Bur. Am. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
Chief Washakie (center) and two of his Shoshone braves (Wyoming).
When they started for Salt Lake, they took with them about thirty head of the Crows’ horses to swap for anything they could get for them. After they were gone, there were one hundred of us left behind, mostly squaws and papooses and old and wounded Indians to take care of, besides six hundred head of horses.
“He said that it … would have to be cut off.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN LIVELY TIMES
After the trading party had been gone two days, the rest of our band moved down the creek to where it sank in the sand hills. Here three of the wounded Indians got so bad that we had to stop for some time; but we had the finest of grass for our horses, and the sage hens were as thick as could be.
One day I was out shooting chickens. I had killed four with arrows and was coming home, when, as I was passing a tepee, a dog jumped out and got me by the leg. He tore off quite a piece of my flesh and I shot him through with an arrow, leaving the feathers on one side of him and the spike sticking out of the other. As I was trying to catch the dog to get my arrow back, the old squaw that owned him ran up with a rope. She threw it over my head and jerked me along to her tepee. And there she held me while her girl tied my feet and hands. Then the angry old squaw grabbed a butcher knife and was going to cut my head off.
A sick Indian, who happened to be lying near by, jumped up and held the squaw while a little boy ran and told mother. Mother came in double quick time. She grabbed the knife from the squaw, cut the strap that she had tied me with, took me by the arm, and made me hike for my tepee. When she saw how the dog had bitten me, oh, she was mad. She went back to the squaw, with me following her, and said: “If you don’t kill that dog before sundown, I will kill you. Look here, see this poor boy with his leg nearly bitten off.”