A Gold Hunter's Experience

by Chalkley J. Hambleton

As we approached we were first greeted by a lot of dirty, hungry looking dogs, which barked at us, snarled and showed their teeth. Then there was a flock of shy, naked, staring children who at first kept at a safe distance, but came nearer as their timidity left them. The boys with their little bows and arrows were shooting at targets—taking their first lessons as future warriors of the tribe.

When we got near the edge of the camp several of the old men came forward to greet us with extended hands, saying "how! how! how!" and we had to have a handshake all around. Some of them knew a few words of English. They asked for whisky, powder and tobacco. Instead, we gave some of them a little cold "grub." They looked over all the wagons and their contents, so far as they could, and were particularly interested in the locomotive boiler which was placed on the running gear of a wagon without the box, and with the help of a little rude imagination, somewhat resembled a huge cannon. I told them it was a "big shoot," and that seemed to inspire them with great respect for it. They looked under it and over it and into it with much interest.

The greater part of the squaws were seated on the ground at the openings of their lodges, busily at work. Some were dressing skins by scraping and rubbing them, some making moccasins and leggings for their lazy lords, some stringing beads and others preparing food. The oldest ones, thin, haggard and bronzed, looked like witches. The young squaws, in their teens, round and plump, their faces bedaubed with red paint toned down with dirt, squatted on the ground and grinned with delight when gazed at by our crew of young men. We all traded something for moccasins and for the rest of the trip wore them instead of shoes.

Curious to see inside of the lodges, I took a cup of sugar and went into two or three under pretence of trading it for moccasins. Their belongings were lying around in piles, and the stench from the partly prepared skins and food was intolerable.

One old Indian seemed to think that I was hunting a wife, for he offered to trade me one of his young squaws for the pony. A pony was the usual price of a wife with these Western Indians. They exhibited no hostility whatever toward us. It might have been otherwise, had we been a weak party of two or three possessing something that they coveted.

They asked us if we saw any buffalo. When we told them that at a distance of two or three days' travel the plains were covered with them, they seemed greatly interested and before we got away began to take down some of their lodges and start off. They were out for their yearly buffalo hunt to supply themselves with meat for the winter. In moving they tied one end of their lodge poles in bunches to their ponies and let the other ends spread out and drag upon the ground, and on these dragging poles they piled their skins and other possessions. The young children and old squaws would often climb up on these and ride.

Cactus plants in hundreds of varieties grew in great abundance on these dry plains. They were beautiful to the eye, but a thorn in the flesh. As we walked through them their sharp needles would run through trousers and moccasins and penetrate legs and feet. We often ate the sickishly sweet little pears that were seen in profusion.

Prairie dogs by the million lived and burrowed in the ground over a vast region. The plains were dotted all over with the little mounds about two feet high that surrounded their holes. On these mounds the little animals would stand up and bark till one approached quite near, then dart into the holes. In places the ground was honeycombed with their small tunnels, endangering the legs of horses and oxen, which would break through the crust of ground into them. I shot at many of them, but never got a single animal, as they always dropped, either dead or alive, into the hole and disappeared from sight.

Many small owls sat with a wise look on top of these little mounds, and rattlesnakes, too, were often found there. When disturbed the owls and snakes would quickly fly and crawl into the holes. It was a saying that a prairie dog, an owl and a rattlesnake lived together in peace in the same hole. Whether the latter two were welcome guests of the little animal, or forced themselves upon his hospitality, in his cool retreat, I never knew.

One day we came to a wide stretch of loose dry sand, devoid of vegetation, over which we had to go. It looked like some ancient lake or river bottom. The white sand reflected the sun's rays and made it unpleasantly hot. The wheels sank into the sand and made it so hard a pull for the oxen that we had to double up teams, taking one wagon through and going back for another, so we only made about three miles that day.