership
(for Bill ever refused to go in harness), in opposition to his usual
practice, which was to hunt alone. His character was well
known. Acquainted with every inch of the Far West, and with
all the Indian tribes who inhabited it, he never failed to outwit his
Red enemies, and generally made his appearance at the rendez-
vous, from his solitary expeditions, with galore of beaver, when
numerous bands of trappers dropped in on foot, having been de-
spoiled of their packs and animals by the very Indians through the
midst of whom old Williams had contrived to pass unseen and
unmolested. On occasions when he had been in company with
others, and attacked by Indians, Bill invariably fought manfully,
and with all the coolness that perfect indifference to death or
danger could give, but always “on his own hook.” His rifle
eracked away merrily, and never spoke in vain; and in a charge—
if ever it came to that—his keen-edged butcher-knife tickled the
fleece of many a Blackfoot. But at the same time, if he saw that
discretion was the better part of valor, and affairs wore so cloudy
an aspect as to render retreat advisable, he would first express his
opinion in curt terms, and decisively, and, charging up his rifle,
would take himself off and ‘“‘ cache’’* so effectually that to search
for him was utterly useless. Thus, when with a large party of
trappers, when any thing occurred which gave him a hint that
trouble was coming, or more Indians were about than he con-
sidered good for his animals, Bill was wont to exclaim—
“ Do’ee hyar now, boys, thar’s sign about? this hos feels like
eaching ;’ and, without more words, and stoically deaf to all
remonstrances, he would forewith proceed to pack his animals,
talking the while to an old, crop-eared, raw-boned Nez-percé pony,
* Hide—from cdcher.
126 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
his own ‘particular saddle-horse, who in dogged temper and iron
hardiness, was a worthy companion of his self-willed master.
This beast, as Bill seized his apishamore to lay upon its galled
back, would express displeasure by humping its back and shaking
its withers with a wincing motion, that always excited the ire of
the old trapper; and no sooner had he laid the apishamore
smoothly on the chafed skin, than a wriggle of the animal shook
it off:
‘““Do’ee hyar now, you darned crittur ?” he would whine out,
“can’t ee keep quiet your old fleece now? Isn't this old coon
putting out to save ’ee from the darned Injuns now, do ’ee hyar ?”
And then, continuing his work and taking no notice of his com-
rades, who stood by bantering the eccentric old trapper, he would
soliloquize—‘‘ Do ’ee hyar, now? ‘This niggur sees sign ahead—
he does ; he'll be afoot afore long, if he don’t keep his eye skinned
—he will. Injuns is all about, they ar’: Blackfoot at that.
Can’t come round this child—they can’t, wagh! And at last,
his pack animals securely tied to the tail of his horse, he would
mount, and throwing the rifle across the horn of his saddle, and
without noticing his companions, would drive the jingling spurs
into his horse’s gaunt sides, and muttering, ‘“‘Can’t come round this
child—they can’t!” would ride away ; and nothing more would
be seen or heard of him perhaps for months, when they would not
unfrequently, themselves bereft of animals in the scrape he had
foreseen, find him located in some solitary valley, in his lonely
camp, with his animals securely picketed around, and his peltries
safe.
However, if he took it into his head to keep company with a
party, all felt perfectly secure under his charge. His iron frame
defied fatigue, and, at night, his love for himself and his own
animals was sufficient guarantee that the camp would be well
guarded. As he rode away, his spurs jingling, and thumping the
sides of his old horse at every step, he managed, with admirable
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 127
dexterity, to take advantage of the best line of country to follow—
avoiding the gullies and cafions and broken ground which would
otherwise have impeded his advance. This tact appeared instinct-
ive, for he looked neither right nor left, while continuing a course
as straight as possible at the foot of the mountains. In selecting
a camping site, he displayed equal skill: wood, water, and grass
began to fill his thoughts toward sundown, and when these three
requisites for a camping ground presented themselves, old Bill
sprang from his saddle, unpacked his animals in a twinkling, and
hobbled them, struck fire and ignited a few chips (leaving the rest
to pack in the wood), lit his pipe, and enjoyed himself. On one
oceasion, when passing through the valley, they had come upon a
band of fine buffalo cows, and, shortly after camping, two of the party
rode in with a good supply of fat fleece. One of the party was a
‘‘oreenhorn”’ on his first hunt, fresh from a fort on Platte, and as
yet uninitiated in the mysteries of mountain cooking. Bill, lazily
smoking his pipe, called to him as he happened to be nearest, to
butcher off a piece of meat and put it in his pot. Markhead
seized the fleece, and commenced innocently carving off a huge
ration, When a gasping roar from the old trapper caused him to
drop his knife.
“'Ti-ya,” growled Bill, ‘‘do ’ee hyar, now, you darned green-
horn, do ’ee spile fat cow like that whar you was raised ? Them
dvins won't shine in this crowd, boy, do ’ee hyar, darn you ?—
What! butcher meat across the grain! why, whar’ll the blood
be goin’ to, you precious Spaniard? Down the grain, I say,” he
continued, in a severe tone of rebuke, “ and let your flaps be long,
or out the juice ‘ll run slick—do ’ee hyar, now?” But this heret-
ical error nearly cost the old trapper his appetite, and all night
long he grumbled his horror at seeing “fat cow spiled in that
fashion.”
‘When two or three days’ journey brought them to the end of
the valley, and they commenced the passage of the mountain,
128 PLE E. IN THE PAB WHST:
their march was obstructed by all kinds of obstacles; although
they had chosen what appeared to be a gap in the chain, and
what was in fact the only practicable passage in that vicinity.
‘They followed the canon of a branch of the Yellow Stone, where
it entered the mountain ; but from this point it became a “torrent,
and it was only by dint of incredible exertions that they reached
the summit of the ridge. Game was exceedingly scarce in the
vicinity, and they suflered extremely from hunger, having, on
more than one occasion, recourse to the parfléche soles of their
moccasins to allay its pangs. Old Bill, however, never grumbled :
he chewed away at his shoes with relish even, and as long as he
had a pipeful of tobacco in his pouch, was a happy man. Starv-
ation was as yet far off, for all their animals were in existence ;
out as they were in a country where it was difficult to procure a
remount, each trapper hesitated to sacrifice one of his horses to his
appetite.
From the summit of the ridge, Bill recognized the country on
the opposite side to that whence they had just ascended as famil-
iar to him, and pronounced it to be full of beaver, as well as
abounding in the less desirable commodity of Indians. This was
the valley lying about the lakes now called Eustis and Biddle, in
which are many thermal and mineral springs, well known to the
trappers by the names of the Soda; Beer, and Brimstone Springs,
and regarded by them with no little awe and curiosity, as being
the breathing places of his Satanic majesty—considered, moreover,
to be the “ biggest kind” of ‘‘ medicine” to be found in the mount-
ains. If truth be teld, old Bill hardly relished the idea of enter-
tug this country, which he pronounced to be of ‘bad medicine”
aotoriety, but nevertheless agreed to guide them to the best trap-
»ing ground.
One day they reached a creek full of beaver sign, and determin-
ed to halt here and establish their headquarters, while they trap-
ped in the neighborhood. We must here observe that at this pe-
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. . 129
riod—which was one of considerable rivalry among the various
trading companies in the Indian territory—the Indians, having
become possessed of arms and ammunition in great quantities, had
_ grown unusually daring and persevering in their attacks on the
white hunters who passed through their country, and consequently
the trappers were compelled to roam about in large bands for mu-
tual protection, which, although it made them less lable to open
attack, yet rendered it more difficult for them to pursue their call-
ing without being discovered ; for, where one or two men might
pass unseen, the broad trail of a large party, with its animals, was
not likely to escape the sharp eyes of the cunning savages. |
They had scarcely encamped when the old leader, who had sal-
lied out a short distance from camp to reconnoiter the neighbor-
hood, returned with an Indian moccasin in his hand, and informed
his companions that its late owner and others were about.
“Do ’ee hyar now, boys, thar’s Inmjuns knocking round, and
Blackfoot at that; but thar’s plenty of beaver too, and this child
means trapping any how.”
His companions were anxious to leave such dangerous vicinity ;
but the old fellow, contrary to his usual caution, determined to
remain where he was—saying that there were Indians all over the
country, for that matter ; and as they had determined to hunt here,
he had made up his mind too—which was conclusive, and all
agreed to stop where they were, in spite of the Indians. La
Bonté killed a couple of mountain sheep close to camp, and they
feasted rarely on the fat mutton that night, and were unmolested
by marauding Blackfeet.
The next morning, leaving two of their number in camp, they
started in parties of two, to hunt for beaver sign and set their
traps. Markhead paired with one Batiste, Killbuck and La
Bonté formed another couple, Meek and Marcellin another; two
Canadians trapped together, and Bill Williams and another re-
mained to guard the camp: but this last, leaving Bill mending
r*
130 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
his moccasins, started off to kill a mountain sheep, a band of
which animals was visible. ,
Markhead and his companion, the first couple on the list, fol-
lowed a creek, which entered that on which they had encamp-
ed, about ten miles distant. Beaver sign was abundant, and
they had set eight traps, when Markhead came suddenly upon
fresh Indian sign, where squaws had passed through the shrub-
bery on the banks of the stream to procure water, as he knew
from observing a large stone placed by them in the stream, on
which to stand to enable them to dip their kettles in the deepest
water. Beckoning to his companion to follow, and cocking his
rifle, he carefully pushed aside the bushes, and noiselessly proceed-
ed up the bank, when, creeping on hands and knees, he gained
the top, and, looking from his hiding-place descried three Indian
huts standing on a little plateau near the creek. Smoke curled
from the roofs of branches, but the skin doors were carefully closed,
so that he was unable to distinguish the number of the inmates.
At a little distance, however, he observed two or three squaws
gathering wood, with the usual attendance of curs whose acute-
ness in detecting the scent of strangers was much to be dreaded.
Markhead was a rash and daring young fellow, caring no more
for Indians than he did for prairie dogs, and acting ever on the
spur of the moment, and as his inclination dictated, regardless of
consequences. He at once determined to enter the lodges, and
attack the enemy, should any be there ; and the other trapper
was fain to join him in the enterprise. ‘The lodges proved empty,
but the fires were still burning, and meat cooking upon them, to
which the hungry hunters did ample justice, besides helping them-
selves to whatever goods and chattels, in the shape of leather and
moccasins, took their fancy.
Gathering their spoil into a bundle, they sought their horses,
which they had left tied under cover of the timber on the banks
of the creek ; and, mounting, took the back trail, to pick up their
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 131
traps and remove from so dangerous a neighborhood. They were
approaching the spot where the first trap was set, a thick growth
of ash and quaking-ash concealing the stream, when Markhead,
who was riding ahead, observed the bushes agitated, as if some
animal was making its way through them. He instantly stopped
his horse, and his companion rode to his side, to inquire the cause
of this abrupt halt. They were within a few yards of the belt of
shrubs which skirted the stream; and before Markhead had time
to reply, a dozen swarthy heads and shoulders suddenly protruded
from the leafy screen, and as many rifle-barrels and arrows were
pointing at their breasts. Before the trappers had time to turn
their horses and fly, a cloud of smoke burst from the thicket almost
in their faces. Batiste, pierced with several balls, fell dead, and
Markhead felt himself severely wounded. However, he struck
the spurs into his horse; and as some half-score Blackfeet jumped
with loud eries from their cover, he discharged his rifle among
them, and galloped off} a volley of balls and arrows whistling
after him. He drew no bit until he reined up at the camp-fire,
where he found Bill quietly dressing a deer-skin. That worthy
looked up from his work ; and seemg Markhead’s face streaming
with blood, and the very unequivocal evidence of an Indian
rencounter in the shape of an arrow sticking in his back, he asked
—‘ Do ’ee feel bad now, boy? Whar away you see them darned
Blackfoot ?”
“Well, pull this arrow out of my back, and may be I'll feel
like telling,” answered Markhead.
‘“ Do ’ee hyar now! hold on till I’ve pete this cussed skin,
will ’ee! Did ’ee ever see sich a darned pelt, now? it won’t take the
- smoke any how I fix it.” And Markhead was fain to wait the
leisure of the imperturbable old trapper, before he was eased of
his annoying companion.
Old Bill expressed no surprise or grief when informed of the fate
of poor Batiste. He said it was “just like greenhorns, runnin’
a
152 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
into them cussed Blackfoot ;’ and observed that the defunct
trapper, being only a Vide-poche, was “no account anyhow.”
Presently Killbuck and La Bonté galloped into camp with another
alarm of Indians. They had also been attacked suddenly by a
band of Blackfeet, but, being in a more open country, had got
clear off, after killing two of their assailants, whose scalps hung at
the horns of their saddles. They had been in a different direction
dothat in which Markhead and his companion had proceeded, and,
from the signs they had observed, expressed their belief that the
country was alive with Indians. Neither of these men had been
wounded. Presently the two Canadians made their appearance
on the bluff, galloping with might and main to camp, and shouting
9
* Indians, Indians,’ as they came. All being assembled, and a
council held, it was determined to abandon the camp and neigh-
borhood immediately. -Old Bill was already packing his animals,
and as he pounded the saddle down on the withers of his old
Rosinante, he muttered—‘ Do ’ee hyar, now! this coon ‘ull cache,
he will.” So mounting his horse, and leading his pack-mule by
a lariat, he bent over his saddle-horn, dug his ponderous rowels
into the lank sides of his beast, and, without a word, struck up the
bluff and disappeared.
The others hastily gathering up their packs, and most of them
having lost their traps, quickly followed his example, and “ put
out.” On cresting the high ground which rose from the creek,
they observed thin columns of smoke mounting into the air from
>?
many different points, the meaning of which they were at no loss
to guess. However they were careful not to show themselves on
elevated ground, keeping as much as possible under the banks of
the creek, when such a course was practicable; but, the blufls”
sometimes rising precipitously from the water, they were more
‘han once compelled to ascend the banks, and continue their
course along the uplands, whence they might easily be discovered
by the Indians. It was nearly sundown when they left their
\
LIFE°-IN THE FAR WEST: 133
camp, but they proceeded during the greater part of the night
at as rapid a rate as possible; their progress, however, being
greatly retarded as they advanced into the mountain, their route
lying up stream. Toward morning they halted for a brief space,
but started again as soon as daylight permitted them to see their
way over the broken ground.
The creek now forced its way through a narrow cajion, the
banks being thickly clothed with a shrubbery of cotton-wood and
quaking ash. The mountain rose on each side, but not abruptly,
‘being here and there broken into plateaus and shelving prairies.
In a very thick bottom, sprinkled with coarse grass, they halted
about noon, and removed the saddles and packs from their wearied
animals, picketing them in the best spots of grass.
La Bonté and Killbuck, after securing their animals, left the
camp to hunt, for they had no provisions of any kind ; and a short
distance beyond it, the former came suddenly upon a recent moc-
casin track in the timber. After examining it for a moment,
he raised his head with a broad grin, and turning to his compan-
ion, pointed into the cover, where, in the thickest part, they dis-
cerned the well known figure of old Bill’s horse browsing upon
the cherry bushes. Pushing through the thicket in search of the
brute’s master, La Bonté suddenly stopped short as the muzzle of
a rifle-barrel gaped before his eyes at the distance of a few inches,
while the thin voice of Bill muttered—
“Do ’ee hyar now, I was nigh giving ’ee h—: I was now. If
I didn’t. think ’ee was Blackfoot, ’m dogged now.’ And not a
little indignant was the old fellow that his cache had been so easi-
ly, though accidentally, discovered. However, he presently made
his appearance in camp, leading his animals, and once more joined
his late companions, not deigning to give any explanation as te
why or wherefore he had deserted them the day before, merely
muttering, ‘‘ Do ’ee hyar now, thar’s trouble comin.’ ”’
The two hunters returned after sundown with a black-tailed
134 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
deer: and after eating the better part of the meat, and setting a
guard, the party were glad to roll in their blankets and enjoy the
rest they so much needed. They were undisturbed during the
night ; but at dawn of day the sleepers were roused by a hundred
fierce yells from the mountains inclosing the creek on which they
‘had encamped. The yells were instantly followed by a ringing
volley, the bullets thudding into the trees, and cutting the branch-
es near them, but without causing any mischief. Old Bill rose
from his blanket and shook himself, and exclaimed ‘“‘ Wagh!” as at
that moment a ball plumped into the fire over which he was
standing, and knocked the ashes about in a cloud. All the mount-
aineers seized their rifles and sprang to cover ; but as yet it was
not sufficiently light to show them their enemy, the bright flashes
from the guns alone indicating their position. As morning dawn-
ed, however, they saw that both sides of the canon were occupied
by the Indians; and, from the firing, judged there must be at least
a hundred warriors engaged in the attack. Not a shot had yet
been fired by the trappers, but as the light increased, they eagerly
watched for an Indian to expose himself, and offer a mark to their
trusty rifles. La Bonté, Killbuck, and old Bill, lay a few yards dis-
tant from each other, flat on their faces, near the edge of the thick-
et, their rifles raised before them, and the barrels resting in the forks
of convenient bushes. From their place of concealment to the
position of the Indians—who, however, were scattered here and
there, wherever a rock afforded them cover—was a distance of
about a hundred and fifty yards, or within fair rifle-shot. The
trappers were obliged to divide their force, since both sides of the
creek were occupied; but, such was the nature of the ground, and
the excellent cover afforded by the rocks and boulders, and clumps
of dwarf pine and hemlock, that not a hand’s breadth of an Indi-
an’s body had yet been seen. Nearly opposite La Bonté, a shelv-
ing glade in the mountain side ended in an abrupt precipice, and at
the very edge, and almost toppling over it, were several boulders
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 135
just of sufficient size to afford cover to a man’s body. As this
bluff overlooked the trappers’ position, it was occupied by the In-
dians, and every rock covered an assailant. At one point, just
over where La Bonté and Killbuck were lying, two boulders lay
together, with just sufficient interval to admit a rifle-barrel be-
tween them, and from this breastwork an Indian kept up a most
annoying fire. All his shots fell in dangerous propinquity to one
or other of the trappers, and already Killbuck had been grazed by
one better directed than the others. La Bonté watched for some
time in vain for a chance to answer this persevering marksman, —
and at length an opportunity offered, by which he was not long in a
profiting.
The Indian, as the light increased, was better able to discern
his mark, and fired, and yelled every time he did so, with re-
doubled vigor. In his eagerness, and probably while in the act
of taking aim, he leaned too heavily against the rock which cover-
ed him, and detaching it from its position, dewn it rolled into the
cafion, exposing his body by its fall. At the same instant a
wreath of smoke puffed from the bushes which concealed the trap-
pers, and the erack of La Bonté’s rifle spoke the first word of re-
ply to the Indian challenge. A few feet behind the rock, fell the
dead body of the Indian, rolling down the steep sides of the canon,
and only stopped by a bush at the very bottom, with a few
yards of the spot where Markhead lay coneealed in some high
grass.
That daring fellow instantly jumped from his cover, and draw-
ing his knife, rushed to the body, and in another moment held
aloft the Indian’s scalp, giving, at the same time, a triumphant
whoop. t
were engaged in butchering the animals, when La Bonté, ie
up from his work, saw half a dozen Indians dodging among the
trees, within a few yards of himself and Killbuck. At the same
instant two arrows thudded into the carcass of the deer over
which he knelt, passing but a few inches from his head. Hollow-
ing to his companion, La Bonté immediately seized the deer, and,
lifting 1t with main strength, held it as a shield before him, but
184 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
not before an arrow had struck him in the shoulder. Rising iron
the ground he retreated behind cover, yelling loudly to alarm the
camp, which was not five hundred yards’ distant on the other
side of the stream. Killbuck when apprized of the danger, rar
bodily into the plain, and, keeping out of shot of the timber, joinee
La Bonté, who now, out of arrow-shot, threw down his shield of
venison, and fired his rifle at the assailants. The Indians appear-
ed at first afraid to leave the cover ; but three or four more joining
them, one a chief, they advanced into the plain, with drawn bows,
scattering wide apart, and running swiftly toward the whites, in
a zigzag course, in order not to present a steady mark to their
unerring rifles. The latter were too cautious to discharge their
pieces, but kept a steady front with mfle at shoulder. The In-
dians evidently disliked to approach nearer ; but the chief, an old
grizzled man, incited them by word and gesture—running in ad-
vance, and calling upon the others to follow him.
“Ho, boy! exclaimed Killbuck to his companion, “that old
coon must go under, or we'll get rubbed out by these darned crit-
turs.”’
La Bonté understood him. Squatting on the ground, he plant-
ed his wiping-stick firmly at the extent of his left arm, and resting
the long barrel of his rifle on his left hand, which was supported
by the stick, he took a steady aim and fired. The Indian, throw-
ing out his arms, staggered and let fall his bow—tried hard to re-
cover himself, and then fell forward on his face. ‘The others, see-
ing the death of their chief, turned and made again for the cover.
“ You darned eritturs,” roared Killbuck, ‘“‘ take that!’ and fired
his rifle at the last one, tumbling him over as dead as a stone.
The camp had also been alarmed. Five of them waded across
the creek and took the Indians in rear; their rifles cracked within
the timber, several more Indians fell, and the rest quickly beat a
retreat. The venison, however, was not forgotten ; the two deer
were packed into camp, and did the duty of mule-meat that night.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. - 185
This lesson had a seasonable effect upon the Diggers, who
made no attempt on the cavallada that night or the next ; for the
camp remained two days to recruit the animals.
We will not follow the party through all the difficulties and
perils of the desert route, nor detail the various deviltries of the
Diggers, who constantly sought opportunities to stampede the ani-
mals, or, approaching them in the night as they grazed, fired their
arrows indiscriminately at the herd; trusting that dead or disabled
ones would be left behind, and afford them a good supply of meat.
In the month of December the mountaineers crossed the great di-
viding ridge of the Rocky Mountains, making their way through
the snowy barrier with the utmost difficulty, and losing many mules
and horses in the attempt. On passing the ndge, they at once struck
the head-springs of the Arkansas river, and turned into the Bayou
Salade. Here they found a village of Arapahos, and were in no
little fear of leaving their cavallada with these dexterous horse-
thieves. Fortunately, the chief in command was friendly to the
whites, and restrained his young men; and a present of three
horses insured his good offices. Still, the near neighborhood of
these Indians being hardly desirable, after a few days’ halt the
Americans were again on their way, and halted finally at the
juncture of the Fontaine-qui-bout with the Arkansas, where they,
determined to construct a winter camp. ‘They now considered
themselves at home, and at once set about building a log-shanty
capable of containing them all, and a large corral for securing the
animals at night, or in case of Indian alarms. This they effected
by felling several large cotton-woods, and throwing them in the
form of a horse-shoe: the entrance, however, being narrower than
in that figure, and secured by upright logs, between which poles
were fixed to be withdrawn at pleasure. The house, or “ fort’’—
as any thing in the shape of a house is called in these parts,
where, indeed, every man must make his house a castle—was
. loopholed on all sides, and boasted a turf chimney of rather primi-
186 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
tive construction; but which answered the purpose of drawing
the smoke from the interior. Game was plentiful all around ;—
bands of buflalo were constantly passing the Arkansas; and there
were always deer and antelope within sight of the fort. The pas-
ture, too, was good and abundant—being the rich grama or buf-
falo grass, which, although rather dry at this season, still retains
its fattening qualities; and the animals soon began to improve
wonderfully in condition and strength.
Of the four hundred head of mules and horses with which they
had started from California, but one-half reached the Arkansas.
Many had been killed for food (indeed they had furnished the only
provisions during the journey), many had been stolen by the Indians,
or shot by them at night; and many had strayed off and not been
recovered. We have omitted to mention that the Sonora girl,
Juanita, and her spouse, Ned Wooton, remained behind at Rou-
bideau’s Fort and Rendezvous on the Uintah, which our band had
passed on the other side of the mountains, whence they proceeded
with a party to Taos in New Mexico, and resided there for some
years, blessed with a fine family, &c., &c., &c., as the novels end.
As soon as the animals were fat and strong, they were taken
down the Arkansas to Bent’s Indian trading fort, about sixty
miles below the mouth of Fontaine-qui-bout. Here a ready sale
was found for them, mules being at that time in great demand on
the frontier of the United States, and every season the Bents
carried across the plains to Independence a considerable number
collected in the Indian country, and in the upper settlements of
New Mexico. While the mountaineers were descending the
Arkansas, a little incident occurred, and some of the party very
unexpectedly encountered an old friend. Killbuck and La Bonté,
who were generally companeros, were riding some distance ahead
of the cavallada, passing at the time the mouth of the Huerfano
or Orphan Creek, when, at a long distance before them, they saw
the figure of a horseman, followed by two loose animals, descending
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 187
the bluff into the timbered bottom of the river. Judging the
stranger to be Indian, they spurred their horses and galloped in
pursuit, but the figure ahead suddenly disappeared. However,
they quickly followed the track, which was plain enough in the
sandy bottom, that of a horse and two mules. Killbuck scrutinized
the “sign,” and puzzled over it a considerable time ; and at last
exclaimed—“ Wagh! this sign’s as plain as mon beaver to me;
look at that hos-track, boy ; did ye ever see that afore ?”’
“ Well, Ihave!” answered La Bonté, peering down at it; “that
ar shuffle-toe seems handy to me now, I tell you.”
“The man as used to ride that hos is long gone under, but the
hos, darn the old crittur, is old Bill Williams’s, Ill swar by
hook.” .
‘Well, it aint nothin else,” continued La Bonté, satisfymg
himself by a long look ; ‘“ It’s the old boy’s hos as sure as shootin:
and them Rapahos has rubbed him out at last, and raised his
animals. Ho, boy! let’s lift their hair.”
“ Aoreed,” answered Killbuck ; and away they started in pur-
suit, determined to avenge the death of their old comrade.
They followed the track through the bottom and into the
stream, which it crossed, and, passing a few yards up the bank,
entered the water again, when they could see nothing more of it.
Puzzled at this, they sought on each side the river, but in vain ; *
and, not wishing to lose more time in the search, they proceeded
through the timber on the banks to find a good camping-place for
the night, which had been their object in riding in advance of the
cavallada. On the left bank, a short distance before them, was a
heavy growth of timber, and the river ran in one place close to a
high bluff, between which and the water was an almost impervious
thicket of plum and cherry trees. The grove of timber ended
before it reached this point, and but few scattered trees grew in
the little glade which intervened, and which was covered with
tolerable grass. ‘This being fixed upon as an excellent camp, the
-
188 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
two mountaineers rode into the glade, and dismounted close to the
plum and cherry thicket,which formed almost a wall before them,
and an excellent shelter from the wind. Jumping off their horses,
they were in the act of removing the saddles from their backs,
when a shrill neigh burst from the thicket not two yards behind
them; a rusting in the bushes followed, and presently a man
dressed in buck-skin, and rifle in hand, burst out of the tangled
brush, exclaiming in an angry voice—
‘“Do’ee hy’ar now? I was nigh upon gut-shootin some of ’ee
—I was now; thought ’ee was darned Rapahos, I did, and
cached night off.”
“Ho, Bill! what, old hos! not gone under yet?” cried both
the hunters. ‘‘ Give us your paw.”
‘‘Do’ee now, if hy’ar ar’nt them boys as was rubbed out on
Lodge Pole (creek) a time ago. Do’ee hyar? if this aint ‘some’
now, I would’nt say so.”
Leaving old Bill Williams and our two friends to exchange
their rough but hearty greetings, we will glance at that old
worthy’s history since the time when we left him caching in the
fire and smoke on the Indian battle-ground in the Rocky Mount-
ains. He had escaped fire and smoke, or he would not have been
here on Arkansas with his old grizzled Nez-percé steed. On that
occasion, the veteran mountaineer had lost his two pack-animals
and all his beaver. He was not the man, however, to want a
horse or mule as long as an Indian village was near at hand.
Skulking, therefore, by day in canons and deep gorges of the
mountains, and traveling by night, he followed closely on the trail
of the victorious savages, bided his time, struck his ‘‘ coup,” and
recovered a pair of pack-horses, which was all he required. Ever
since, he had been trapping alone in all parts-of the mountains ;
had visited the rendezvous but twice for short periods, and then
with full packs of beaver; and was now on his way to Bent’s .
Fort, to dispose of his present loads of peltry, enjoy one good
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 189
earouse on T'aos whisky, and then return to some hole or corner in
the mountains which he knew of, to follow in the spring his soli-
tary avocation. He, too, had had his share of troubles, and had
many Indian scrapes, but passed safely through all, and scarcely
cared to talk of what he had done, so matter-of-fact to him were
the most extraordinary of his perilous adventures.
Arrived at Bent’s Fort, the party disposed of their cavallada,
and then—respect for the pardonable weaknesses of our mountain
friends prompts us to draw a vail over the furious orgies that en-
sued. A number of hunters and trappers were “in” from their
hunting-grounds, and a village of Shians and some lodges of Kio-
ways were camped round the fort. As long as the liquor lasted,
and there was good store of alcohol as well as of Taos whisky, the
Arkansas resounded with furious mirth—not unmixed with graver
scenes; for your mountaineer, ever quarrelsome,in his cups, 1s
quick to give and take offense, when rifles alone can settle the
difference, and much blood is spilt upon the prairie in his wild and
frequent quarrels.
Bent’s Fort is situated on the left or northern bank of the river
Arkansas, about one hundred miles from the foot of the Rocky
Mountains—on a low and level bluff of the prairie which here
slopes gradually to the water’s-edge. The walls are built entirely,
of adobes—or sun-burned bricks—in the form of a hollow square,
at two corners of which are circular flanking towers of the same
material. The entrance is by a large gateway into the square,
round which are the rooms occupied by the traders and employés
of the host. These are small in size, with walls colored by a
white-wash made of clay found in the prairie. Their flat roofs
are defended along the exterior by parapets of adobe, to serve as a
cover to marksmen firing from the top; and along the coping
grow plants of cactus of all the varieties common in the plains.
In the center of the square is the press for packing the furs; and
there are three large rooms, one used as a store and magazine,
190 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
another as a council-room, where the Indians assemble for their
“talks,” while the third is the common dining-hall, where the
traders, trappers, and hunters, and all employés, feast upon the
best provender the game-covered country affords. Over the culin-
ary department presided of late years a fair lady of color, Charlotte
by name, who was, as she loved to say, “de onlee lady in de dam
Injun country,” and who moreover was celebrated from Long’s
Peak to the Cumbres Espanolas for slap-jacks and pumpkin pies.
Here congregate at certain seasons the merchants of the plains
and mountains, with their stocks of peltry. Chiefs of the Shian,
the Kioway, and Arapahé, sit in solemn conclave with the head
traders, and smoke the “calumet” over their real and imaginary
grievances. Now O-cun-no-whurst, the Yellow Wolf, grand chief
of the Shian, complains of certain grave offenses against the dignity
of his nation! A trader from the “ big lodge” (the fort) has been
in his village, and before the trade was opened, in laying the
customary chief’s gift ‘“‘on the prairie’* has not “opened his
hand,” but ‘squeezed out his present between his fingers,” grudg-
ingly, and with too sparing measure. ‘This was hard to bear, but
the Yellow Wolf would say no more!
Tah-kai-buhl, or, ‘he who jumps,” is deputed from the Kioway
to warn the white traders not to proceed to the Canadian to trade
with the Camanche. That nation is mad—a “heap mad” with
the whites, and has “ dug up the hatchet” to “ rub out” all who
enter its country. The Kioway loves the pale-face, and gives him
warning (and “he who jumps” looks as if he deserves something
“on the prairie” for his information).
Shawh-noh-qua-mish, “the peeled lodge-pole,”’ is there to excuse
his Arapaho braves, who lately made free with a band of horses
belonging to the fort. He promises the like shall never happen
again, and he, Shawh-noh-qua-mish, speaks with a “single tongue.” —
* Indian expression fgr a free gift.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 191
Over clouds of tobacco and kinnik-kinnk, these grave affairs are
settled and terms arranged.
In the corral, groups of leather-clad mountaineers, with ‘ decks”
of “euker” and “seven up,” gamble away their hard-earned
peltries. The employés—mostly St. Louis Frenchmen and Cana-
dian voyageurs—are pressing packs of buffalo skins, beating robes,
or engaged in other duties of a trading fort. Indian squaws, the
wives of mountaineers, strut about in all the pride of beads and
fofarrow, jingling with bells and bugles, and happy as paint can
make them. Hunters drop in with animals packed with deer or
buffalo meat to supply the fort; Indian dogs look anxiously in at
the gate-way, fearing to enter and encounter their natural enemies,
the whites: and outside the fort, at any hour of the day or night,
one may safely wager to see a dozen cayeutes or prairie wolves
loping round, or seated on their haunches, and looking gravely on,
waiting patiently for some chance offal to be cast outside. Against
the walls, groups of Indians, too proud to enter without an invita-
tion, lean, wrapped in their buffalo robes, sulky and evidently ill
at ease to be so near the whites without a chance of fingering their
scalp-locks ; their white lodges shining in the sun, at a little
distance from the river-banks; their horses feeding in the plain
beyond. es
_ The appearance of the fort is very striking, standing as it does
hundreds of miles from any settlement, on the vast and lifeless
prairie, surrounded by hordes of hostile Indians, and far out of
reach of intercourse with civilized man; its mud-built walls in-
closing a little garrison of a dozen hardy men, sufficient to hold in
check the numerous tribes of savages ever thirsting for their blood.
Yet the solitary stranger passing this lone fort, feels proudly secure
when he comes within sight of the “stars and stripes” which float
above the walls.
CHAPTER VIII.
AGaIn we must take a jump with La Bonté over a space of
several months: when we find him, in company of half a dozen
trappers, among them his inseparable companero Killbuck, camped
on the Greenhorn Creek, e route to the settlements of New
Mexico. They have a few mules packed with beaver for the
Taos market: but this expedition has been planned more for
pleasure than profit—a journey to Taos valley being the only
civilized relaxation coveted by the mountaineers. Not a few of
the present band are bound thither with matrimonial intentions ;
the belles of Nuevo Mejico being to them the xe plus ultra of
female perfection, uniting most conspicuous personal charms (al-
though coated with cosmetic alegrta—an herb, with the juice of
which the women of Mexico hideously bedaub their faces), with
all the hard-working industry of Indian squaws. The ladies, on
their part, do not hesitate to leave the paternal abodes, and eternal
tortilla-making, to share the perils and privations of the American
mountaineers in the distant wilderness. Utterly despising their
own countrymen, whom they are used to contrast with the dashing
white hunters who swagger in all the pride of fringe and leather
through their towns—they, as is but natural, gladly accept hus-
bands from the latter class ; preferrmg the stranger, who possesses
the heart and strong right arm to defend them, to the miserable
cowardly ‘ Pelados,’ who hold what little they have on sufferance
of savage Indians, but one degree superior to themselves.
Certainly no band of hunters that ever appeared in the vale of
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 195
Taos, numbered in its ranks a properer lot of lads than those now
camped on Greenhorn, intent on matrimonial foray into the settle-
ments of New Mexico. There was young Dick Wooton, who
was “some”’ for his inches, being six feet six, and as straight and
strong as the barrel of his long rifle. Shoulder to shoulder with
this “ boy,” stood Rube Herring, and not a hair’s-breadth differ-
ence in height or size was there between them. Killbuck, though
mountain winters had sprinkled a few snow-flakes on his head,
looked up to neither; and La Bonté held his own with any
mountaineer who ever set a trap in sight of Long’s Peak or the
Snowy Range. Marcellin—who, though a Mexican, despised his
people and abjured his blood, having been all his life in the
mountains with the white hunters—looked down easily upon six
feet and odd inches. In form a Hercules, he had the symmetry
of an Apollo; with strikingly handsome features, and masses of
long black hair hanging from his slouching beaver over the
shoulders of his buckskin hunting shirt. He, as he was wont tu
say, was “no dam Spaniard, but ‘mountainee man,’ wagh!”
Chabonard, a half-breed, was not lost in the crowd ;—and, the
last in height, but the first m every quality which constitutes
excellence in a mountaineer, whether of indomitable courage, or
perfect indiffence to death or danger; with an iron frame capable
of withstanding hunger, thirst, heat, cold, fatigue, and hardships of"
every kind; of wonderful presence of mind, and endless resources
in times of peril; with the instinct of an animal, and the, moral
courage of a man—who was “ taller’ for his inches than Kr
Carson, paragon of mountaineers?* Small in stature, anc
* Since the time of which we speak, Kit Carson has distinguished himself i:
guiding the several U.S. exploring expeditions, under Frémont, across the Rocky
Mountains, and to all parts of Oregon and California; and for his services, the
President of the United States presented the gallant mountaineer with the com-
mission of lieutenant in a newly raised regiment of mounted riflemen, of which
his old leader Fxémont is appoiated colonel.
i
194 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
slenderly limbed, but with muscles of wire, with a fair complexion
and quiet intelligent features, to look at Kit none would suppose
that the mild-looking being before him was an incarnate devil in
Indian fight, and had raised more hair from head of Redskins than
any two men in the western country ; and yet, thirty winters had
scarcely planted a line. or furrow on his clean-shaven face. No
name, however, was better known in the mountains—from Yellow
Stone to Spanish Peaks, from Missouri to Columbia River—than
that of Kit Carson, “raised” in Boonlick county, of Missouri
State, and a credit to the diggins that gave him birth.
On Huerfano or Orphan Creek, so called from an isolated hutte
which stands on a prairie near the stream, our party fell in with a
village of Yuta Indians, at that time hostile to the whites. Both
parties were preparing for battle, when Killbuck, who spoke the
language, went forward with signs of peace, and after a talk with
several chiefs, entered into an armistice, each party agreeing not
to molest the other. After trading for a few deer-skins, which the
Yutas are celebrated for dressing delicately fine, the trappers moved
hastily on out of such dangerous company, and camped under the
mountain on Oak Creek, where they forted in a strong position,
and constructed a corral in which to secure their animals at night.
At this point is a tolerable pass through the mountains, where a
break occurs in a range, whence they gradually decrease in magni-
tude until they meet the sierras of Mexico, which connect the two
mighty chains of the Andes and the Rocky Mountains. From the
summit of the dividing ridge, to the eastward a view is had of
the vast sea of prairie which stretches away from the base of the
mountains in dreary barrenness, for nearly a thousand miles, until
it meets the fertile valley of the great Missouri. Over this bound-
less expanse, nothing breaks the uninterrupted solitude of the
view. Not a tree or atom of foliage relieves the eye; for the
Imes of scattered timber which helt the streams running from the
mountains, are lost in the shadow of their stupendous height, and
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 195
beyond this nothing is seen but the bare surface of the rolling
prairie. In no other part of the chain are the grand character-
istics of the Far West more strikingly displayed than from this
pass. The mountains here rise, on the eastern side, abruptly from
the plain, and the view over the great prairies is not therefore
obstructed by intervening ridges. To the westward the eye sweeps
over the broken spurs which stretch from the main range in every
direction ; while distant peaks, for the most part snow-covered, are
seen at intervals rising isolated above the range. On all sides the
scene is wild and dismal.
Crossing by this pass, the trappers followed the Yuta trail over
a plain, skirting a pine-covered ridge, in which countless herds of
antelope, tame as sheep, were pasturing. Numerous creeks inter-
sect it, well timbered with oak, pine, and cedar, and well stocked
with game of all kinds. On the eleventh day from leaving the
Huerfano, they struck the Taos valley settlement on Arroyo Hon-
do, and pushed on at once to the village of Fernandez—sometimes
but improperly, called Taos. As the dashing band clattered
through the village, the dark eyes of the reboso-wrapped mucha-
chas peered from the doors of the adobe houses, each mouth armed
with a cigarito, which was at intervals removed to allow utterance
to the salutation to each hunter as he trotted past of Adios Amer-
icanos—‘ Welcome to Fernandez!” and then they hurried off to
prepare for the fandango, which invariably followed the advent of
the mountaineers. The men, however, seemed scarcely so well
pleased; but leaned sulkily against the walls, their sarapes turned
over the left shoulder, and concealing the lower part of the face,
the hand appearing from its upper folds only to remove the eternal
cigarro from their lips. They, from under their broad-brimmed
sombreros, scowled with little affection upon the stalwart hunters,
who clattered past them, scarcely deigning to glance at the sullen
Pelados, but paying incomprehensible compliments to the buxom
wenches who smiled at them from the doors. Thus exchanging
co
196 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
salutations, they rode up to the house of an old mountaineer, who
had long been settled here with a New Mexican wife, and who
was the recognized entertainer of the hunters when they visited
Taos valley, receiving in exchange such peltry as they brought
with them.
No sooner was it known that Los Americanos had arrived, than
nearly all the householders of Fernandez presented themselves to
offer the use of their ‘“salas’ for the fandango which invariably
celebrated their arrival. This was always a profitable event ; for as
the mountaineers were generally pretty well “flush” of cash when
on their “spree,” and as open-handed as an Indian could wish, the
sale of whiskey, with which they regaled all comers, produced a
handsome return to the fortunate individual whose room was se-
lected for the fandango. On this occasion the sala of the Alcalde
Don Cornelio Vegil was selected and put in order; a general invi-
tation was distributed ; and all the dusky beauties of Fernandez
were soon engaged in arraying themselves for the fete. Of came
the coats of dirt and “alegria’” which had bedaubed their faces
since the last “funcion,” leaving their cheeks clear and clean.
Water was profusely used, and their cuerpos were doubtless aston-
ished by the unusual lavation. Their long black hair was washed
and combed, plastered behind their ears, and plaited into a long
queue, which hung down their backs. Hmaguas of gaudy color,
(red most affected) were donned, fastened round the waist with or-
namented belts, and above this a snow white camzsita of fine linen
was the only covering, allowing a prodigal display of their charms.
Gold and silver ornaments, of antiquated pattern, decorate their
ears and necks; and massive crosses of the precious metals,
wrought from the gold or silver of their own placeres, hang pen-
dent on their breasts. ‘The enagua or petticoat, reaching about
half-way between the knee and ankle, displays their well-turned
limbs, destitute of stockings, and their tiny feet, thrust into quaint
little shoes (zapatitos) of Cinderellan dimensions. Thus equipped,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 197
with the reboso drawn over their heads and faces, out of the folds
of which their brilliant eyes flash like lightning, and each pretty
mouth armed with its cigarito, they coquettishly enter the fandan-
go.* Here, at one end of a long room are seated the musicians,
their instruments being generally a species of guitar, called he-
aca, a bandolin, and an Indian drum, called tombe—one of each.
Round the room groups of New Mexicans lounge, wrapped in the
eternal sarape, and smoking of course, scowling with jealous eyes
at the more favored mountaineers. These, divested of their hunt-
ing-coats of buckskins, appear in their bran-new shirts of gaudy
calico, and close fitting buckskin pantaloons, with long fringes
down the outside seam from the hip to the ankle; with moc-
casins, ornamented with bright beads and porcupine quills. Each,
round his waist, wears his mountain belt and scalp-knife, ominous
of the company he is in, and some have pistols sticking in their
belt.
The dances—save the mark !—are without form or figure, at
least those in which the white hunters sport the “fantastic toe.”
Seizing his partner round the waist with the gripe of a grisly bear,
each mountaineer whirls and twirls, jumps and stamps; intro-
duces Indian steps used in the “ scalp” or “ buffalo” dances, whoop-
ing occasionally with unearthly cry, and then subsiding into the
jerking step, raising each foot alternately from the ground, so much
in vogue in Indian ballets. The hunters have the floor all to
themselves. The Mexicans have no chance in such physical force
dancing ; and if a dancing Peladof steps into the ring, a lead-like
thump from a galloping mountaineer quickly sends him sprawl-
ing, with the considerate remark‘ Quit, you darned Spaniard !
you can’t ‘shine’ in this crowd.”
* The word fandango, in New Mexico, is not applied to the peculiar dance
known in Spain by that name, but designates a ball or dancing meeting.
t A nickname for the idle fellows hanging about a Mexican town, translated
into “Greasers” by the Americans.
198 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
During a lull, guagés* filled with whisky go the rounds—offer-
ed to and seldom refused by the ladies—sturdily quaffed by the
mountaineers, and freely swallowed by the Pelidos, who drown
their jealousy and envious hate of their entertainers in potent
aguardiente. Now, as the guagés are oft refilled and as often
drained, and as night advances, so do the spirits of the mount-
aineers become more boisterous, while their attentions to their
partners become warmer—the jealousy of the natives waxes hot-
ter thereat—and they begin to show symptoms of resenting the
endearments which the mountaineers bestow upon their wives and
sweethearts. And now, when the room is filled to crowding—
with two hundred people, swearing, drinking, dancing, and shout-
ing-—the half-dozen Americans monopolizing the fair, to the evident
disadvantage of at least threescore scowling Pelados, it happens
that one of these, maddened by whisky and the green-eyed monster,
suddenly seizes a fair one from the waist-encircling arm of a mount-
aineer, and pulls her from her partner. Wagh !—La Bonté—it
is he—stands erect as a pillar for a moment, then raises his hand to
his mouth, and gives a ringing war-whoop—jumps upon the rash
Pelado, seizes him by the body as if he were a child, lifts him
over his head, and dashes him with the force of a giant against
the wall.
The war, long threatened, has commenced ; twenty Mexicans
draw their knives and rush upon La Bonté, who stands his ground,
and sweeps them down with his ponderous fist, one after another
as they throng around him. ‘ Howgh-owgh-owgh-owgh-h!” the
well known war-whoop, bursts from the throats of his companions,
and on they rush to the rescue. The women scream, and block
the door in their eagerness to escape; and thus the Mexicans are
compelled to stand their ground and fight. Knives glitter in the
light, and quick thrusts are given and parried. In the center of the
* Cask-shaped gourds.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 199
room the whites stand shoulder to shoulder—covering the floor with
Mexicans by their stalwart blows; but the odds are fearful against
them, and other assailants crowd up to supply the place of those
who fall. |
The alarm being given by the shrieking women, reinforcements
of Pelados rushed to the scene of action, but could not enter the
room, which, was already full. The odds began to tell against the
mountaineers, when Kit Carson’s quick eye caught sight of a high
stool or stone, supported by three long heavy legs. In a moment
he had cleared his way to this, and in another the three legs were
broken off and in the hands of himself, Dick Wooton, and La
Bonté. Sweeping them round their heads, down came the heavy
weapons among the Mexicans with wonderful effect—each blow,
dealt by the nervous arms of Wooton and La Bonté, mowing down
a good half-dozen of the assailants. At this the mountaineers
gave a hearty whoop, and charged the wavering enemy with such
resistless vigor, that they gave way and bolted through the door,
leaving the floor strewed with wounded, many most dangerously ;
for, as may be imagined, a thrust from the keen scalp-knife by the
nervous arm of-a mountaineer was no baby blow, and seldom fail-
ed to strike home—up to the “‘ Green River’’* on the blade.
The field being won, the whites too, beat a quick retreat to the
house where they were domiciled, and where they had left their
rifles. Without their trusty weapons they felt, deed unarmed ;
and not knowing how the affair just over would be followed up,
lost no time in making preparations for defense. However, after
great blustermg on the part of the prefecto, who, accompanied
by a posse comitatus of “Greasers,” proceeded to the house, and
demanded the surrender of all concerned in the affair—which prop-
* The knives used by the hunters and trappers are manufactured at the “ Green
River’ works, and have that name stamped upon the blade. Hence the monn-
tain term for doing any thing effectually is “up to Green Biver.”
200 LIFE IN THY FAR WEST.
osition was received with a yell of derision—the business was com-
pounded by the mountaineers promising to give sundry dollars to
the friends of two of the Mexicans, who died during the night of
their wounds, and to pay for a certain amount of masses to be sung
for the repose of their souls in purgatory. Thus the affair blew
over; but for several days the mountaineers never showed them-
selves in the streets of Fernandez without their rifles on their
shoulders, and refrained from attending fandangos for the present,
aid until the excitement had cooled down.
A bitter feeling, however, existed on the part of the men; and one
or two offers of a matrimonial nature were rejected by the papas
of certain ladies who had been wooed by some of the white hunt-
ers, and their hands formally demanded from the respective padres.
La Bonté had been rather smitten with the charms of one
Dolores Salazar—a buxom lass, more than three parts Indian in
ner blood, but confessedly the ‘‘ beauty” of the Vale of Taos. She,
by dint of eye, and of nameless acts of elaborate coquetry, with
which the sex so universally bait their traps, whether in the salons
of Belgravia, or the rancherias of new Mexico, contrived to make .
considerable havoc in the heart of our mountaineer; and when
once Dolores saw she had made an impression, she followed up
her advantage with all the arts the most civilized of her sex could
use when fishing for a husband.
La Bonté, however, was too old a hunter to be easily caught ;
and before committing himself, he sought the advice of. his tried
companion Killbuck. Taking him to a retired spot without the
village, he drew out his pipe and charged it—seated himself cross- .
logged on the ground, and, with Indian gravity, composed himself —
for a “talk.” -
“Ho, Killbuck!” he began, touching the ground with the bow]
of his pipe, and then turning the stem upward for “ medicine”
—‘‘Hyar’s a child feels squamptious like, and nigh upon ‘gone
19)
beaver,’ he is—Wagh !
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 201
“ Wagh !” exclaimed Killbuck, all attention.
“Old hos,”’ continued the other, “thay’s no use caching any-
how what a niggur feels—so hyar’s to ‘put out.’ . You’re good
for beaver J know; at deer or bufller, or darned red Injun either,
you're ‘some.’ Now that’s a fact. ‘Offhand,’ or ‘ with a rest,’
you make ’em ‘come.’ You knows the ‘sion’ of Injuns slick—
Blackfoot or Sioux, Pawnee or Burntwood, Zeton, Rapaho, Shian,
or Shoshonée, Yutah, Piyutah, or Yamhareek—their trail’s as
plain as writin’, old hos, to you.”
‘“Wagh!” grunted Killbuck, blushing bronze at all these com-
pliments.
“Your sight ain’t bad. Elks is elk ; black-tail deer ain’t white-
tails; and b’ar is b’ar to you, and nothin’ else, a long mile off
and more.”
“ Wa-ch !”
“Thar ain’t a track as leaves its mark upon the plains or mount-
ains but you can read off-hand; that I’ve see’d myself. But tell
me, old hos, can you make understand the ‘sign’ as shows itself in
a woman’s breast ?”
Killbuck removed the pipe from his mouth, raised his head, and
puffed a rolling cloud of smoke into the air—knocked the ashes
from the bowl, likewise made his “medicine’—and answered
thus :—
“From Red River, away up north among the Britishers, to
Heely (Gila) in the Spanish country—from ‘old Missoura to the
Sea of Californy, I’ve trapped and hunted. I knows the Injuns
and thar ‘sign,’ and they knows me, ’m thinkin’. Thirty winters
has snowed on me in these hyar mountains, and a niggur or a
Spaniard * would larn ‘some’ in that time. This old tool”
(tapping his rifle) “shoots ‘center’ she does; and if thar’s game
afoot, this child knows pal from ‘cow,’ and ought to could.
a Always alluding to Mexicans, who are invariably called Spaniards by the
W estern Americans.
[*
202 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
That deer is deer, and goats is goats, is plain as paint to any but
agreenhorn. Beaver’s a cunning crittur, but I’ve trapped ‘a heap ;’
and at killing meat when meat’s a running, I’ll ‘shine’ in the big-
gest kind of crowd. For twenty year I packed a squaw along.
Not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot—the darndest
slut as ever cried for fofarow. I lodge-poled her on Colter’s Creek,
and made her quit. My bufiler hos, and as good as four packs of
beaver, I gave for old Bull-tail’s daughter. He was head chief of
the Ricaree, and ‘came’ nicely ‘round’ me. ‘Thar wasn’t enough
scarlet cloth, nor beads, nor vermilion in Sublette’s packs for her.
Traps wouldn’t buy her all the fofarrow she wanted ; and in two
years I’d sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of Jake Hawkin’s guns
—this very one I hold in my hands. Then I tried the Sioux,
the Shian, and a Digger from the other side, who made the best
moccasin as ever J wore. She was the best of all, and was rubbed
out by the Yutas in the Bayou Salade. Bad was the best ; and
after she was gone under I tried no more.
«“ Afore I left the settlements I know’d a white gal, and she
was some punkins. I have never seed nothing as ’ould beat her.
Red blood won’t ‘shine’ any ways you fix it; and though I’m
h— for ‘sign,’ a woman’s breast is the hardest kind of rock to me,
and leaves no trail that I can see of. I’ve hearn you talk of a
gal, in Memphis county ; Mary Brand you called her oncest. The
gal I said J know’d, her name I disremember, but she stands
before me as plain as Chimbly Rock on Platte, and thirty year
and more har’nt changed a feature in her face, to me.
“Tf you ask this child, he’ll tell you to leave the Spanish slut to
her Greasers, and hold on till you take the trail to old Missoura,
whar white and Christian gals are to be had for axing. Wagh"’
La Bonté rose to his feet. The mention of Mary Brand’s name
decided him ; and he said—
“ Darn the Spaniard ! she can’t shine with me ; come, old hos !
let’s move.”
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 203
£2) UVSC R ob i SARE a cai BES AI dS AITO BB
And, shouldering their rifles, the two campaiieros returned to
the Ranch. More than one of the mountaineers had fulfilled the
object of their journey, and had taken to themselves a partner
from among the belles of Taos, and now they were preparing for
their return to the mountains. Dick Wooton was the only un-
fortunate one. He had wooed a damsel whose parents peremptorily
forbade their daughter to wed the hunter, and he therefore made
ready for his departure with considerable regret. ;
The day came, however. The band of mountaineers were
already mounted, and those with wives in charge were some hours
on the road, leaving the remainder quaffing many a stirrup-cup
before they left. Dick Wooton was as melancholy as a buffalo
bull in spring ; and as he rode down the village, and approached
the house of his lady-love, who stood wrapped in reboso, and
cigarito in mouth, on the sill of the door, he turned away his head
as if dreading to say adios. La Bonté rode beside him, and a
thought struck him.
“Ho Dick!” he said, “thar’s the gal, and thar’s the mount-
ains: shoot sharp’s the word.”
Dick instantly understood him, and was “himself again.” He
rode up to the girl as if to bid her adieu, and she came to meet
him. Whispering one word, she put her foot upon his, was ins
stantly seized round the waist, and. placed upon the horn of his
saddle. He struck spurs into his horse, and in a minute was out
of sight, his three companions covering his retreat, and menacing
with their rifles the crowd which was soon drawn to the spot by
the cries of the girl’s parents, who had been astonished spectators
of the daring rape.
The trapper and his bride, however, escaped scatheless, and the
whole party effected a safe passage of the mountains, and reached.
the Arkansas, where the band was broken up—some proceeding to
Bent’s Fort, and others to the Platte, among whom were Killbuck
and La Bonté, still in company. |
204 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
These two once more betook themselves to trapping, the Yellow
Stone being their chief hunting-ground. But we must again leap
over months and years, rather than conduct the reader through
all their perilous wanderings, and at last bring him back to the
camp on Bijou, where we first introduced him to our mount-
aineers; and as we have already followed them on the Arapaho
trail, which they pursued to recover their stolen animals from a
band of that nation, we will once again seat ourselves at the camp
on Boiling Spring, where they had met a strange hunter on a
solitary expedition to the Bayou Salade, whose double-barreled
rifle had excited their wonder and curiosity.
From him they learned also that a large band of Mormons were
wintering on the Arkansas, ev voute to the Great Salt Lake and
Upper California ; and as our hunters had before fallen in with
the advanced guard of these fanatic emigrants, and felt no little
wonder that such helpless people should undertake so long a jour-
ney through the wilderness, the stranger narrated to them the
history of the sect, which we shall shortly transcribe for the
benefit of the reader.
CHAPTER IX.
_'Tue Mormons were originally of the sect known as “ Latter-
day Saints,’ which sect flourishes wherever Anglo-Saxon gulls
are found in sufficient numbers to swallow the egregious nonsense
of fanatic humbugs who fatten upon their credulity. In the
United States they especially abounded ; but, the creed becoming
‘“‘slow,’ one Joe Smith, a smart man, arose from its ranks, and
instilled a little life into the decaying sect.
Joe, better known as the “ Prophet Joe,” was taking his siesta
one fine day, upon a hill in one of the New England States, when
an angel suddenly appeared to him, and made known the locality
of a new Bible or Testament, which contained the history of the
lost tribes of Israel; that these tribes were no other than the
Indian nations which possessed the continent of America at the
time of its discovery, and the remains of which still existed in their
savage state; that, through the agency of Joe, these were to be
reclaimed, collected into the bosom of a church to be there estab-
lished, according to principles which would be found in the won-
derful book--and which church was gradually to receive into its
bosom all other churches, sects, and persuasions, with “ unanimity
of belief and perfect brotherhood.”
After a certain probation, Joe was led in body and spirit to the
mountain ; by the angel who first appeared to him, was pointed
out the position of the wonderful book, which was covered by a
flat stone, on which would be found two round pebbles, called
Urim and Thummim, and through the agency of which the
mystic characters inscribed on the pages of the book were to be
206 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
deciphered and translated. Joe found the spot indicated without
any difficulty, cleared away the earth, and discovered a hollow
place formed by four flat stowes ; on removing the topmost one of
which sundry plates of brass presented themselves, covered with
quaint and antique carving; on the top lay Urim and Thummim
(commonly known to the Mormons as Mummum and Thummum,
the pebbles of wonderful virtue), through which the miracle of
reading the plates of brass was to be pexformed.
Joe Smith, on whom the mantle of Moses had so suddenly
fallen, carefully removed the plates and hid them, burying him-
self in woods and mountains while engaged in the work of trans-
lation. However, he made no secret of the important task im-
posed upon him, nor of the great work to which he had been
called. Numbers at once believed him, but not a few were deaf
to belief, and openly derided him. Being persecuted (as the sect
declares, at the instigation of the authorities), and many attempts
being made to steal his precious treasure, Joe, one fine night,
packed his plates in a sack of beans, bundled them into a Jersey
wagon, and made tracks for the West. Here he completed the
great work of translation, and not long after gave to the world
the ‘ Book of Mormon,” a work as bulky as the Bible, and called
“of Mormon,” for so was the prophet named by whose hand the
history of the lost tribes had been handed down in the plates
of brass thus miraculously preserved for thousands of years, and
brought to light through the agency of Joseph Smith.
The fame of the book of Mormon spread over all America, and
even to Great Britain and Ireland. Hundreds of proselytes flocked
to Joe, to hear from his lips the doctrine of Mormonism ; and in
a very brief period, the Mormons became a numerous and recog-
nized sect, and Joe was at once, and by universal acclamation,
installed as the head of the Mormon church, and was ever after
known by the name of the ‘‘ Prophet Joseph.”
However, from certain peculiarities in their social system, the
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 207
Mormons became rather unpopular in the settled States, and at
length moved bodily into Missouri, where they purchased several
tracts of land in the neighborhood of Independence. Here they
erected a large building, which they called the Lord’s Store,
where goods were collected on the common account, and retailed
to members of the church at moderate ‘prices.. All this time their
numbers increased in a wonderful manner, and immigrants from
all parts of the States, as well as Europe, continually joined them.
As they became stronger, they grew bolder and more arrogant
in their projects. They had hitherto been considered as bad
neighbors, on account of their pilfering propensities, and their
utter disregard of the conventional decencies of society—exhibit-
ing the greatest immorality, and endeavoring to establish among
their society an indiscriminate concubinage. ‘This was sufficient
to produce an ill feeling against them on the part of their neigh-
bors, the honest Missourians; but they still tolerated their pres-
ence among them, until the Saints openly proclaimed their inten--
tion of seizing upon the country, and expelling by force the present
occupants ; giving, as their reason, that it had been revealed to
their prophets that the “Land of Zion’ was to be possessed by
themselves alone.
The sturdy Missourians began to think this was a little too
strong, and that, if they permitted such aggressions any longer,
they would be in a fair way of being despoiled of their lands by the
Mormon interlopers. At length matters came to a crisis, and the
Saints, emboldened by the impunity with which they had hitherto
carried out their plans, issued a proclamation to the effect that all
in that part of the country, who did not belong to the Mormon
persuasion, must “clear out,’ and give up possession of their
lands and houses. The Missourians collected in a body, burned
the printing-press from which the proclamation had emanated,
seized. several of the Mormon leaders, and, after inflicting a sum-
mary chastisement, “tarred and feathered” them, and let them go.
208 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
/
To revenge this’ insult, the Mormons marshaled an army of
Saints, and marched upon Independence, threatening vengeance
against the town and people. Here they met, however, a band
of sturdy backwoodsmen, armed with rifles, determined to defend
the town against the fanatic mob, who, not relishing their appear-
ance, refused the encounter, and surrendered their leaders at the
first demand. ‘The prisoners were afterward. released, on condition
that the Mormons left that part of the country without delay.
Accordingly, they once more “ took up their beds and walked,”
erossing the Missouri to Clay County, where they established
themselves, and would finally have formed a thriving settlement
but for their own acts of willful dishonesty. At this time their
blasphemous mummery knew no bounds. Joe Smith, and other
prophets who had lately arisen, were declared to be chosen of
God ; and it was the general creed that, on the day of judgment,
the former would take his stand on the right hand of the judg-
ment-seat, and that none would pass into the kingdom of heaven
without his seal and touch. One of their tenets was the faith in
“spiritual matrimony.” No woman, it appeared, would be ad-
mitted into heaven unless ‘‘ passed” by a saint. To qualify them
for this, it was necessary that the woman should first be received
by the guaranteeing Mormon as an “earthly wife,” in order that
he did not pass in any of whom he had no knowledge. The con-
sequence of this state of things may be imagined. The most de-
basing immorality was a precept of the order, and an almost uni-
versal concubinage existed among the sect, which at this time
numbered at least forty thousand. ‘Their disregard to the laws
of decency and morality was such as could not be tolerated in any
class of civilized society.
Again did the honest Missourians set their faces against this
pernicious example, and when the county to which the Mormons
had removed became more thickly settled, they rose to a man
against the modern Gomorrah. ‘The Mormons, by this time,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 209
shaving on their part gained considerable accession to their
strength, thought to set the laws at defiance, organized and
armed large bodies of men, in order to maintain the ascendency
over the legitimate settlers, and bid fair to constitute an ‘“ im-
perium in imperio” in the State, and become the sole possessors
of the public lands. This, of course, could not be tolerated.
Governor Boggs at once ordered out a large force of State militia
to put down this formidable demonstration, marched against the
Mormons, and suppressed the insurrectionary movement without
bloodshed.
From Clay County they moved still farther into the wilds, and
settled at last in Caldwell County, where they built the town
of “Far West,” and here they remained for the space of three
years.
During this time they were continually receiving converts to
the faith, and many of the more ignorant country people were
disposed to join them, being only deterred by the fear of incur-
ring ridicule from the stronger-minded. The body of the Mor-
mons seeing this, called upon their prophet, Joe Smith, to perform
a miracle in public before all comers, which was to prove to those
- of their own people who still doubted the doctrine, the truth of
what it advanced (the power of performing miracies was-stead-
fastly declared to be in their hands by the prophets), and to en-
list those who wavered in the Mormon cause.
The prophet instantly agreed, and declared that; upon a certain
day, he would walk across the broad waters of the Missouri with-
out wetting the soles of his feet. On the appointed day, the river
banks were thronged by an expectant crowd. The Mormons sang
hymns of praise in honor of their prophet, and were proud of the
forthcoming miracle, which was to set finally at rest all doubt as
to his power and sanctity.
This power of performing miracles and effecting miraculous
cures of the sick, was so generally believed by the Mormons,
210 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
that physic was never used among them. The prophets visited
the beds of the sick, and laid hands upon them, and if, as of
course was almost invariably the case, the patient died, it was
attributed to his or her want of faith; but if, on the contrary, the
patient recovered, there was universal glorification on the miracu-
lous eure. ;
Joe Smith, was a tall, fine-looking man, of most plausible ad-
dress, and possessed the gift of the gab in great perfection. At
the time appointed for the performance of the walking-water
miracle, he duly attended on the river banks, and descended bare-
foot to the edge of the water.
“My brethren!” he exclaimed in a loud voice, “this day is a
happy one to me, to us all, who venerate the great and only faith.
The truth of our great and blessed doctrine will now be proved
before the thousands I see around me. You have asked me to
prove by a miracle that the power of the prophets of old has been
given tome. I say unto you, not only to me, but to all who have
faith. I have faith, and can perform miracles—that faith em-
powers me to walk across the broad surface of that mighty river
without wetting the soles of my unworthy feet ; but if ye are to
see this miracle performed, it 1s necessary that ye have faith also,
not only in yourselves, but in me. Have ye this faith in your-
selves ?”
“« We have, we have!” roared the crowd.
“Have ye the faith in me, that ye believe I can perform this
miracle ?”
«We have, wé have!” roared the crowd.
“Then,” said Joe Smith, coolly walking away, “ with such
faith do ye know well that I cowld, but it boots not that I
should do it; therefore, my brethren, doubt no more ;’ and Joe
put on his boots and disappeared.
Being again compelled to emigrate, the Mormons proceeded
into the state of Illinois, where, in a beautiful situation, they
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 211
founded the New Jerusalem, which, it had been declared by the
prophet Mormon, should rise out of the wilderness of the west,
and where the chosen people should be collected under one church,
and governed by the elders after a “spiritual fashion.”
The city of Nauvoo soon became a large and imposing settle-
ment. An enormous building, called the Temple of Zion, was
erected, half church half hotel, in which Joe Smith and the other
prophets resided, and large storehouses were connected with it, in
which the goods and chattels belonging to the community were
kept for the common good.
However, here, as every where else, they were continually
quarreling with .their neighbors ; and as their numbers increased,
so did their audacity. A regular Mormon militia was again or-
ganized and armed, under the command of experienced officers,
who had joined the sect; and now the authority of the State
government was openly defied. In consequence, the executive
took measures to put down the nuisance, and a regular war
commenced, and was carried on for some time, with no little
bloodshed on both sides; and this armed movement is known in
the United States as the Mormon war. The Mormons, how-
ever, who, it seemed, were much better skilled in the use of the
tongue than the rifle, succumbed ; the city of Nauvoo was taken,;
Joe Smith and other ringleading prophets captured, and the
former, in an attempt to escape from his place of confinement,
was seized and shot. ‘The Mormons declare he had long foretold
his own fate, and that when the rifles of the firing party who
were his executioners were leveled at the prophet’s breast, a flash
of lightning struck the weapons from their hands, and blinded for
a time the eyes of the sacrilegious soldiers.
With the death of Joe Smith the prestige of the Mormon cause
declined ; but still thousands of proselytes joined them annually,
and at last the State took measures to remove them altogether, as
a body, from the country.
212 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
Once again they. fled, as they themselves term it, before the
persecutions of the ungodly! But this time their migration was
far beyond the reach of their enemies, and their intention was to
place between them the impassable barrier of the Rocky Mount-
ains, and to seek a home and resting-place in the remote regions
of the Far West.
This, the most extraordinary migration of modern times, com-
menced in the year 1845 ; but it was not till the following year
that the great body of the Mormons turned their backs upon the
settlements of the United States, and launched boldly out into the
vast and barren prairies, without any fixed destination as a goal
to their endless journey. For many months, long strings of Pitts-
burg and Conostaga wagons, with herds of horses and domestic
eattle, wound their way toward the Indian frontier, with the in-
tention of rendezvousing at Council Bluffs on the Upper Missouri.
Here thousands of wagons were congregated, with their tens of
thousands of men, women, and children, anxiously waiting the
route from the elders of the church, who on their parts scarcely
knew whither to direct the steps of the vast crowd they had set in
motion. At length the indefinite destination of Oregon and Cali-
fornia was proclaimed, and the long train of emigrants took up the
line of march. It was believed the Indian tribes would immedi-
ately fraternize with the Mormons, on their approaching their
country ; but the Pawneées quickly undeceived them by running
off with their stock on every opportunity. Besides these losses, at
every camp, horses, sheep, and oxen strayed away and were not
recovered, and numbers died from fatigue and want of provender ;
so that, before they had been many weeks on their journey, nearly
all their cattle, which they had brought to stock their new country,
were dead or missing, and those that were left were in most miser-
able condition.
They had started so late in the season, that the greater part
were compelled to winter on the Platte, on Grand Island, and in
7 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. t 2138 .
the vicinity, where they endured the greatest privations and suffer-
ing from cold and hunger. Many who had lost their stock lived
upon roots and pig-nuts; and scurvy, in a most malignant form,
and other disorders, carried off numbers of the wretched fanatics.
Among them were many substantial farmers from all parts of
the United States, who had given up their valuable farms, sold
off all their property, and were dragging their irresponsible and
unfortunate families into the wilderness—carried away by their
blind and fanatic zeal in this absurd and incredible faith. There
were also many poor wretches from different parts of England,
mostly of the farm-laboring class, with wives and families, crawl-
ing along with helpless and almost idiotic despair, but urged for-
ward by the fanatic leaders of the movement, who promised them
a land flowing with milk and honey to reward them for all their
hardships and privations.
Their numbers were soon reduced by want and disease. "When
too late, they often wished themselves back in the old country,
and sighed many a time for the beer and bacon of former days,
now preferable to the dry buffalo meat, (but seldom obtainable) of
the Far West.
Evil fortune pursued the Mormons, and dogged their steps.
The year following, some struggled on toward the promised land,
and of these a few reached Oregon and California. Many were
killed by hostile Indians; many perished of hunger, cold, and
thirst, in passing the great wilderness ; and many returned to the
States, penniless, and crestfallen, and heartily cursing the moment
in which they had listened to the counsels of the Mormon prophet.
The numbers who reached their destination of Oregon, California,
and the Great Salt Lake, are computed at 20,000, of whom the
United States had an unregretted riddance.
One party had followed the troops of the American government
intended for the conquest of New Mexico and the Californias. Of
these a battalion’was formed, and part of it proceeded to Upper
.
Big. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
California ; but the way being impracticable for wagons, some
seventy families proceeded up the Arkansas, and wintered near the
mountains, intending to cross to the Platte the ensuing spring, and
jom the main body of emigrants on their way by the South Pass
of the Rocky Mountains.
In the wide and well-timbered bottom of “the Arkansas, the
Mormons had erected a street of log shanties, in which to pass the
inclement winter. These were built of rough logs of cotton-wood,
laid one above the other, the interstices filled with mud, and
rendered impervious to wind or wet. At one end of the row of
shanties was built the “church” or temple—a long building of
huge logs, in which the prayer-meetings and holdings-forth took
place. The band wintering on the Arkansas were a far better
class than the generality of Mormons, and comprised many wealthy
and respectable farmers from the western states, most of whom
were accustomed to the life of woodmen, and were good hunters.
Thus they were enabled to support their families upon the produce
of their rifles, frequently sallying out to the nearest point of the
mountains with a wagon, which they would bring back loaded
with buffalo, deer, and elk meat, thereby saving the necessity of
killing any of their stock of cattle, of which but few remained.
_ The mountain hunters found this camp a profitable market for
their meat and deer-skins, with which the Mormons were now
compelled to clothe themselves, and resorted there for that purpose
—to say nothing of the attraction of the many really beautiful
Missourian girls who sported their tall, graceful figures at the fre-
quent fandangoes. Dancing and preaching go hand in hand in
Mormon doctrine, and the “temple” was generally cleared for a
hop two or three times during the week, a couple of fiddles doing
the duty of orchestra. A party of mountaineers came in one day,
bringing some buffalo meat and dressed deer-skins, and were
invited to be present at one of these festivals.
Arrived at the temple, they were rather taken aback by finding
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 215
themselves in for a sermon, which one of the elders delivered pre-
paratory to the ‘physical exercises.’ ‘The preacher was one
Brown—called, by reason of his commanding a company of Mor-
mon volunteers, “‘Cap’en Brown’—a hard-featured, black-coated
man of five-and-forty, correctly got up in black continuations, and
white handkerchief round his neck, a costume seldom seen at the
foot of the Rocky Mountains.. The Cap’en, rising, cleared his
voice, and thus commenced, first turning to an elder (with whom
there was a little rivalry in the way of preaching) :—“ Brother
Dowdle !’—(brother Dowdle blushed and nodded: he was a long
tallow-faced man, with black hair combed over his face)—‘I feel
like holding forth a little this afternoon, before we glorify the Lord
—a—a—ain the—a—holy dance. As there are a many strange
gentlemen now—a—present, it’s about right to tell *em—a—
what our doctrine just is, and so [ tells ’°em right off what the
Mormons is. They are the chosen of the Lord; they are the
children of glory, persecuted by the hand of man: they flies here
to the wilderness, and, among the Jmjine and the buffler, they
lifts up their heads, and cries with a loud voice, Susannah, and
hurray for the promised land! Do you believe it? I know it.
“They wants to know whar we’re going. Whar the church
goes—thar we goes. Yes, to hell, and pull the devil off his throne
that’s what we'll do. Do you believe it? I know it.
“'Thar’s milk and honey in that land as we’re goin’ to, and the
lost tribes of Israel is thar, and will jine us. They say as we'll
starve on the road, bekase thar’s no game and no water; but
thar’s manna up in heaven, and it’ll rain on us, and thar’s proph-
ets among us can make the water ‘come.’ Can't they, brother
Dowdle ?”
‘“ Well, they can.”
*¢ And now, what have the Genézles and the Philistenes to say
against us Mormons? They says we’re thieves, and steal hogs ;
yes, d— ’em! they say we has as many wives as we like. So
216 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
we have. Ive twenty—forty, myself, and mean to have as zp ny
more as I can get. But it’s to f unfortunate females into
heaven that I has ’em—yes, to ies going to roaring flames
and damnation that I does it.
“Brother Dowdle,” he continued, in a hoarse, low voice, ‘‘ I’ve
‘give out,’ and think we’d better begin the exercises grettful to
the Lord.”
Brother Dowdle rose, and, after saying that “he didn’t feel like
saying much, begged to remind all hands, that dancing was solemn
like, to be done with proper devotion, and not with laughing and
talking, of which he hoped to hear little or none; that joy was to
be in their hearts, and not on their lips; that they danced for the
glory of the Lord, and not their own amusement, as did the Gen-
tiles.” After saying thus, he called upon brother Ezra to “ strike
up :” sundry couples stood forth, and the ball commenced.
Ezra of the violin was a tall, shambling Missourian, with a
pair of “homespun” pantaloons thrust into the legs of his heavy
boots. Nodding his head in time with the music, he occasionally
gave instructions to such of the dancers as were at fault, singing
them to the tune he was playing, in a dismal nasal tone—
“ Down the center—hands across,”
“You, Jake Herring—thump it,”
“Now, you all go right a-head—
Every one of you hump it.
Every one of you—hump tt.”
The last words being the signal that all should clap the steam on,
which they did con amore, and with comical seriousness.
A mountaineer, Rube Herring, whom we have more than once
met in the course of this narrative, became a convert to the Mor-
mon creed, and held forth its wonderful doctrines to such of the
incredulous trappers as he could induce to listen to him. Old
Rube stood nearly six feet six in height, and was spare and bony
in make. He had picked up a most extraordinary cloth coat
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 217
ong the Mormons, which had pclae to some one his equal
in stature. This coat, whi ch was of a snuff-brown color, had its
waist about a hand’s span from ‘the nape of Rube’s neck, or about
a yard above its proper position, and the skirts reached to his
ankles. A slouching felt-hat covered his head, from which long
black hair escaped, hanging in flakes over his lantern-jaws. His
pantaloons of buckskin were shrunk with wet, and reached mid-
way between his knees and ankles, and his huge feet were encased
in moccasins of buffalo-cow skin.
Rube was never without the book of Mormon in his hand, and
his sonorous voice might be heard, at all hours of the day and
night, reading passages from its wonderful pages. He stood the
badgering of the hunters with most perfect good humor, and said .
there never was such a book as that ever before printed ; that the
Mormons were the ‘ biggest kind” of prophets, and theirs the best
faith ever man believed in.
Rube had let out one day that he was to be hired as guide by
this party of Mormons to the Great Salt Lake; but their destina-
tion being changed, and his services not required, a wonderful
change came over his mind. He was, as usual, book of Mormon
in hand, when brother Brown announced the change in their
plans ; at which the book was cast into the Arkansas, and Rube
exclaimed—“ Cuss your darned Mummum and Thummum!
thar’s not one among you knows ‘fat cow’ from ‘ poor bull,’ and
you may go to h— for me.” And turning away, old Rube spat
out a quid of tobacco and Kis Mormonism together.
Among the Mormons was an old man, named Brand, from
Memphis County, state of Tennessee, with a family of a daughter
and two sons, the latter with their wives and children. Brand
was 2 wiry old fellow, nearly seventy years of age, but still stout
and strong, and wielded ax or rifle better than many a younger
man. If truth be told, he was not a very red-hot Mormon, and
had joined them as much for the sake of company to California,
K
2158 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
‘whither he had long resolved to emigrate, as from any implicit
credence in the faith. His sons were strapping fellows, of the
sterling stuff that the Western pioneers are made of ; his daughter
Mary, a fine woman of thirty, for whose state of single blessedness
there must doubtless have been sufficient reason ; for she was not
only remarkably handsome, but was well-known in Memphis to
be the best-tempered and most industrious young woman in those
diggings. She was known to have received several advantageous
offers, all of which she had refused; and report said that it was
from having been disappointed in very early life in an affaire du
ceur, at an age when such wounds sometimes strike strong and
deep, leaving a sear difficult to heal. Neither his daughter, nor any
of his family, had been converted to the Mormon doctrine, but had
ever kept themselves aloof, and refused to join or associate with
them ; and, for this reason, the family had been very unpopular
with the Mormon families on the Arkansas; and hence, probably,
one great reason why they now started alone on their journey.
Spring had arrived, and it was time the Mormons should pro-
ceed on their march; but whether already tired of the sample
they had had of life in the wilderness, or fearful of encountermg
the perils of the Indian country, not one among them, with the
exception of old Brand, seemed inclined to pursue the journey far-
ther. That old backwoodsman, however, was not to be deterred,
but declared his intention of setting out alone, with his family,
- and risking a]l the dangers to be anticipated.
One fine sunny evening in April of 1847, when the cotton-
woods on the banks of the Arkansas began to put forth their
buds, and robins and blue-birds—harbingers of spring-—were hop-
ping, with gaudy plumage, through the thickets, three white-tilt-
ed Conostoga wagons emerged from the timbered bottom of the
river, and rumbled slowly over the prairie, in the direvtion of the
Platte’s waters. Each wagon was drawn by eight oxen, and
contained a portion of the farming implements and horgehold uten:
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 219
sils of the Brand family. The teams were driven by the young
boys, the men following in rear with shouldered rifles—old
Brand himself mounted on an Indian horse, leading the advance.
The women were safely housed under the shelter of the wagon
tilts, and out of the first the mild face of Mary Brand smiled
adieu to many of her old companions, who had accompanied them
thus far, and now wished them “ God-speed” on their long jour-
ney. Some mountaineers, too, galloped up, dressed in buckskin,
and gave them rough greeting—warning the men to keep their
‘eyes skinned,” and look out for the Arapahos, who were out on
the waters of the Platte. Presently all retired, and then the
huge wagons and the little company were rolling on their solitary
way through the deserted prairies—passing the first of the many
thousand miles which lay between them and the “ setting sun,”
as the Indians style the distant regions of the Far West. And
on, without casting a look behind him, doggedly and _ boldly
marched old Brand, followed by his sturdy family.
They made but a few miles that evening, for the first day the
start is all that is effected; and nearly the whole morning is
taken up in getting fairly under weigh. The loose stock had
been sent off earlier, for they had been collected and corralled the
previous night; and, after a twelve hours’ fast, it was necessary
they should reach the end of the day’s journey betimes. They
found the herd grazing in the bottom of the Arkansas, at a point
previously fixed upon for their first camp. Here the oxen were
unyoked, and the wagons drawn up so as to form the three sides
of a small square. ‘The women then descended from their seats,
and prepared the evening meal.
wind—a warning to their tribe, that such foul treachery as they
had meditated had met with a merited retribution.
The next day the party continued their course to the Platte.
Antoine and the stranger returned to the Arkansas, starting m the
night to avoid the Indians ; but Killbuck and La Bonté lent the
aid of their rifles to the solitary caravan, and, under their experi-
enced guidance, no more Indian perils were encountered. Mary
no longer sat perched up in her father’s Conostoga, but rode a
quiet mustang by La Bonté’s side; and no doubt they found a
theme with which to while away the monotonous journey over the
dreary plains. South Fork was passed and Laramie was reached.
The Sweet Water Mountains, which hang over the “ pass’’ to Cal-
ifornia, were long since in sight; but when the waters of -the
North Fork of Platte lay before their horses’ feet, and the broad
trail was pointed out which led to the great valley of Columbia
and their promised land, the heads of the oxen were turned down
the stream where the shallow waters flow on to join the great
Missouri—and not wp, toward the mountains where they leave
_ their spring-heads, from which springs flow several waters—some
coursing their way to the eastward, fertilizing, in their route to the
Atlantic, the lands of civilized man; others westward forcing a
passage through rocky cafions, and flowing through a barren wil-
derness, inhabited by fierce and barbarous tribes.
These were the routes to choose from: and, whatever was the
cause, the oxen turned their yoked heads away from the rugged -
mountains ; the teamsters joyfully cracked their ponderous whips,
as the wagons rolled lightly down the Platte ; and men, women,
and children, waved their hats and bonnets in the air, and cried
1»)
out lustily, “‘ Hurrah for home !
‘
232 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
La Bonté looked at the dark somber mountains ere he turned
his back upon them for the last time. He thought of the many
years he had spent beneath their rugged shadow, of the many
hardships he had suffered, of all his pains and perils in those wild
regions. ‘The most exciting episodes of his adventurous career, his
tried companions in scenes of fierce fight and bloodshed, passed in
review before him. A feeling of regret was creeping over him,
when Mary laid her hand gently on his shoulder. One single tear
rolled unbidden down his cheek, and he answered her inquiring
eyes: “I’m not sorry to leave it, Mary,” he said; but it’s hard to
turn one’s back upon old friends.”
They had a hard battle with Killbuck, in endeavoring to per-
suade him to accompany them to the settlements. The old
mountaineer shook his head. ‘The time,” he said, ‘‘ was gone
by for that. He had often thought of it, but, when the day ar-
rived, he hadn’t heart to leave the mountains. Trapping now
was of no account, he knew; but beaver was bound to rise, and
then the good times would come again. What could he do in the
settlements, where there wasn’t room to move, and where it was
hard to breathe—there were so many people.
He accompanied them a considerable distance down the river,
ever and anon looking cautiously back, to ascertam that he had
not gone out of sight of the mountains. Before reaching the forks,
however, he finally bade them adieu; and, turning the head of
his old grizzled mule westward, he heartily wrung the hand of his
comrade La Bonté; and, crying Yep! to his well-tried animal,
disappeared behind a roll of the prairie, and was seen no more—a
thousand good wishes for the welfare of the sturdy trapper speed-
ing him on his solitary way.
Four months from the day when La Bonté so opportunely ap-
peared to rescue Brand’s family from the Indians on Black Horse
Creek, that worthy and the faithful Mary were duly and lawfully
united in the township church of Brandville, Memphis County,
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 233
State of Tennessee. We can not say, in the concluding words of
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand novels, that “numerous
pledges of mutual love surrounded and cheered them in their de
clining years,” &c., &c.; because it was.only on the 24th of July,
in the year of our Lord 1847, that La Bonté and Mary Brand
were finally made one, after fifteen long years of separation.
The fate of one of the humble characters who have figured in
these pages, we must yet tarry a little longer to describe.
During the past. winter, a party of mountaineers, flying from
overpowering numbers of hostile Sioux, found themselves, one
stormy evening, in a wild and dismal cafion near the elevated
- mountain valley called the “‘ New Park.”
The rocky bed of a dry mountain torrent, whose waters were
now locked up at their spring-heads by icy fetters, was the only
road up which they could make their difficult way : for the rugged
sides of the gorge rose precipitously from the creek, scarcely aflord-
ing a foot-hold to even the active bighorn, which occasionally
looked down upon the travelers from the lofty summit. Logs of
pine, uprooted by the hurricanes which sweep incessantly through
the mountain defiles, and tossed headlong from the surrounding
ridges, continually obstructed their way; and huge rocks and
_ boulders, fallen from the heights and blocking up the bed of the
stream, added to the difficulty, and threatened them every instant
with destruction. .
Toward sundown they reached a point where the eafion opened
out into a little shelving glade or prairie, a few hundred yards in
extent, the entrance to which was almost hidden by a thicket of
dwarf pine and cedar. Here they determined to encamp for the
night, in a spot secure from Indians, and, as they imagined, un-
trodden by the foot of man.
What, however, was their astonishment, on breaking through
the cedar-covered entrance, to perceive a solitary horse standing
°
234 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST.
motionless in the center of the prairie. Drawing near, they found
it to be an old grizzled mustang, or Indian pony, with cropped
ears and ragged tail (well picked by hungry mules), standing
doubled up with cold, and at the very last gasp from extreme old
age and weakness. Its bones were nearly through the stiffened
skin, the legs of the animal were gathered under it ; while its for-
lorn-looking head and stretched-out neck hung listlessly downward,
almost overbalancing its tottering body. The glazed and sunken
eye—the protruding and froth-covered tongue—the heaving” flank
and quivering tail—declared its race was run; and the driving
sleet and snow, and penetrating winter blast, scarce made impres-
sion upon its callous and worn-out frame.
One of the band of mountaineers was Marcellin, and a single
look at the miserable beast was sufficient fer him to recognize the
once renowned Nez-percé steed of old Bill Williams. That the
owner himself was not far distant he felt certain ; and, searching
earefully around, the hunters presently came upon an old camp,
before which lay, protruding from the snow, the blackened
remains of pine logs. Before these, which had been the fire, and
leaning with his back against a pine trunk, and his legs crossed
under him, half covered with snow, reclined the figure of the old
mountaineer, his snow-capped head bent over his breast. His
well-known hunting-coat of fringed elk-skin hung stiff and weather-
stained about him; and his rifle, packs, and traps, were strewed
around.
Awe-struck, the trappers approached the body, and found it
frozen hard as stone, in which state it had probably lain. there
for many days or weeks. A jagged rent in the breast of his
leather coat, and dark stains about it, showed he had received
a wound before his death; but it was impossible to say, wheth-
er to his hurt, or to sickness, or to the natural decay of age,
was to be attributed the wretched and solitary end of poor Bill
Williams.
LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 235
A friendly bullet cut short the few remaining hours of the trap-—
per’s faithful steed ; and burying, as well as they were able, the
body of the old mountaineer, the hunters next day left him in his
lonely grave, in a spot so wild and remote, that it was doubtful
whether even hungry wolves would discover and disinter his at-
tenuated corpse.
THE END.
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ductions, admits they are constructed on a plan well chosen, and adds that they can not be
too strongly recommended as adapted for youth.
Che History of Congress, Biographical and Political:
Comprising Memoirs of Members of the Congress of the United States,
drawn from authentic Sources. By H. G. Wuereter. Numerous Steel
Portraits. 8vo, Muslin. $300 per vol. (Vols. I. and II. are now ready.)
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~ Home Influence :
A Tale for Mothers and Daughters. By Grace Acurmar. 12mo, Musiin,
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The author’s intention in this volume is to aid in educating the heart—an object which must
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Che Image of his Sather.
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Sportively sarcastic and humorous, it touches off very graphically many follies of the day.
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Wuthering Heights.
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he Children of the New Forest.
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4 Popular Literature Published by Harper § Brothers
Loiterings in Enrope;
Or, Sketches of Travel in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria,
Prussia, Great Britain, and Ireland. With an Appendix, containing Ob-
servations on European-Charities and Medical Institutions. By J. W.
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The author evidently wrote just as he traveled, with a perfect overflowing of enthusiasm.
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vhem those natural hues which are beyond the reach of that art.—Journal of Commerce.
The Battle of Buena Vista,
With the Operations of the ‘“‘ Army of Occupation” for One Month. By
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The best description that has yet appeared of one of the most distinguished battles fought
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Han and his Motives.
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The Cenant of Wildfell Hall.
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Being a Continuation of the Work published some years since under this
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Every one will remember the first two volumes of this charming story for children, and, of
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THE FIRST TWo VotumEs Of the same work may still be had. 2 vols. 18mo,
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Mmoo; or, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas.
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Musing the other day over our matinal hyson, we suddenly found ourselves in the entertain-
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the mingled ashes of Captain Cook and Robinson Crusoe, The title signifies a rover; the
bouk is excellent, quite first-rate. —BLACK WOOD
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