KIT CARSON.
I have been requested by several parties to offer something of Kit Carson's early days on the Plains. Having been intimate with that famous man during the declining years of his eventful life, and having heard from his own lips many of the adventures of his youth, while sitting around the camp-fire on several little "outings" with him and Maxwell in the mountains of New Mexico, I have chosen for my sketch Kit's first shot at an Indian.
That portion of the great central plains of Kansas which radiates from the Pawnee Fork as its center, including the bend of the Arkansas, where that river makes a sudden sweep to the southeast, and the beautiful valley of the Walnut,—in all an area of nearly a thousand square miles,—was from time immemorial a sort of debatable ground, occupied by none of the tribes, but claimed by all to hunt in, for it was a famous resort of the buffalo.
None of the various bands of savages had the temerity to attempt its permanent occupancy, for whenever they met there—which was of frequent occurrence—on their annual hunt for their winter's supply of meat, a bloody battle was sure to ensue. The region referred to has perhaps been the scene of more sanguinary conflicts than any other portion of the continent. Particularly was this the case when the Pawnees, who claimed the country, met their hereditary enemies, the Cheyennes.
Through this region, hugging the margin of the silent Arkansas, and running under the very shadow of Pawnee Rock, the old Santa Fé trail wound its course, now the actual road-bed of the Santa Fé Railway,—so closely are the past and present transcontinental highways cemented at this point: one, a mere memory; the other, one of the great railways now spanning the continent.
Who, among the bearded and grizzled old fellows like myself, has forgotten that most exciting and sensational (at least it was so to my boyish mind) of all the miserably executed illustrations in the geographies of their school-days fifty years ago—"Santa Fé Traders Attacked by Indians"? The picture located the scene of the fight at Pawnee Rock, which formed a sort of a nondescript shadow in the background of a crudely drawn representation of the dangers of the trail.
I witnessed a spirited encounter between a small band of the Cheyennes and Pawnees in the fall of 1867. It occurred on the open prairie, just north of the mouth of the Walnut, about four miles from where the city of Great Bend now stands. Both tribes were hunting the buffalo, and when each by accident discovered the presence of the other, with a demoniacal yell that fairly shook the sand-dunes of the Arkansas they rushed at once into the shock of battle.
The Pawnees were of course friendly to the whites, and had permission from their agent to leave their reservation in the valley of the Neosho, near Council Grove. At that particular time, for a wonder, the Cheyennes too were temporarily at peace with the Government. So I had nothing to do but passively witness the savage combat.
Both bands of the savages soon exhausted their ammunition, and then the chiefs of the contending factions appealed to me most earnestly to supply them with more, of which there was plenty at Fort Zarah, only half a mile away. I was necessarily forced to remain neutral, but my sympathies were with the "under dog" in the fight,—which happened to be the Cheyennes, whom the Pawnees drove off disgraced and discomfitted.
That evening, in a grove of timber on the Walnut, the victors had a grand dance in which scalps, ears and fingers of their enemy, suspended by strings to poles, were important accessories to their weird orgies around the huge camp-fires.