USA > Oregon > The Oregon trail : sketches of prairie and Rocky Mountain life > Part 12
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Fearful was the fate that months after overtook some of the members of that party. General Kearny, on his late return from California, brought in the account how they 35 were interrupted by the deep snows among the mountains, and maddened by cold and hunger fed upon each other's flesh !
'I got tired of the confusion. "Come, Paul," said I, "we will be off." Paul sat in the sun, under the wall of 40 the fort. He jumped up, mounted, and we rode toward
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Fort Laramie. When we reached it, a man came out of the gate with a pack at his back and a rifle on his shoulder; others were gathering about him, shaking him by the hand, as if taking leave. I thought it a strange thing that 5.a man should set out alone and on foot for the prairie. I soon got an explanation. Perrault - this, if I recollect right, was the Canadian's name - had quarreled with the bourgeois, and the fort was too hot to hold him. Bordeaux, inflated with his transient authority, had abused him, and Io received a blow in return. The men then sprang at cach
other, and grappled in the middle of the fort. Bordeaux was down in an instant, at the mercy of the incensed Ca- nadian; had not an old Indian, the brother of his squaw, seized hold of his antagonist, he would have fared ill. Per- 15 rault broke loose from the old Indian, and both the white men ran to their rooms for their guns; but when Bordeaux, looking from his door, saw the Canadian, gun in hand, standing in the area and calling on him to come out and fight, his heart failed him; he chose to remain where he was. 20 In vain the old Indian, scandalized by his brother-in-law's cowardice, called upon him to go upon the prairie and fight it out in the white man's manner; and Bordeaux's own squaw, equally incensed, screamed to her lord and master that he was a dog and an old woman. It all availed nothing. 25 Bordeaux's prudence got the better of his valor, and he would not stir. Perrault stood showering opprobrious epithets at the recent bourgeois. Growing tired of this, he made up a pack of dried meat, and slinging it at his back, set out alone for Fort Pierreº on the Missouri, a distance 30 of three hundred miles, over a desert country full of hostile Indians.
I remained in the fort that night. In the morning, as I was coming out from breakfast, conversing with a trader named Mccluskey, I saw a strange Indian leaning against 35 the side of the gate. He was a tall, strong man, with heavy features.
" Who is he?" I asked. "That's The Whirlwind," said Mccluskey. "He is the fellow that made all this stir about the war. It's always the way with the Sioux; they 40 never stop cutting each other's throats; it's all they are fit for; instead of sitting in their lodges, and getting robes
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to trade with us in the winter. If this war goes on, we'll make a poor trade of it next season, I reckon."
And this was the opinion of all the traders, who were vehemently opposed to the war, from the serious injury that it must occasion to their interests. The Whirlwind 5 left his village the day before to make a visit to the fort. His warlike ardor had abated not a little since he first con- ceived the design of avenging his son's death. The long and complicated preparations for the expedition were too much for his fickle, inconstant disposition. That morn- Io ing Bordeaux fastened upon him, made him presents, and told him that if he went to war he would destroy his horses and kill no buffalo to trade with the white men; in short, that he was a fool to think of such a thing, and had better make up his mind to sit quietly in his lodge and smoke his 15 pipe, like a wise man. The Whirlwind's purpose was evidently shaken; he had become tired, like a child, of his favorite plan. Bordeaux exultingly predicted that he would not go to war. My philanthropy at that time was no match for my curiosity, and I was vexed at the possibility 20 that after all I might lose the rare opportunity of seeing the formidable ceremonies of war. The Whirlwind, how- ever, had merely thrown the firebrand; the conflagration was become general. All the western bands of the Dah- cotahs were bent on war; and as I heard from Mccluskey, 25 six large villages were already gathered on a little stream, forty miles distant, and were daily calling to the Great Spirit to aid them in their enterprise. Mccluskey had just left them and represented them as on their way to La Bonté's camp, which they would reach in a week, unless 30 they should learn that there were no buffalo there. I did not like this condition, for buffalo this season were rare in the neighborhood. There were also the two Minnicongew villages that I mentioned before; but about noon, an Indian came from Richard's fort with the news that they were 35 quarreling, breaking up, and dispersing. So much for the whisky of the emigrants! Finding themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue to these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the result; a spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced 40 a quicker effect. Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries
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and smothered feuds that exist in an Indian village broke out into furious quarrels. They forgot the warlike enter- prise that had already brought them three hundred miles. They seemed like ungoverned children inflamed with the 5 fiercest passions of men. Several of them were stabbed in the drunken tumult; and in the morning they scattered and moved back toward the Missouri in small parties. I feared that, after all, the long-projected meeting and the ceremonies that were to attend it might never take place, Io and I should lose so admirable an opportunity of seeing the Indian under his most fearful and characteristic aspect ; however, in foregoing this, I should avoid a very fair proba- bility of being plundered and stripped, and, it might be, stabbed or shot into the bargain. Consoling myself with 15 this reflection, I prepared to carry the news, such as it was, to the camp.
I caught my horse, and to my vexation found he had lost a shoe and broken his tender white hoof against the rocks. Horses are shod at Fort Laramie at the moderate 20 rate of three dollars a foot; so I tied Hendrick to a beam in the corral, and summoned Roubidou, the blacksmith. Roubidou, with the hoof between his knees, was at work with hammer and file, and I was inspecting the process, when a strange voice addressed me.
25 "Two more gone under ! Well, there is more of us left yet. Here's Jean Gras and me off to the mountains to-morrow. Our turn will come next, I suppose. It's a hard life, anyhow !"
I looked up and saw a little man, not much more than 30 five feet high, but of very square and strong proportions. In appearance he was particularly dingy; for his old buck- skin frock was black and polished with time and grease, and his belt, knife, pouch, and powder-horn appeared to have seen the roughest service. The first joint of each 35 foot was entirely gone, having been frozen off several winters before, and his moccasins were curtailed in pro- portion. His whole appearance and equipment bespoke the "free trapper." He had a round ruddy face, animated with a spirit of carelessness and gayety not at all in ac- 40 cordance with the words he had just spoken.
" Two more gone ?" said I; "what do you mean by that ?"
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"Oh," said he, "the Arapahoes have just killed two of us in the mountains. Old Bull-Tail has come to tell us. They stabbed one behind his back, and shot the other with his own rifle. That's the way we live here! I mean to give up trapping after this year. My squaw says she 5 wants a pacing horse and some red ribbons; I'll make enough beaver to get them for her, and then I'm done ! I'll go below and live on a farm."
"Your bones will dry on the prairie, Rouleau !" said another trapper, who was standing by; a strong, brutal- 10 looking fellow, with a face as surly as a bull-dog's.
Rouleau only laughed, and began to hum a tune and shuffle a dance on his stumps of feet.
"You'll see us, before long, passing up your way," said the other man. I5
"Well," said I, "stop and take a cup of coffee with us; " and as it was quite late in the afternoon, I prepared to leave the fort at once.
As I rode out, a train of emigrant wagons was passing across the stream. " Whar are ye goin', stranger ?"" Thus 20 I was saluted by two or three voices at once.
"About eighteen miles up the creek."
"It's mighty late to be going that far! Make haste, ye'd better, and keep a bright lookout for Indians !"
I thought the advice too good to be neglected. Fording 25 the stream, I passed at a round trot over the plains be- yond. But "the more haste, the worse speed." I proved the truth of the proverb by the time I reached the hills three miles from the fort. The trail was faintly marked, and riding forward with more rapidity than caution, I lost 30 sight of it. I kept on in a direct line, guided by Laramie creek, which I could see at intervals darkly glistening in the evening sun, at the bottom of the woody gulf on my right. Half an hour before sunset I came upon its banks. There was something exciting in the wild solitude of the 35 place. An antelope sprang suddenly from the sage-bushes before me. As he leaped gracefully not thirty yards be- fore my horse, I fired, and instantly he spun round and fell. Quite sure of him, I walked my horse toward him, leisurely reloading my rifle, when to my surprise he sprang 40 up and trotted rapidly away on three legs into the dark
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recesses of the hills, whither I had no time to follow. Ten minutes after, I was passing along the bottom of a deep valley, and chancing to look behind me, I saw in the dim light that something was following. Supposing it to be 5 a wolf, I slid from my scat and sat down behind my horse to shoot it; but as it came up, I saw by its motions that it was another antelope. It approached within a hundred yards, arched its graceful neck, and gazed intently. I leveled at the white spot on its chest, and was about to fire, Io when it started off, ran first to one side and then to the other, like a vessel tacking against a wind, and at last stretched away at full speed. Then it stopped again, looked curiously behind it, and trotted up as before; but not so boldly, for it soon paused and stood gazing at me. I fired; it, leaped 15 upward and fell upon its tracks, Measuring the distance, I found it 204 paces. When I stood by his side, the antelope turned his expiring eye upward. It was like a beautiful woman's, dark and rich. "Fortunate that I am in a hurry," thought I ; " I might be troubled with remorse, if I had time 20 for it."
Cutting the animal up, not in the most skillful manner, I hung the meat at the back of my saddle, and rode on again. The hills (I could not remember one of them) closed around me. "It is too late," thought I, "to go 25 forward. I will stay here to-night, and look for the path in the morning." As a last effort, however, I ascended a high hill, from which, to my great satisfaction, I could see Laramie creek stretching before me, twisting from side to side amid ragged patches of timber; and far off, 3º close beneath the shadows of the trees, the ruins of the old trading fort were visible. I reached them at twilight. It was far from pleasant, in that uncertain light, to be pushing through the dense trees and shrubbery of the grove beyond. I listened anxiously for the foot-fall of
35 man or beast. Nothing was stirring but one harmless brown bird, chirping among the branches. I was glad when I gained the open prairie once more, where I could see if anything approached. When I came to the mouth of Chugwater, it was totally dark. Slackening the reins, 40 I let my horse take his own course. He trotted on with unerring instinct, and by nine o'clock was scrambling
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down the steep descent into the meadows where we were encamped. While I was looking in vain for the light of the fire, Hendrick, with keener perceptions, gave a loud neigh, which was immediately answered in a shrill note from the distance. In a moment I was hailed from the 5 darkness by the voice of Reynal, who had come out, rifle in hand, to see who was approaching.
He, with his squaw, the two Canadians and the Indian boys, were the sole inmates of the camp, Shaw and Henry Chatillon being still absent. At noon of the following day Ic they came back, their horses looking none the better for the journey. Henry seemed dejected. The woman was dead, and his children must henceforward be exposed, without a protector, to the hardships and vicissitudes of Indian life. Even in the midst of his grief he had not for- 15 gotten his attachment to his bourgeois, for he had procured among his Indian relatives two beautifully ornamented buffalo robes, which he spread on the ground as a present to us.
Shaw lighted his pipe, and told me in a few words the 20 history of his journey. When I went to the fort they left me, as I mentioned, at the mouth of Chugwater. They followed the course of the little stream all day, traversing a desolate and barren country. Several times they came upon the fresh traces of a large war party - the same, no 25 doubt, from whom we had so narrowly escaped an attack. At an hour before sunset, without encountering a human being by the way, they came upon the lodges of the squaw and her brothers, who, in compliance with Henry's message, had left the Indian village in order to join us at our camp. 30 The lodges were already pitched, five in number, by the side of the stream. The woman lay in one of them, reduced For some time she had been unable
to a mere skeleton. to move or speak. Indeed, nothing had kept her alive but the hope of seeing Henry, to whom she was strongly 35 and faithfully attached. No sooner did he enter the lodge than she revived, and conversed with him the greater part of the night. Early in the morning she was lifted into a travail, and the whole party set out toward our camp. There were but five warriors; the rest were women and 40 children. The whole were in great alarm at the proximity
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of the Crow war party, who would certainly have destroyed them without mercy had they met. They had advanced only a mile or two, when they discerned a horseman, far off, on the edge of the horizon. They all stopped, gathering 5 together in the greatest anxiety, from which they did not recover until long after the horseman disappeared; then they set out again. Henry was riding with Shaw a few rods in advance of the Indians, when Mahto-Tatonka, a younger brother of the woman, hastily called after them. Io Turning back, they found all the Indians crowded around the travail in which the woman was lying. They reached her just in time to hear the death-rattle in her throat. In a moment she lay dead in the basket of the vehicle. A complete stillness succeeded; then the Indians raised in 15 concert their cries of lamentation over the corpse, and among them Shaw clearly distinguished those strange sounds resembling the word "Halleluyah," which together with some other accidental coincidences has given rise to the absurd theory that the Indians are descended from 20 the ten lost tribes of Israel.
The Indian usage required that Henry, as well as the other relatives of the woman, should make valuable pres- ents, to be placed by the side of the body at its last resting place. Leaving the Indians, he and Shaw set out for the 25 camp and reached it, as we have seen, by hard pushing, at about noon. Having obtained the necessary articles, they immediately returned. It was very late and quite dark when they again reached the lodges. They were all placed in a deep hollow among the dreary hills. Four 30 of them were just visible through the gloom, but the fifth and largest was illuminated by the ruddy blaze of a fire within, glowing through the half-transparent covering of raw hides. There was a perfect stillness as they approached. The lodges seemed without a tenant. Not a living thing 35 was stirring - there was something awful in the scene. They rode up to the entrance of the lodge, and there was no sound but the tramp of their horses. A squaw came out and took charge of the animals, without speaking a word. Entering, they found the lodge crowded with Indians; 40 a fire was burning in the midst, and the mourners encircled it in a triple row. Room was made for the newcomers
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at the head of the lodge, a robe spread for them to sit upon, and a pipe lighted and handed to them in perfect silence. Thus they passed the greater part of the night. At times the fire would subside into a heap of embers, until the dark figures seated around it were scarcely visible; then a squaw 5 would drop upon it a piece of buffalo-fat, and a bright flame, instantly springing up, would reveal on a sudden the crowd of wild faces, motionless as bronze. The silence continued unbroken. It was a relief to Shaw when daylight returned and he could escape from this house of mourning. He and 10 Henry prepared to return homeward; first, however, they placed the presents they had brought near the body of the squaw, which, most gaudily attired, remained in a sitting posture in one of the lodges. A fine horse was picketed not far off, destined to be killed that morning for the service 15 of her spirit, for the woman was lame, and could not travel on foot over the dismal prairies to the villages of the dead. Food, too, was provided, and household implements, for her use upon this last journey.
Henry left her to the care of her relatives, and came 20 immediately with Shaw to the camp. It was some time before he entirely recovered from his dejection.
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CHAPTER XI
SCENES AT THE CAMP
REYNAL heard guns fired one day, at the distance of a mile or two from the camp. He grew nervous instantly. Visions of Crow war parties began to haunt his imagina- tion; and when we returned (for we were all absent), he 5 renewed his complaints about being left alone with the Canadians and the squaw. The day after, the cause of the aların appeared. Four trappers, one called Moran, another Saraphin, and the others nicknamed Rouleau and Jean Gras, came to our camp and joined us. They ro it was who fired the guns and disturbed the dreams of our confederate, Reynal. They soon encamped by our side. Their rifles, dingy and battered with hard service, rested with ours against the old tree; their strong rude saddles, their buffalo robes, their traps, and the few rough and 15 simple articles of their traveling equipment, were piled near our tent. Their mountain horses were turned to graze in the meadow among our own; and the men them- selves, no less rough and hardy, used to lie half the day in the shade of our tree lolling on the grass, lazily smok- 20 ing, and telling stories of their adventures; and I defy the annals of chivalry to furnish the record of a life more wild and perilous than that of a Rocky mountain trapper. With this efficient reinforcement the agitation of Rey- nal's nerves subsided. He began to conceive a sort of 25 attachment to our old camping ground; yet it was time to change our quarters, since remaining too long on one spot must lead to certain unpleasant results not to be borne with unless in a case of dire necessity. The grass no longer presented a smooth surface of turf; it was 3º trampled into mud and clay. So we removed to another old tree, larger yet, that grew by the river side at a furlong's
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distance. Its trunk was full six feet in diameter; on one side it was marked by a party of Indians with various inexplicable hieroglyphics, commemorating some warlike enterprise, and aloft among the branches were the remains of a scaffolding, where dead bodies had once been deposited, 5 after the Indian manner.
"There comes Bull-Bear," said Henry Chatillon, as we sat on the grass at dinner. Looking up, we saw several horsemen coming over the neighboring hill, and in a moment four stately young men rode up and dismounted. One IQ of them was Bull-Bear, or Mahto-Tatonka, a compound name which he inherited from his father, the most power- ful chief in the Ogallallah band. One of his brothers and two other young men accompanied him. We shook hands with the visitors, and when we had finished our meal - 15 for this is the orthodox manner of entertaining Indians, even the best of them - we handed to each a tin cup of coffee and a biscuit, at which they ejaculated from the bottom of their throats, "How! how !" a monosyllable by which an Indian contrives to express half the emotions 20 that he is susceptible of. Then we lighted the pipe, and passed it to them as they squatted on the ground.
"Where is the village ?"
"There," said Mahto-Tatonka, pointing southward; "it will come in two days."
" Will they go to the war ?" "Yes."
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No man is a philanthropist on the prairie. We wel- comed this news most cordially, and congratulated our- selves that Bordeaux's interested efforts to divert The 30 Whirlwind from his congenial vocation of bloodshed had failed of success, and that no additional obstacles would interpose between us and our plan of repairing to the ren- dezvous at La Bonté's camp.
For that and several succeeding days, Mahto-Tatonka 35 and his friends remained our guests. They devoured the relics of our meals; they filled the pipe for us and also helped us to smoke it. Sometimes they stretched them- selves side by side in the shade, indulging in raillery and practical jokes ill becoming the dignity of brave and aspir- 40 ing warriors, such as two of them in reality were.
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Two days dragged away, and on the morning of the third we hoped confidently to see the Indian village. It did not come; so we rode out to look for it. In place of the eight hundred Indians we expected, we met one soli- 5 tary savage riding toward us over the prairie, who told us that the Indians had changed their plans, and would not come within three days; still he persisted that they were going to the war. Taking along with us this mes- senger of evil tidings, we retraced our footsteps to the camp, Io amusing ourselves by the way with execrating Indian in- constancy. When we came in sight of our little white tent under the big tree, we saw that it no longer stood alone. A huge old lodge was erected close by its side, discolored by rain and storms, rotted with age, with the 15 uncouth figures of horses and men, and outstretched hands that were painted upon it, well-nigh obliterated. The long poles which supported this squalid habitation thrust them- selves rakishly out from its pointed top, and over its en- trance were suspended a "medicine-pipe" and various 20 other implements of the magic art. While we were yet at a distance, we observed a greatly increased population of various colors and dimensions, swarming around our quiet encampment. Moran, the trapper, having been ab- sent for a day or two, had returned, it seemed, bringing 25 all his family with him. He had taken to himself a wife for whom he had paid the established price of one horse. This looks cheap at first sight, but in truth the purchase of a squaw is a transaction which no man should enter into without mature deliberation, since it involves not only the 30 payment of the first price, but the formidable burden of feeding and supporting a rapacious horde of the bride's relatives, who hold themselves entitled to feed upon the indiscreet white man. They gather round like leeches, and drain him of all he has.
Moran, like Reynal, had not allied himself to an aristo- cratic circle. His relatives occupied but a contemptible position in Ogallallah society; for among these wild demo- crats of the prairie, as among us, there are virtual dis- tinctions of rank and place; though this great advantage 40 they have over us, that wealth has no part in determin- ing such distinctions. Moran's partner was not the most
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beautiful of her sex, and he had the exceedingly bad taste to array her in an old calico gown bought from an emi- grant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the establishment, in more senses than 5 one, was a hideous old hag of eighty. Human imagina- tion never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than the countenance' of a Io living being, even to the hollow, darkened sockets, at the bottom of which glittered her little black eyes. Her arms had dwindled away into nothing but whipcord and wire. Her hair, half black, half gray, hung in total neglect nearly to the ground, and her sole garment consisted of the rem- 15 nant of a discarded buffalo robe tied round her waist with a string of hide. Yet the old squaw's meager anatomy was wonderfully strong. She pitched the lodge, packed the horses, and did the hardest labor of the camp. From morning till night she bustled about the lodge, screaming 20 like a screech-owl when anything displeased her. Then there was her brother, a "medicine-man," or magician, equally gaunt and sinewy with herself. His mouth spread from ear to ear, and his appetite, as we had full occasion to learn, was ravenous in proportion. The other inmates 25 of the lodge were a young bride and bridegroom; the latter one of those idle, good-for-nothing fellows who infest an Indian village as well as more civilized communities. He was fit neither for hunting nor for war; and one might infer as much from the stolid unmeaning expression of his 30 face. The happy pair had just entered upon the honey- moon. They would stretch a buffalo robe upon poles, so as to protect them from the fierce rays of the sun, and spread- ing beneath this rough canopy a luxuriant couch of furs, . would sit affectionately side by side for half the day, though 35 I could not discover that much conversation passed be- tween them. Probably they had nothing to say; for an Indian's supply of topics for conversation is far from being copious. There were half a dozen children, too, playing and whooping about the camp, shooting birds with 40 little bows and arrows, or making miniature lodges of sticks, as children of a different complexion build houses of blocks.
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