Trails Through Western Woods

by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

Then the destruction was swift beyond belief. The royal game which Coronado saw in 1585, which Lewis and Clark in their adventurous journey into the unknown West encountered at every turn, was nearly gone. They endured in such numbers that as late as 1840 Father De Smet said:

"The scene realized in some sort the ancient tradition of the holy scriptures, speaking of the vast pastoral countries of the Orient, and of the cattle upon a thousand hills."

It was inconceivable to the Indians that civilization should wreak such utter desolation. They could not comprehend the passing of the mighty herds any more than they could appreciate the destruction of the forests or their own decline. They did not know that the railroad which traversed the highway of the plains between the East and West ran through miles upon miles of country whitened with buffalo bones; that veritably the prairies which had been the pasture of the herds were now become their graveyard—a graveyard of unburied dead. They did not know that armies of workingmen and settlers had drawn upon the buffalo for food and warmth, that the beasts had been harried and hunted North, South, East and West, sometimes legitimately, but too often in cruel, wanton sport, until, at last, it became an evident fact that they were visibly nearing their end. A kind of stampede possessed the terrified beasts. Their old haunts were usurped. Where the fostering forests had given them shelter, towns arose. Baffled and dismayed they fled, hither and thither, only to crash headlong within the range of the huntsman's gun. So they charged at random, ever pressed closer and closer to bay by the encroaching life which was their death.

About the year of 1883 it was known that the last thinned and vagrant remnant of the buffalo was virtually gone. Maddened into desperate bewilderment they had done an unprecedented thing. Instead of going northward as their habit had been since man first observed their kind, they turned and fled South. This was their end. The half-breeds of the Red River, the Sioux of the Missouri, and most relentless of all, the white hide-hunter, beset the wild, retreating band. Their greed spared neither beast that tottered with age, nor calf fresh from its mother's womb. All fell prey to the mastering greed of the lords of the great free land.

Upon the shores of the Cannonball River, so-called from the heaps of round stones upon its banks, on the edge of the Dakotas, the buffalo made their last stand. Driven to bay they stood and fell together, the latest offspring of a vanished race.

But the poor Indian, he who had shared the freedom of the continent with his horned friend, could not yet understand that the buffalo were gone—gone as the sheltering woods were going, even as he, himself, must go. Evolution is cruel as well as beneficent and there is a pang for each poor, lesser existence crushed out in the race, as there is joy in the survival of the strongest and best. And those who are superior to-day must themselves be superseded to-morrow and fall into the abysmal yesterday, mere stepping stones toward the Infinite. The Indians, knowing none of these things, became troubled and perplexed. In vain they sought the herds on their old-time hunting grounds, but only stark, bleached bones were there and they went back to their lodges, hungry, gaunt and wan.

In years past the buffalo had disappeared at intervals to unknown pastures, then returned multiplied and reinforced. Was it not possible that they had gone upon such a journey, perhaps to the ultimate North where the Old Man dwelt, to seek refuge in a mighty polar cave under his benign protection? So from their meager stores the Indians offered sacrifices of horses and other of their most valued possessions, to the Old Man, that he might drive the buffalo back to the deserted pasture lands near the Rocky Mountains.

"They are tired," said Long Tree of the Sioux, "with much running. They have had no rest. They have been chased and chased over the rocks and gravel of the prairie and their feet are sore, worn down, like those of a tender-footed horse. When the buffalo have rested and their feet have grown out again, they will return to us in larger numbers, stronger, with better robes and fatter than they ever were."

Still the years passed and the buffalo came not, and some there were who said that if the Old Man, the Great Spirit of the North, loved his children of the forest, he would not have left them to suffer so painfully and long.

Then out of dumb despair came sudden hope; out of the bitter silence sounded a Voice and a prophet came "preaching through the wilderness," even as John the Baptist had come, centuries ago, bringing a message of peace and the promise of salvation. This prophet was Wovoka, founder of the Ghost Dance religion, who arose in "the land of the setting sun," in the shadow of the Sierras. He told the wrapt people that when "the sun died" he went to heaven where he saw God, the spirits of those long dead and vast herds of revivified buffalo feeding in the pastures of the skies. Heaven would not be perfect to the Indian without the buffalo, and the red man, less jealous than ourselves of his paradise, was willing to share the bliss of immortality with his old-time companions of the plains. The tenets of the new creed were gentle, teaching peace, truth, honesty and universal brotherhood. Under the thrall of the Ghost Dance, devotees dropped to earth insensible and had visions of the spirit-world. Wovoka prophesied that at the appointed time the ghostly legions, led by a spirit captain, would descend from heaven, striking down the unbelievers and restoring to the Indians and the buffalo dominion over the earth.