Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders

by George Bird Grinnell

The Shawnees and Delawares were great hunters, and almost always when the train stopped for noon, and their cattle had been turned out and the meal eaten, these men would be seen striding off over the prairie, each with a long rifle over his shoulder.

In the train there were several messes. Colonel Bent and any member of his family, or visitor, messed together, the white teamsters and the Mexicans also messed together, while the Delawares and Shawnees, by preference, messed by themselves. Each man had his own quart cup and plate, and carried his own knife in its sheath. Forks or spoons were not known. Each man marked his own plate and cup, usually by rudely scratching his initials or mark on it, and when he had finished using it, he washed or cleansed it himself. Each mess chose its cook from among its members. The food eaten by these travellers, though simple, was wholesome and abundant. Meat was the staple; but they also had bread and abundant coffee, and occasionally boiled dried apples and rice. Usually there was sugar, though sometimes they had to depend on the old-fashioned “long sweetening”; that is, New Orleans molasses, which was imported in hogsheads for trade with the Indians.

The train was occasionally attacked by Indians, but they were always beaten off. In 1847 the Comanches attacked the wagons at Pawnee Fork, but they were repulsed, and Red Sleeves, their chief, was killed. The fork is called by the Indians Red Sleeves’ Creek, in remembrance of this affair. Charles Hallock, who made the journey with one of these trains, wrote an account of an attack by Comanches, which was printed in Harper’s Magazine, in 1859.

After the return to the post in autumn, the cattle were turned out into the herd, wagons ranged around outside of the corral, while the yokes and chains for each bull team were cared for by the driver of the team. Usually they were carried into the fort and piled up in some shady place. The keys for the bows were tied to the yokes, and the chains lay close to them.

Rarely a few ox-bows were lost by being taken away by the Indians, who greatly coveted the hickory wood for the manufacture of bows. There was no hickory nearer than Council Grove, and if an Indian could get hold of an ox-bow, he steamed and straightened it, and from it made a useful bow.

Back at the fort only a few men were left; the clerks, a trader or two, and a few laborers and herders. There were frequent calls there by Indians, chiefly war-parties stopping to secure supplies of arms and ammunition. Hunting parties occasionally called to procure ordinary goods. Parties of white travellers came and stayed for a little while, and then went on again. During this time especial precautions were taken against trouble with the Indians. At night, the fort was closed early, and conditions sometimes arose under which admission to the fort might be refused by the trader. This watchfulness, which was never relaxed, was not caused by any special fear of Indian attacks, but was merely the carrying out of those measures of prudence which Colonel Bent had always practised, and which he had so thoroughly inculcated in his men that they had become fixed habits.

Usually the Cheyenne Indians were freely admitted to the fort, and were allowed to wander through it, more or less at will. They might go up on the roof and into the watch-tower, but were warned by the chiefs not to touch anything. They might go about and look, and, if they wished to, ask questions, but they were not to take things in their hands. Toward the close of the day, as the sun got low, a chief or principal man went through the fort, and said to the young men who were lounging here and there: “Now, soon these people will wish to close the gates of this house, and you had better now go out and return to your camps.” When this was said the young men always obeyed, for in those days the chiefs had control over their young men; they listened to what was said to them and obeyed.

On one occasion a war-party of Shoshoni came down from the mountains and visited Bent’s Fort, and insisted on coming in. The trader in charge, probably Murray, declined to let them in, and when they endeavored to force their way into the post, he killed one of them, when the others went away. The Indian’s body was buried at some little distance from the fort, and his scalp was afterward given to a war-party of Cheyennes and Arapahoes.

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In winter the scenes at the fort were very different. Now it harbored a much larger population. All the employees were there, except a few traders and teamsters and laborers, who might be out visiting the different camps, and who were constantly going and returning. The greater part of the laborers and teamsters had little or nothing to do, and spent most of the winter in idleness, lounging about the fort, or occasionally going out hunting. Besides the regular inhabitants there were many visitors, some of whom spent a long time at the fort. Hunters and trappers from the mountains, often with their families, came in to purchase goods for the next summer’s journey, or to visit, and then, having supplied their wants, returned to their mountain camps. All visitors were welcome to stay as long as they pleased.