The Life of a Fossil Hunter

by Charles H. Sternberg

I arrived at this conclusion with regard to the cannon-bone of the ancient camel as Darwin, Marsh, and Huxley arrived at the conclusion that the ancient horse had three toes. They recognized that the splint bones of the horse represented the side toes of rhinoceroses, one on each side of the middle metacarpals and metatarsals respectively, and they decided that they were the remnants of side toes in the ancestor of the horse. And later we also found a three-toed horse.

I secured also in these beds the skull of a peccary and an oreodont, both new, and used as the types of Cope’s description, and a couple of carnivores; one, called by Cope Archælurus debilis, about the size of the American panther, the other a dog about the size of a coyote. Cope gave the name Enhydrocyon stenocephalus to this genus and species. A splendid skull of the rhinoceros Diceratherium nanum Marsh, was another of my discoveries here. All the specimens, with the skull of a rodent from the same beds, are now on exhibition in the American Museum.

Of course these are but a few of the many specimens secured in these beds; hundreds are stored away in the drawers and trays of the Museum. I was told that it would cost twenty-five dollars to get a typewritten copy of the list of John Day fossils in the Museum. In that list are many specimens which my party secured or which I purchased from Warfield and Day. Professor Cope once wrote me that my collection there represented about fifty species of extinct mammals.

One day in July I left Jake Wortman in the field and started for Dayville, leading a pack pony. I intended to stay all night with Mr. Mascall, leave my load of fossils, and take back a load of provisions. Bill Day had lost one of the horses, and as a large band of Umatilla Indians was encamped on Fox Prairie at the summit of the mountains, about six miles east of our camp in the Cove, he had gone off in that direction to look for it.

When I reached the high mountain above Dayville, I could look down into the narrow valley of the John Day. Although it was noon, there was no smoke rising from the chimneys of the houses. The fields of wheat were ripe for the cradle—they had no machines in that region, and not only cradled their grain, but threshed it with horses, who tramped it out—but no one was working in them, and there was no stock in the pastures. What could it mean? I asked myself; and as I followed the long trail down to the river, my heart was full of fearful forebodings. Had a pestilence killed all these people whom I knew so well? Or had they all fled, with their horses and cattle, from Indians on the warpath?

Without expecting to hear a response, I called, when I reached the river, for Mr. Mascall to come over with his boat and take me across. To my delight, I saw him come out of his house and take the trail down to the boat through the woods that covered the first river bottom. All the while that he was unlocking the boat and rowing across, I kept shouting, “What’s the trouble? Where are all the people?” But not until I had got aboard with my pack and saddle, and we had started back, would he answer the questions which I had been asking myself ever since I left the top of the mountain.

It seems that three hundred Bannocks, or Snakes, under their chosen leader, Egan, had left the Malheur Agency, several hundred miles south, and after stealing six thousand horses, mainly from the French brothers’ ranch, were now on their way north to join Homely, the chief of the Umatillas, at Fox Prairie. General Howard, who was in hot pursuit, had sent a courier ahead of his command to the settlers in the John Day valley, advising them to gather at some central locality, build a stockade, and take their women and children into it for protection from the treacherous redskins. Everyone in the valley, except Mr. Mascall and an old man who kept the mail station on Cottonwood Creek, a mile to the south, had taken this advice and gone to Spanish Gulch, a mining town on top of the mountains about ten miles southwest.

Near sundown Bill Day came in, having heard the news at the Indian camp. He instantly insisted that we leave everything and go to Spanish Gulch. It was foolish, he said, to risk our lives going back to warn Jake. On the long trail up the mountain we should be in full sight of the South Fork, down which the Indians were expected to come, and it would take us half a day to climb those four thousand feet and hide ourselves in the canyons on the other side. I refused, however, to be moved by his arguments. I told him that I meant to go back, and that he was to go with me. We could not leave Jake there in camp, entirely unconscious of the fate that might be approaching him. He knew nothing of the proximity of hostile Indians, and it was our duty to warn him.

“Well,” Bill said, “I am going to look out for number one. I have not lost any Indians. If you have, go and hunt trouble. Let Jake look out for himself.”

All my shells, perhaps three hundred, were empty, but I had plenty of powder and lead, and the best long-range rifle I had ever owned, a heavy Sharp’s weighing fourteen pounds, and shooting a hundred and twenty grains of lead and seventy grains of powder. I set to work cleaning and oiling it; and then spent the whole night in front of the fireplace, melting lead, casting bullets, and loading shells. Bill also stayed awake, and with his needle-gun kept guard at a porthole which commanded a good view of the open ground around the house.