GONE WITH THE WIND
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
January—1943.
By John T. Bristow
I have been asked to “write up” the Kickapoo Indians. This I cannot do satisfactorily without more data. I do not know the history of the tribe and, at this late date, I do not choose to waste time in acquainting myself with the particulars. It takes a lot of research to do a story of that nature. And, historically written, it would be rather drab. Anyway, this is a hurry-up assignment I am writing now to help out Carl, The Spectator Editor, while he is playing a lone hand during his father’s sickness.
WANTS WRITEUP OP KICKAPOO INDIANS
From Porterville, California, George J. Remsburg, who formerly lived in Atchison, and years ago had some excellent historical articles pertaining to Northeast Kansas printed in the Atchison Daily Globe, writes:
“A while back I received from you a copy of the Spectator containing your article, Turning Back the Pages. You have given us a splendid story of the Old Trail days in Northeast Kansas. I read every word of it with intense interest, and am preserving it for future reference. Also accept my thanks for copies of the Spectator containing your Memory’s Storehouse Unlocked. It is a most interesting narrative, and I am glad to have it for my historical collection.
“Why don’t you write up some recollections of the Kickapoo Indians?
“Mrs. Robert T. Bruner, of your town, is my much beloved cousin—as good a girl as ever lived.”
Marysville, Kansas, Dec. 18, 1938. Dear Mr. Bristow:
I have just received the Diamond Jubilee number of the Seneca Courier-Tribune, and among other feature articles read your article on “Green Campbell.” I want to congratulate you on this product of your able pen. It presents the theme in a fascinating, interesting manner; and incidentally garnishes the subject with a lot of worthwhile pioneer history.
It is too bad that persons with your ability to write—to draw word pictures — with words from an apt, concise, and well-stocked vocabulary, should lay down the pen. Those products, tho very interesting now, with the passing of years become literary gems. So keep on writing, Mr. Bristow; we love the articles of your able mind and eloquent pen.
I don’t believe you have ever written up the Kickapoo Indians—right at your door? Why not reconsider—and do it now?
Under separate cover I am mailing you one of my latest books, “The Jay-hawkers of Death Valley.” I want to give you the opportunity to read it. You need not buy it.
John G. Ellenbecher.
Mr. Ellenbecher has been writing historic articles for many years—principally about the old Overland Trail. In company with Abe Eley, formerly of Wetmore, Mr. Ellenbecker called on me when I was writing the Green Campbell story. I told them that it would be my last. But it was not. I reconsidered. Twelve of the stories in this book have been written since. And I may write still another one.—J. T. B.
However, there are some incidents having Indian connections which might make fairly readable matter. The Kickapoos were, I judge, just like other Indians — pushed out of civilization to make room for the whites. They had come here before the white settlement, of course. Where they came from I do not know—Michigan, maybe.
The Kickapoos did not war with other tribes. Nor did they molest the whites. Still, they were Indians, and it was hard for the early settlers to believe that they would have a lasting record as such—since hostile Indians roamed the country west of the Blue river. Back in the early 90’s when the Kickapoos took up the Sioux “Ghost Dance, or Messiah Craze,” as it was called, and held all-night pow-wows for several weeks, there was some nervousness among the whites.
In the early 70’s the Kickapoos came to Wetmore to do their trading. They had Government money and were good customers of the two general stores. Later they did their trading at Netawaka, and still later at Horton. My father, a shoemaker, came to know some of them rather intimately. I knew many of them too.
Masquequah was Chief then. Many are the times I have sold him white sugar and red calico—the Indians would not buy brown sugar if they could get white sugar. This was when I was a clerk in Than Morris’ store. Associated with me then were Curt Shuemaker, George Cawood and “Chuck” Cawood. In the good old days we often piled up a thousand dollar sales of a Saturday.
I should, perhaps, amplify this assertion about the sugar. We sold at that time about four times as much brown sugar which came in barrels marked “C” sugar, as we did white sugar. One day the boss said, “The town’s full of Indians; sell no white sugar to anyone until after the Indians leave.” When I told the Chief we had no white sugar, he said, “Ugh, Indian’s money good as white man’s money—maybe. Indians go Netawaka buy white sugar.” And that is what they did. Sorry, I can’t tell you why Morris did not want to sell the Indians white sugar that day. It could hardly have been because it consumed more time-it was a busy Saturday—to “tie-up” white sugar. We had no paper sacks then. The system was to weigh-up the sugar, lay a piece of wrapping paper flat down on the counter, empty the sugar onto it; then tie it up—if you could. A green clerk like myself could waste a lot of time trying to wrap up a dollar’s worth of granulated sugar. Brown sugar would pack together, and wrap more easily.
The story got out that the Netawaka merchant would sell the Indian a bill of groceries, put it in a box, and a clerk would obligingly carry it to the Indian’s wagon—and then, while the Indian was loitering in the store, the clerk would slip out and rob the box, in the interest of the merchant. But, if this were true, the Indians seemed to like it. They followed the Netawaka merchant to Horton when that town got started in 1886. Also, it was said, a certain white farmer living near the southwest corner of the reservation, would sometimes ride out from Netawaka with one of his Indian friends, letting his hired hand follow up with his own rig. At opportune times, the white man would reach back and throw out packages for the hired hand to gather up. Methinks Sam would have had hard luck in fishing out a package of granulated sugar such as those tied-up by me.
The old, old Indians are, I believe, all dead now. Of the younger generations, I know little—except that they are the descendants of a once relatively large tribe, and that their once large domain has been reduced to thirty sections, and that much of the land within the boundaries of the reservation is now owned by white people.
H. A. Hogard, Educational Field Agent, and Grover Allen, Indian, were in Wetmore last Sunday practicing archery with George Grubb and Ollie Woodman. They told me the Indian population now numbers about 280. There are about fifty families.
For my first episode I shall tell you about a deer-hunt my father and I had with the Indians. In a former article I told you about an Indian with a party of deer-hunters we chanced to meet in the John Wolfley timber, whom my father named Eagle Eye. His Indian name was far from that, however.
It was Eagle Eye who had arranged this hunt. He brought along from the reservation, eight miles northeast of here, two extra ponies—one of normal size and not too large at that, and a little one for me to ride. While putting the saddle on the little pony my father asked the Indians if it were a gentle pony. Eagle Eye said, “Him heap gentle like lazy squaw.”
It had snowed during the night and was still snowing when the Indians arrived at day-break. Two deer-runs were to be covered and it would take a full day to do it. Then, too, our party wanted to, if possible, get onto the grounds ahead of other hunters. It was not very cold, and my father was pleased with the snow. Tracking would be good. A natural born hunter, snow always appealed to him. He had killed a great many deer in his native Tennessee.
In the old days in Tennessee there was hardly ever enough snow to do a good job of tracking. However, hunters down there this winter would have had snow aplenty to track deer—if deer still remain to be tracked. A foot of snow and thirteen degrees below zero was recorded January 19th at Nashville—where I was born, the second son of a tanner, at 11:30 p. m., December 31, 1861.
Also in our hunting party, riding a small pony, was a little Indian boy whom they called—shall I say—Nish-a-shin. This might not be correct. When we got lined out, Eagle Eye rode first, then my father. I was third in line and Nish-a-shin was fourth. Three Indians followed in single-file formation with long rifles carried crosswise in front of them. The Indians all rode bareback, even Nish-a-shin. My father had secured two saddles for us.
In the gray of that early Sunday morning after the storm abated and the white prairie lay still, Eagle Eye headed west toward the John Wolfley timber. We traveled in silence, never out of a walk. From the head of Spring creek we went across to Elk creek and Soldier creek.
At that time the whole southwest country was practically virgin prairie. The Dixon 40-acres where Maurice Savage now lives, and the Bill Rudy land where Joe Pfrang’s home now is, were the only fenced tracts in that section of the country. Bill Rudy went to California. Years later when my father went out there they renewed their friendship. And one time when I was visiting in Fresno my father took me to see Mr. Rudy. He owned an 80-acre ranch and seemed to be well pleased with the change he had made. He had much to say about the intense cold weather he had endured on his homestead here. The winters Mr. Rudy experienced in Kansas were very much like the one we are now having, only in the old days real blizzards were the rule.
On October seventeenth, 1898, Jack Hayden lost nineteen head of cattle, in a pasture north of the Rudy — or Pfrang — place, in an unusually early and unusually severe blizzard. The cattle drifted with the blinding snow-storm over a bank and piled up in a ditch. I was in Chicago at the time. It rained in Chicago, but coming home on the Burlington, the first snow appeared near the north line of Missouri, got heavier toward Atchison, and from Atchison west on the Central Branch, it was really heavy. That snow, and succeeding falls, kept the ground here covered in a sea of white until spring.
Those Indians called me “paleface papoose.” I was, of course, beyond the normal age of a papoose, but your old Indian was no fool. They probably reasoned that whiteman would not understand Indian’s word for youth. Eagle Eye had started calling me “paleface papoose” when my father was saddling the pony. Maybe it was because I had to have a saddle. Little Nish-a-shin you know rode bareback. He did not make much talk.
It was in the wilds of Soldier creek, in the big timber, where we made camp for dinner. One of the Indians carried a stew-kettle in a grain-sack and I carried a flour-sack having in it several loaves of bread baked by my mother, and maybe four or five links of butcher-shop bologna. Also two tin-cups, two tin-plates, with knives and forks for two. My mother did not think to put in spoons, but then of course she could not know the kind of mess we were in for.
With fallen deadwood dug up out of the snow a rousing fire was made—and the kettle put on. When the Indian dish corresponding to the whiteman’s mulligan was ready, all hands squatted down around the fire and devoured the food ravenishly, including my mother’s nice brown loaves of bread and the store bologna. My father had told me that I would be expected to eat of the Indian’s food and that I should pass our bread and meat around, as a token of friendship.
I cannot say now what kind of meat it was those Indians cooked in that kettle, but it was something which they had brought along. They had not killed anything on the hunt that day. However, I do not believe it was dogmeat. Surely Eagle Eye would not have done that to us. But maybe it was just as well that I didn’t then know anything about the accredited habits of Indians in general as with respect to their dogs. I can however truthfully say this much for the Indian’s stew. That dish—dog or no dog—didn’t gag me nearly so much as the bowl of Chinese noodles my father and my brother Frank cajoled me into eating with them and other members of their party — Harry Maxwell, a former Wetmore boy, and Dan Conner — while seeing Fresno’s Chinatown.
After traveling all day through the woods, following cow-paths and never deviating once from the single-file formation which characterized the start on that white morning away back in the 70’s we got back home at dusk. From sun-up until sun-down we had traveled, and not one deer did we see. Some tracks in the fresh snow were followed for miles. Only once did the Indians dismount and hunt a clump of woods hurriedly on foot, spreading out fanwise. They had glimpsed something moving among the trees—something which they did not locate. It was then I learned why they had brought the incommunicative Nish-a-shin along. Quickly he began gathering up the reins of the deserted ponies. I learned something else too. Pronto paleface papoose became a second edition of Nish-a-shin.
Starting up near Goff, the Spring creek deer-run came down to within a half mile of Wetmore, then went southeast across the prairie to Mosquito creek, thence up Mosquito creek nearly to Bancroft and across the prairie again to the head of Spring creek.
Three deer were the most ever seen at one time on this run. They came into a flock of 4,000 sheep I was herding for old Morgan on the Dan Williams place a mile south of town, where Clyde Ely now lives. The sheep were frightened and divided themselves into two bunches as the deer loped gaily through the flock.
If you don’t know, a deer-run is the feeding grounds of those ruminants. As long as the deer remain in the country they travel the same route closely. In the winter—in the old days here—they fed largely on hazel-brush and Other tender twigs.
We observed in our early hunts that the deer when feeding always traveled the circle in the same way, never reversing. Sometimes however when routed suddenly they would backtrack. And when pressed they would usually run with the wind. Probably that was not so much to gain speed as it was to camouflage the trail of their own scent and to more readily themselves catch the scent of their pursuers. When hard pressed they would sometimes take off with the wind and go ten or twelve miles off the run—in one instance, nearly to Sabetha. Whenever a deer would turn tail to wind we were ready to go home. I have seen them break out against the wind and then when off a reasonable distance circle around and go the other way. At such times my father would say, “Ah damn it, now he’s gone with the wind!”
Since I am employing a rather broad drag-line brand of technique, there is one more thing I might amplify here. In the beginning I said it would entail a lot of research to do a good Indian story, historically complete. Reliable information is hard to obtain. The old Indians—the Indians I knew—have all gone to their “happy hunting grounds.” The present generation does not seem to have a very clear picture of the old days.
For instance, I made two trips to the reservation about five years ago and interviewed a number of the older ones — second generation, of course—in a vain effort to obtain just one Indian word. You may recall that the tanyard story was, I might say, predicated on the Indian’s name of sumac. When a small boy, I had understood Eagle Eye to call it “sequaw.” I wanted to be accurate, as that flaming little bush played an important part in the story as well as in the tannery. Not one of them could tell me the Indian name.
I found one Indian, Henry Rhodd, 64 years old at that time, who said he could not tell me the Indian name for sumac, but he knew what their fathers used it for. He said they tanned their deer skins with it. That was the same thing Eagle Eye had so dexterously managed to convey to my father and me up in the Wolfley timber sixty-odd years earlier. Henry, whom I would judge carries a mite of French blood in his veins, sniffed as if he were inhaling the perfume of a fragrant rose, and said, “And oh it smelled so good.” This, however, did not coincide with my findings as a tanner’s helper. Still, I have seen my father sniff his newly tanned calf skins and say the same thing. Our tan-yard was just about the “stinkenist” place on earth.
In this connection I might mention that some years later I, myself, shot a deer on lower Mosquito creek. My brother Sam and I had started out one afternoon, the two of us riding our old roan mare, Pet. We struck a fresh trail south of town about where the three deer and the four thousand sheep had mixed. We followed the tracks to the Frank Purcell timber. There we ran onto John Dixon and “Dore” Thornton. They said they had been trailing the deer on foot all day.
John Dixon told me to go around to the south side of the timber; that they would follow the tracks through the woods. The deer came out running fast, and I shot it. The charge of buckshot from my muzzle-loading shotgun hit a little too far back to make a clean kill.
We trailed that crippled deer—it was shot through the body as evidenced by blood on either side of the trail—for a distance of ten miles to the very spot where it had been started in the morning. At the line between the John Wolfley place and the Mary Morris place, now owned by R. M. Emery, the following morning, we lost the trail because of melting snow and cattle tracks. The deer was found dead a few days later only a quarter of a mile away.
After it had been shot that deer laid down three times — at the Joe Boyce place, at the Bill Rudy place, and on the commons where the Ben Walters place is now. The first time it laid down the warm blood from the wound bored a hole in the snow. Darkness caught us at the old Dixon or Savage place. It was then we remembered the old roan mare was still tied back in the Purcell timber.
What boy is there who would not have been proud of that feat of marksmanship—plugging his first deer through and through as it ran past at almost lightning speed in its mad flight for life? Did I glory in the feat? I did. At first. As a big-game hunter I had, in my own estimation, scored high. Following in the footsteps of my father, a born hunter of big game, I had all but arrived. Plugged my first deer! I was the “toast” of the town! Or at least I could imagine I was. It would still be interesting to know just what would have happened had I brought home the venison. But I cannot now begin to tell you how adversely I was moved when the deer was found dead.
In a flash I saw it all—how I had dropped back into a crook of the old worm fence on the Roger O’Mera farm and waited for the deer, driven out of the Purcell timber by the three other hunters, to come within gunshot; how, as if it had wings, the deer, after being shot, cleared that high rail fence; and how its life-blood spurting two ways stained the fresh white snow where the little animal lit on the opposite side of the rails; how every few miles we saw it jump up from a brief rest and run on again, leaving more red on the white; and how, as we discovered the next morning after leaving the trail at dusk, that a wolf had taken up the chase and had sent the tired deer on and on without more rest back to the big timber from whence it had come and where, perhaps, in the throes of great agony, it sought its mate. And how, still pursued by the wolf, it had cleared in one great leap—its last grand leap—on a down-hill slope, a thirty foot hazel thicket.
Something indefinable, something unforgettable, made an impression on me then. And that something put the “kibosh” on my big-game hunting aspirations. I do not now count it a weakness. Though there were no game laws then, that crime was made all the worse because it was a doe.
My brother Sam, who rode with me that day, later, really brought home the venison, eclipsing all my past glory. But it took two trips all the way to Arkansas in a horse-drawn covered wagon to do it. The first and unsuccessful time he had for hunting companions Alex McCreery, John E. Thomas, and my father. Their bag was a few wild turkeys. The second trip Sam made with Roy Shumaker. This time they killed two deer. Then, for the first time, the sons whose father was a veteran deer-hunter, were to know the taste of venison.
Also, I used to chase wolves and jack rabbits with my horse and the hounds, and enjoy it—until one particular rabbit chase which spoiled the “sport” for me. It was on a Sunday afternoon in the quarter section adjoining town on the northeast—the south half of which is now owned by-Bill Davis. No horses were in this chase. The crowd from town, with several trucks, were stationed on the ridge near the southwest corner. The gray hounds started the rabbit over near the east line, and it ran north down a draw, out of sight. It swung to the left and topped the ridge north of the crowd, with the dogs in close pursuit. The rabbit turned south heading straight for the crowd, and jumped up into Frank Ducker’s truck, right at my feet. One of the men standing in the truck grabbed it while the dogs were on both sides of the truck. The rabbit squealed pitifully. The captor said its sides were thumping like a trip-hammer. Most of the men thought the rabbit had earned its freedom—but not so with some of the “sports.” Expecting to see another chase, they dropped the rabbit on the ground about two rods in front of the dogs, but when the rabbit saw the dogs it began squealing again—and the grayhounds rushed in and nabbed both rabbit and squeal before it realized that it must run again for its life. Every time after this when a rabbit chase was proposed, I could hear that frightened jack rabbit’s pitiful squeal.
But I never experienced any sickening wolf chases.
We had grayhounds and trail hounds under foot when we lived on the Hazeltine farm—but not one that I could call my own. I bought a yellow half-breed grayhound named Tuck from a farm hand on the Zeke Jennings place for one dollar, that proved to be a wonder. The unknown half of him was supposed to be bull dog. With Alex McCreery and his pack of trail hounds, and a half dozen other horseback riders and some grayhounds, a wolf was started out of an isolated clump of brush on the south end of the Len Jones farm, two miles west of Wetmore. I happened to be on the east side of the brush patch with my dog, while the other riders with the pack were on the west side. The wolf came out about a rod in front of my position, and Tuck got an almost even start in the chase. I had a pretty fast horse, but the chase led across a slough, and I lost some ground in heading this wash—but even so, I was on hand soon after the kill, one mile from the start, before Alex and the other riders and the dogs arrived. Alex said, “You and old Tuck was to-hell-and-gone before we caught sight of you.” Tuck had caught the wolf—and drowned it in an eighteen-inch pool of water, along the branch. I found him sitting on his tail at the edge of the pool—looking very pleased. In those days it was a boy’s greatest ambition to own a fast horse, and a fast dog. Now I had both. The only flaw was that I was no longer a boy.
Tuck also caught a deer in the big bottom south of spring creek on the Mary Morris farm four miles west of Wetmore. In this chase I was trailing pretty close, on my horse, when the dog grabbed the deer’s hind leg, causing both to tumble end-over-end. In the midst of this spill, it seemed to me as if deer and yellow dogs were scattered all over the ground. The deer got up first, and ran west toward the John Wolfley timber. My prized hound did not seem to have the heart to follow after it. I think there were moments now when Tuck did not know east from west.
Now, a last word about the Indians—and the Ghost Dance or Messiah Craze as participated in by the Kickapoos. The “craze” was a sort of spiritual delusion starting with the Sioux Indians, the same blood-thirsty red devils who got credit for the ghastly Custer massacre in 1876. This, and other depredations, were still fresh in the minds of the people, and there was widespread alarm among the citizens whenever the craze had taken hold. However, the craze was short-lived. I do not think the Kickapoos repeated after the first year. The dance that time at the Mission was kept going for three weeks.
I do not recall in what way this dance differed from the Green Corn Dance held annually by the Kickapoos, or other tribal dances. But undoubtedly it carried a threat to the whites. Except for brandishing tomahawks at certain periods of the dance—it looked to the casual observer like other Indian dances. Old Sitting Bull, of the Sioux, had made much bad medicine, and the threat was in the air, if not actually in the dance. Gold had been discovered earlier in the Black Hills country. The Government had withdrawn a part of the Indian lands for development by the whites. This the Sioux resented. There was fear among the Indians in general that their lands might be taken away from them. I cannot now be sure of this, but I believe the Government took a hand in suppressing the Ghost Dance.
I can best explain things with a reprint of what I wrote for the Spectator at the time. Incidentally, I might say that in looking up the old files I observe now that this story appeared in the first issue of The Spectator after I became its owner. Also, that the article was illustrated with a splendid woodcut engraved by my brother Sam. Illustrations in that day were engraved on cross-grain box-wood blocks.
The following excerpt is copied from the issue of December 12, 1890: During the past week or ten days, our people have visited the Indian Mission, eight miles northwest of Wetmore to witness the Indian pow-wow which has been in progress for several weeks. Although a more civilized tribe than the Sioux with which the “Ghost Dance” originated, the Kickapoos have caught the “Messiah Craze” and have made things lively for a while. The dance has been watched with considerable interest and no little alarm by many visitors and citizens living near the reservation. However, the conclusion now is that there will be no outbreak. The neighbors along the line look upon their actions merely as a curious freak of superstition.
When asked how long the Indians kept up the dance, an old Indian who was too feeble to participate in the festivities, in broken English, said, “Messiah come at sunrise.” It was afterwards learned that the Indians continued dancing all night with the expectation of seeing Christ, or the Messiah, at sunrise. This is, in a manner, following the custom of the ancient Aztec sun-worshipers of Mexico, who years ago builded mounds, some of them 600 and 800 feet high, where they would assemble at sunrise and carry on their festivities in the anticipation of the coming of some great divinity.
Two Sioux Indians got an inspiration from on High—or elsewhere. It was only a dream, of course—but then why should not the Indian be allowed to dream as well as the white man? He has proven his capability, and has gone the present generation of white men one better.
A careful study of ancient recorded stories shows this one to be no more fantastic than the feat accredited to Moses, who, with an outstretched hand caused the waters of the Red Sea to part so that the Children of Israel might walk across on dry land. But, I believe, Moses credited the Lord — collaborating no doubt—with making the big wind which actually drove the water out of their path. Our Kickapoos were not much on the big blow—but it seems that a couple of Sioux, in this instance, made a heap lot of big wind.
According to a recent writer on the subject, the Messiah craze is the out-growth of a startling story related by two Sioux Indians, which, in substance, lays bare the assertion that Jesus had come down upon earth again and had appeared to the Indians. According to the report He was discovered by two Indians who had followed a light in the sky for 18 days over a country destitute of water. The most peculiar part of the story is that at each camping place they were supplied with water from a little pool that came up out of the ground and furnished just enough for their needs and no more. At the end of the 18 days journey they came to a secluded place near a mountain, and there they found a hut, built of bull-rushes, and on entering they saw Jesus, who told them that He had come once to save the white men and they had crucified Him—and this time He had appeared to the Indians and that they should go back and bear the news to the other Indians. The two Indians were then borne up in a cloud and in a very short time were set down at their home where they related what they had seen.