ENTIRE PARTY SLAIN.
The attack occurred about four o’clock and the firing was distinctly heard on the boat. A party prepared to go out and investigate when a hunter came riding in from the bluffs, saying that the whites were being assailed by a large party of Indians. Three scouts set out immediately, and after proceeding about two miles and a half found the body of Mr. Burroughs. It being certain that all the rest had been killed, and not knowing where the Indians were, it was not thought best to go farther at the time. Next morning a party went out with wagons and brought in the bodies, all of which were found. They were buried in one grave, side by side, with a head board giving the names and date.[49]
YANKEE JACK AGAIN.
Captain La Barge arrived at the mouth of the Marias on the Effie Deans soon after this affair and saw the fresh graves. He remembered the circumstance particularly, because, among the guard, which had been stationed there after the massacre, was the identical “Yankee Jack” who had whipped the two Irishmen on the Robert Campbell in 1863.
About September, 1865, eight men left Fort Benton in a skiff for the States. They were attacked by some forty Indians near the mouth of Milk River and five of their number were killed. The fight lasted over five hours. One of the men who was killed, T. A. Kent by name, is said to have actually killed thirteen Indians before he himself fell.
In the year 1866 there were several noted open-boat voyages down the river. One of these was made by a party of ten miners, who purchased a mackinaw at Fort Benton in which to transport themselves and their golddust. When in camp on an island about sixty miles above Fort Randall, one of the men, of the name of Thompson, got up in the night, took an ax, killed one companion and wounded another. He was apparently bent on the destruction of the entire party. The rest of the men, suddenly awakened by the cries of their comrades, and believing that they were attacked by Indians, rushed to the boat with the wounded man and made off, leaving the murderer and his victim alone on the island. Whether robbery was the motive of the deed, or whether it was caused by insanity, was never known.
More fortunate was another mackinaw party that went down the same season. It consisted of seventeen men, and made the trip from Fort Benton to Sioux City in twenty-two days. They brought down over two hundred thousand dollars in golddust.
The third party of this season consisted of one man in a yawl and about twenty others in a mackinaw. They made the entire trip without loss, although they were attacked, some 225 miles below Benton, by about five hundred Blackfeet. The river was in flood stage, and thanks to its great width and swift current the boats were able to keep out of range of the Indians and to pass quickly beyond their reach.
HUBBELL’S MACKINAW.
The most important mackinaw trip ever made down the river was in 1866 under the leadership of J. B. Hubbell of the firm of Hawley & Hubbell. Hubbell had advertised that his steamboat would leave Fort Benton on her second trip about September 15, promising, if she did not get to Fort Benton, to take the passengers down in a mackinaw until they met her. As late as October 20 she had not appeared, and accordingly about thirty passengers started down in a mackinaw. The boat was a very elaborate one, built for this particular trip. It was eighty feet long, twelve feet beam, housed in on both sides by bulletproof walls for a distance of fifty feet, with sleeping bunks along the sides, and open spaces at bow and stern for managing the boat. Two masts rigged with square sails were provided.