The squaws scalped every Crow they could find.
“Why don’t you scalp our Indians and send their scalps to the Crows?” I asked her.
“Go away,” she said, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”
Our Indians carried our dead to a deep washout in the side of the hill, put them in and covered them with dirt and rocks. The dead Crows were left to the wolves and the buzzards.
That night when I got back to camp I was very tired and hungry, and I had seen so many Indians scalped that I felt sick and wished from the bottom of my heart that I was home with my kindred.
About two hundred and fifty horses were captured from the Crows. Thirty-one Indians on our side had been killed and about one hundred wounded. Eighteen of these afterwards died from their wounds, making forty-nine in all we lost in that terrible fight. The Crows had suffered far worse than we did. The men sent out by Washakie to count the killed came back and reported that they had found one hundred and three dead Crows. Washakie thought this number would be increased greatly by those that died from their wounds.
I began to change my mind about our Indians being cowards after seeing that fight. I have seen other fights between the whites and the Indians, but I never have seen greater bravery displayed than was shown by our Indians in this fierce battle with the Crows.
We had to stay in this place about three weeks to give our wounded warriors a chance to get well. When we could move them, it was too late to go the grounds that Washakie had planned, so we began to get ready for winter. Our camp was moved over on the Angitapa (Rock Creek), and the hunters began to kill buffaloes while the squaws dried the meat. There were a good many widows and orphans now to take care of. The worst of it was the man who was best at cutting the hamstrings had been killed in battle, so we could not get on so fast with our hunting. However, we soon got all of the buffaloes that we wanted and the squaws began to make the hides into robes.
Poor old mother and Hanabi worked very hard to get ours ready for the journey to Salt Lake. Washakie had a good many robes. Besides those he had got from hunting, he had bought a lot from other Indians, and he had his chief’s share of those captured from the Crows. We had six packs of dried meat and our camp outfit made three more. Altogether it made so heavy a load that we could not travel very fast.
When we got over the divide Washakie said that mother and I had better stay there with some of the others to take care of the extra horses. I did not like to do this, for I wanted to go to Salt Lake this time; but I would do anything that Washakie advised. He told us that we could come on slowly after them.