USA > Oregon > The Oregon trail : sketches of prairie and Rocky Mountain life > Part 19
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way. "These," continued the old man, "must have been the three white people whom I saw sitting at the edge of the water."
Mene-Seela was the grand depository of the legends 5 and traditions of the village. I succeeded, however, in getting from him only a few fragments. Like all Indians, he was excessively superstitious, and continually saw some reason for withholding his stories. "It is a bad thing," he would say, "to tell the tales in summer. Stay Io with us till next winter, and I will tell you everything I know; but now our war parties are going out, and our young men will be killed if I sit down to tell stories before the frost begins."
But to leave this digression. We remained encamped 15 on this spot five days, during three of which the hunters were at work incessantly, and immense quantities of meat and hides were brought in. Great alarm, however, pre- vailed in the village. All were on the alert. The young men were ranging through the country as scouts, and the 20 old men paid careful attention to omens and prodigies, and especially to their dreams. In order to convey to the enemy (who, if they were in the neighborhood, must inevitably have known of our presence) the impression that we were constantly on the watch, piles of sticks and 25 stones were erected on all the surrounding hills, in such a manner as to appear at a distance like sentinels. Often, even to this hour, that scene will rise before my mind like a visible reality : the tall white rocks; the old pine trees on their summits; the sandy stream that ran along their 3º bases and half encircled the village; and the wild-sage bushes, with their dull green hue and their medicinal odor, that covered all the neighboring declivities. Hour after hour the squaws would pass and repass with their vessels of water between the stream and the lodges. For the 35 most part no one was to be seen in the camp but women and children, two or three superannuated old men, and a few lazy and worthless young ones. These, together with the dogs, now grown fat and good-natured with the abundance in the camp, were its only tenants. Still it 40 presented a busy and bustling scene. In all quarters the incat, hung on cords of hide, was drying in the sun, and
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around the lodges the squaws, young and old, were labor- ing on the fresh hides that were stretched upon the ground, scraping the hair from one side and the still adhering flesh from the other, and rubbing into them the brains of the buffalo, in order to render them soft and pliant.
5
In mercy to myself and my horse, I never went out with the hunters after the first day. Of late, however, I had been gaining strength rapidly, as was always the case upon every respite of my disorder. I was soon able to walk with ease. Raymond and I would go out upon the Ic neighboring prairies to shoot antelope, or sometimes to assail straggling buffalo, on foot, an attempt in which we met with rather indifferent success. To kill a bull with a rifle-ball is a difficult art, in the secret of which I was as yet very imperfectly initiated. As I came out of Kongra- 15 Tonga's lodge one morning, Reynal called to me from the opposite side of the village, and asked me over to breakfast. The breakfast was a substantial one. It con- sisted of the rich, juicy hump-ribs of a fat cow; a repast absolutely unrivaled. It was roasting before the fire, 20 impaled upon a stout stick, which Reynal took up and planted in the ground before his lodge; when he, with Raymond and myself, taking our seats around it, un- sheathed our knives and assailed it with good will. In spite of all medical experience, this solid fare, without 25 bread or salt, seemed to agree with me admirably.
" We shall have strangers here before night," said Reynal.
" How do you know that ?" I asked.
"I dreamed so. I am as good at dreaming as an In- dian. There is The Hail-Storm; he dreamed the samo 30 thing, and he and his crony, The Rabbit, have gone out on discovery."
I laughed at Reynal for his credulity, went over to my host's lodge, took down my rifle, walked out a mile or two on the prairie, saw an old bull standing alone, crawled 35 up a ravine, shot him, and saw him escape. Then, quite exhausted and rather ill-humored, I walked back to the village. By a strange coincidence, Reynal's prediction had been verified; for the first persons whom I saw were the two trappers, Rouleau and Saraphin, coming to meet 40 me. These men, as the reader may possibly recollect,
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had left our party about a fortnight before. They had been trapping for a while among the Black hills, and were now on their way to the Rocky mountains, intending in a day or two to set out for the neighboring Medicine Bow. 5 They were not the most elegant or refined of companions, yet they made a very welcome addition to the limited society of the village. For the rest of that day we lay smoking and talking in Reynal's lodge. This indeed was no better than a little hut, made of hides stretched on Io poles, and entirely open in front. It was well carpeted with soft buffalo robes, and here we remained, sheltered from the sun, surrounded by various domestic utensils of Madame Margot's household. All was quiet in the village. Though the hunters had not gone out that day, they lay 15 sleeping in their lodges, and most of the women were silently engaged in their heavy tasks. A few young men were playing at a lazy game of ball in the center of the village; and when they became tired, some girls supplied their place with a more boisterous sport. At a little dis- 20 tance, among the lodges, some children and half-grown squaws were playfully tossing up one of their number in a buffalo robe, an exact counterpart of the ancient pastime from which Sancho Panzaº suffered so much. Farther out on the prairie, a host of little naked boys were roaming 25 about, engaged in various rough games, or pursuing birds and ground-squirrels with their bows and arrows; and woe to the unhappy little animals that fell into their mer- ciless, torture-loving hands ! A squaw from the next lodge, a notable active housewife named Weah Washtay, 30 or Good Woman, brought us a large bowl of wasna, and went into an ecstasy of delight when I presented her with a green glass ring, such as I usually wore with a view to similar occasions.
The sun went down and half the sky was growing fiery 35 red, reflected on the little stream as it wound away among the sage-bushes. Some young men left the village, and soon returned, driving in before them all the horses, hun- dreds in number, and of every size, age, and color. The hunters came out, and cach securing those that belonged 40 to him, examined their condition, and tied them fast by long cords to stakes driven in front of his lodge. It was
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half an hour before the bustle subsided and tranquillity was restored again. By this time it was nearly dark. Kettles were hung over the blazing fires, around which the squaws were gathered with their children, laughing and talking merrily. A circle of a different kind was 5 formed in the center of the village. This was composed of the old men and warriors of repute, who with their white buffalo robes drawn close around their shoulders, sat together, and as the pipe passed from hand to hand, their conversation had not a particle of the gravity and Ic reserve usually ascribed to Indians. I sat down with them as usual. I had in my hand half a dozen squibs and serpents, which I had made one day when encamped upon Laramie creek, out of gunpowder and charcoal, and the leaves of Frémont's Expedition,º rolled round a stout 15 lead pencil. I waited till I contrived to get hold of the large piece of burning bois de vache which the Indians kept by them on the ground for lighting their pipes. With this I lighted all the fireworks at once, and tossed them whizzing and sputtering into the air, over the heads of the 20 company. They all jumped up and ran off with yelps of astonishment and consternation. After a moment or two, they ventured to come back one by one, and some of the boldest, picking up the cases of burnt paper that were scattered about, examined them with eager curiosity to 25 discover their mysterious secret. From that time forward I enjoyed great repute as a "fire-medicine."
The camp was filled with the low hum of cheerful voices. There were other sounds, however, of a very different kind, for from a large lodge, lighted up like a gigantic lan- 30 tern by the blazing fire within, came a chorus of dismal cries and wailings, long drawn out, like the howling of wolves, and a woman, almost naked, was crouching close outside, crying violently, and gashing her legs with a knife till they were covered with blood. Just a year before, a 35 young man belonging to this family had gone out with a war party and had been slain by the enemy, and his rela- tives were thus lamenting his loss. Still other sounds might be heard ; loud earnest cries often repeated from amid the gloom, at a distance beyond the village. They proceeded 40 from some young men who, being about to set out in a few
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days on a warlike expedition, were standing at the top of a hill, calling on the Great Spirit to aid them in their enter- prise. While I was listening, Rouleau, with a laugh on his careless face, called to me and directed iny attention to 5 another quarter. In front of the lodge where Weah Wash- tay lived another squaw was standing, angrily scolding an old yellow dog, who lay on the ground with his nose resting between his paws, and his eyes turned sleepily up to her face, as if he were pretending to give respectful attention, Io but resolved to fall asleep as soon as it was all over.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself !" said the old woman. "I have fed you well, and taken care of you ever since you were small and blind, and could only crawl about and squeal a little, instead of howling as you do now. 15 When you grew old, I said you were a good dog. You were strong and gentle when the load was put on your back, and you never ran among the feet of the horses when we were all traveling together over the prairie. But you had a bad heart ! Whenever a rabbit jumped out of the bushes, 20 you were always the first to run after him and lead away all the other dogs behind you. You ought to have known
that it was very dangerous to act so. When you had got far out on the prairie, and no one was near to help you, per- haps a wolf would jump out of the ravine; and then what 25 could you do ? You would certainly have been killed, for no dog can fight well with a load on his back. Only three days ago you ran off in that way, and turned over the bag of wooden pins with which I used to fasten up the front of the lodge. Look up there, and you will see that it is all
3º flapping open. And now to-night you have stolen a great piece of fat incat which was roasting before the fire for my children. I tell you, you have a bad heart, and you must dic !"
So saying, the squaw went into the lodge, and coming 35 out with a large stone mallet, killed the unfortunate dog at one blow. This speech is worthy of notice as illustrat- ing a curious characteristic of the Indians: the ascribing intelligence and a power of understanding speech to the inferior animals, to whom, indeed, according to many of 40 their traditions, they are linked in close affinity, and they even claim the honor of a lineal descent from bears, wolves, deer, or tortoises.
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As it grew late, and the crowded population began to disappear, I too walked across the village to the lodge of my host, Kongra-Tonga. As I entered I saw him, by the flickering blaze of the fire in the center, reclining half asleep in his usual place. His couch was by no means 5 an uncomfortable one. It consisted of soft buffalo robes laid together on the ground, and a pillow made of whit- ened deerskin stuffed with feathers and ornamented with beads. At his back was a light framework of poles and slender reeds, against which he could lean with ease when Ic in a sitting posture; and at the top of it, just above his head, his bow and quiver were hanging. His squaw, a laughing, broad-faced woman, apparently had not yet completed her domestic arrangements, for she was bustling about the lodge, pulling over the utensils and the bales of 15 dried meats that were ranged carefully round it. Unhap- pily, she and her partner were not the only tenants of the dwelling, for half a dozen children were scattered about, sleeping in every imaginable posture. My saddle was in its place at the head of the lodge and a buffalo robe was 20 spread on the ground before it. Wrapping myself in my blanket I lay down, but had I not been extremely fatigued the noise in the next lodge would have prevented my sleep- ing. There was the monotonous thumping of the Indian drum, mixed with occasional sharp yells, and a chorus 25 chanted by twenty voices. A grand scene of gambling was going forward with all the appropriate formalities. The players were staking on the chance issue of the game their ornaments, their horses, and as the excitement rose, their garments, and even their weapons, for desperate gambling is 30 not confined to the hells of Paris. The men of the plains and the forests no less resort to it as a violent but grateful relief to the tedious monotony of their lives, which alternate be- tween fierce excitement and listless inaction. I fell asleep with the dull notes of the drum still sounding on my ear, but 35 these furious orgies lasted without intermission till day- light. I was soon awakened by one of the children crawl- ing over me, while another larger one was tugging at my blanket and nestling himself in a very disagreeable proxim- ity. I immediately repelled these advances by punching 40 the heads of these miniature savages with a short stick
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which I always kept by me for the purpose; and as sleeping half the day and eating much more than is good for them inakes them extremely restless, this operation usually had to be repeated four or five times in the course of the night. 5 My host himself was the author of another most formid- able annoyance. All these Indians, and he among the rest, think themselves bound to the constant performance of certain acts as the condition on which their success in life depends, whether in war, love, hunting, or any other
Io employment. These "medicines," as they are called in that country, which are usually communicated in dreams, are often absurd enough. Some Indians will strike the butt of the pipe against the ground every time they smoke; others will insist that everything they say shall be inter- 15 preted by contraries; and Shaw once met an old man who conceived that all would be lost unless he compelled every white man he met to drink a bowl of cold water. My host was particularly unfortunate in his allotment. The Great Spirit had told him in a dream that he must sing a certain 20 song in the middle of every night; and regularly at about twelve o'clock his dismał monotonous chanting would awaken me, and I would see him seated bolt upright on his couch, going through his dolorous performances with a most business-like air. There were other voices of the night still 25 more inharmonious. Twice or thrice, between sunset and dawn, all the dogs in the village, and there were hundreds of them, would bay and yelp in chorus; a most horrible clamor, resembling no sound that I have ever heard, except perhaps the frightful howling of wolves that we used some- 30 times to hear long afterward when descending the Arkansas on the trail of General Kearny's army.º The canine uproar is, if possible, more discordant than that of the wolves. Heard at a distance, slowly rising on the night, it has a strange unearthly effect, and would fearfully haunt the 35 dreams of a nervous man; but when you are sleeping in the midst of it the din is outrageous. One long loud howl from the next lodge perhaps begins it, and voice after voice takes up the sound till it passes around the whole circumference of the village, and the air is filled with confused and dis- 40 cordant cries, at once fierce and mournful. It lasts but for a moment and then dies away into silence.
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Morning came, and Kongra-Tonga, mounting his horse, rode out with the hunters. It may not be amiss to glance at him for an instant in his domestic character of husband and father. Both he and his squaw, like most other Indians, were very fond of their children, whom they indulged to 5 excess, and never punished, except in extreme cases when they would throw a bowl of cold water over them. Their offspring became sufficiently undutiful and disobedient under this system of education, which tends not a little to foster that wild idea of liberty and utter intolerance of Ic restraint which lie at the very foundation of the Indian character. It would be hard to find a fonder father than - Kongra-Tonga.' There was one urchin in particular, rather less than two feet high, to whom he was exceed- ingly attached; and sometimes spreading a buffalo robe 15 in the lodge, he would seat himself upon it, place his small favorite upright before him, and chant in a low tone some of the words used as an accompaniment to the war dance. The little fellow, who could just manage to balance himself by stretching out both arms, would lift his feet and turn 20 slowly round and round in time to his father's music, while my host would laugh with delight, and look smiling up into my face to see if I were admiring this precocious performance of his offspring. In his capacity of husband he was some- what less exemplary. The squaw who lived in the lodge 25 with him had been his partner for many years. She took good care of his children and his household concerns. He liked her well enough, and as far as I could see, they never quarreled; but all his warmer affections were reserved for younger and more recent favorites. Of these he had at 3c present only one, who lived in a lodge apart from his own. One day while in his camp he became displeased with her, pushed her out, threw after her her ornaments, dresses, and everything she had, and told her to go home to her father. Having consummated this summary divorce, for which he 35 could show good reasons, he came back, seated himself in his usual place, and began to smoke with an air of the utmost tranquillity and self-satisfaction.
I was sitting in the lodge with him on that very after- noon, when I felt some curiosity to learn the history of 4a the numerous scars that appeared on his naked body. Of
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some of them, however, I did not venture to inquire, for I already understood their origin. Each of his arms was marked as if deeply gashed with a knife at regular inter- vals, and there were other scars also, of a different charac- 5 ter, on his back and on either breast. They were the traces of those formidable tortures which these Indians, in common with a few other tribes, inflict upon them- selves at certain seasons; in part, it may be, to gain the glory of courage and endurance, but chiefly as an act of Io self-sacrifice to secure the favor of the Great Spirit. The scars upon the breast and back were produced by running through the flesh strong splints of wood, to which ponder- ous buffalo-skulls are fastened by cords of hide, and the wretch runs forward with all his strength, assisted by two 15 companions, who take hold of each arm, until the flesh tears apart and the heavy loads are left behind. Others of Kongra-Tonga's scars were the result of accidents; but he had many which he received in war. He was one of the most noted warriors in the village. In the course of so his life he had slain, as he boasted to me, fourteen men; and though, like other Indians, he was a great braggart and utterly regardless of truth, yet in this statement com- mon report bore him out. Being much flattered by my inquiries, he told me tale after tale, true or false, of his 25 warlike exploits; and there was one among the rest illus- trating the worst features of the Indian character too well for mne to omit it. Pointing out of the opening of the lodge toward the Medicine-Bow mountain, not many miles dis- tant, he said that he was there a few summers ago with a
3º war party of his young men. Here they found two Snake Indians, hunting. They shot one of them with arrows and chased the other up the side of the mountain till they sur- rounded him on a level place, and Kongra-Tonga himself, jumping forward among the trees, seized him by the arm. 35 Two of his young men then ran up and held him fast while he scalped him alive. They then built a great fire, and cutting the tendons of their captive's wrists and feet, threw him in, and held him down with long poles until he was burnt to death. He garnished his story with a great 4º many descriptive particulars much too revolting to men- tion. His features were remarkably mild and open, with-
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out the fierceness of expression common among these In- dians; and as he detailed these devilish cruelties, he looked up into my face with the same air of earnest simplicity which a little child would wear in relating to its mother some anecdote of its youthful experience.
5
Old Mene-Seela's lodge could offer another illustration of the ferocity of Indian warfare. A bright-eyed, active little boy was living there. He had belonged to a village of the Gros-Ventre Blackfeet, a small but bloody and treacherous band, in close alliance with the Arapahoes. 10 About a year before, Kongra-Tonga and a party of war- riors had found about twenty lodges of these Indians upon the plains a little to the eastward of our present camp; and surrounding them in the night, they butchered men, women, and children without mercy, preserving 15 only this little boy alive. He was adopted into the old man's family, and was now fast becoming identified with the Ogallallah children, among whom he mingled on equal terms. There was also a Crow warrior in the village, a man of gigantic stature and most symmetrical proportions. 20 Having been taken prisoner many years before and adopted by a squaw in place of a son whom she had lost, he had for- gotten his old national antipathies, and was now both in act and inclination an Ogallallah.
It will be remembered that the scheme of the grand 25. warlike combination against the Snake and Crow Indians originated in this village; and though this plan had fallen to the ground, the embers of the martial ardor continued to glow brightly. Eleven young men had prepared them- selves to go out against the enemy. The fourth day of 30 our stay in this camp was fixed upon for their departure. At the head of this party was a well-built active little Indian, called The White Shield, whom I had always noticed for the great neatness of his dress and appearance. His lodge too, though not a large one, was the best in the 35 village, his squaw was one of the prettiest girls, and alto- gether his dwelling presented a complete model of an Ogallallah domestic establishment. I was often a visitor there, for The White Shield being rather partial to white men, used to invite me to continual feasts at all hours of 40 the day. Once when the substantial part of the entertain-
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ment was concluded, and he and I were seated cross-legged on a buffalo robe smoking together very amicably, he took down his warlike equipments, which were hanging around the lodge, and displayed them with great pride and self- 5 importance. Among the rest was a most superb headdress of feathers. Taking this from its case, he put it on and stood before me, as if conscious of the gallant air which it gave to his dark face and his vigorous, graceful figure. He told me that upon it were the feathers of three war-eagles, Io cqual in value to the same number of good horses. He took up also a shield gayly painted and hung with feathers. The effect of these barbaric ornaments was admirable, for they were arranged with no little skill and taste. His quiver was made of the spotted skin of a small panther, such 15 as are common among the Black hills, from which the tail and distended claws were still allowed to hang. The White Shield concluded his entertainment in a manner charac- teristic of an Indian. He begged of me a little powder and ball, for he had a gun as well as bow and arrows; but this 20 I was obliged to refuse, because I had scarcely enough for my own use. Making him, however, a parting present of a paper of vermilion, I left him apparently quite contented. Unhappily on the next morning The White Shield took cold and was attacked with a violent inflammation of the 25 throat. Immediately he seemed to lose all spirit, and though before no warrior in the village had borne himself more proudly, he now moped about from lodge to lodge with a forlorn and dejected air. At length he came and sat down, close wrapped in his robe, before the lodge of 30 Reynal, but when he found that neither he nor I knew how to relieve him, he arose and stalked over to one of medicine-men of the village. This old impostor thumped him for some time with both fists, howled and yelped over him, and beat a drum close to his ear to expel the evil 35 spirit that had taken possession of him. This vigorous treatment failing of the desired effect, The White Shield withdrew to his own lodge, where he lay disconsolate for some hours. Making his appearance once more in the afternoon, he again took his seat on the ground before
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