Farnham was very much pleased with the South Park, and says of it, after describing its streams, valleys, and rocky ridges:
This is a bird's-eye view of Bayou Salado, so named from the circumstance that native rock salt is found in some parts of it. We were in the central portion of it. To the north and south and west its isolated plains rise one above another, always beautiful and covered with verdure during the months of spring and summer. A sweet spot this, for the romance of the future as well as of the present and past. The buffalo have for ages resorted here about the last days of July from the arid plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and hither the Utes, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Black Feet, Crows and Sioux of the north, have for ages met and hunted and fought and loved, and when their battles and hunts were interrupted by the chills and snows of November, they separated for their several winter resorts.
How wild and beautiful the past, as it comes up fledged with the rich plumage of the imagination! These vales, studded with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams, with their thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I see the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited logs, in family groups, whispering the dreams of their rude love, or gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief at the hour of midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance or the whoop of war that is to cast the deadly arrow with the first gleam of morning light.
Or, may we not see them gathered, a circle of old braves, around an aged tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies of half a century's daring deeds. The eldest and richest in scalps rises from the center of the ring and advances to the tree. Hear him!
"Fifty winters ago when the seventh moon's first horn hung over the green forests of the Ute hills, myself and five others erected a lodge for the Great Spirit on the snows of the White Butte and carried there our wampum and skins, and the hide of a white buffalo. We hung them in the Great Spirit's lodge and seated ourselves in silence till the moon had descended the western mountain, and thought of the blood of our fathers that the Comanches had killed when the moon was round and lay on the eastern plains. My own father was scalped, and the fathers of five others were scalped, and their bloody heads were gnawed by the wolf. We could not live while our father's lodges were empty and the scalps of their murderers were not in the lodges of our mothers. Our hearts told us to make these offerings to the Great Spirit who had fostered them on the mountains, and when the moon was down and the shadows of the White Butte were as dark as the hair of a bear, we said to the Great Spirit: 'No man can war with the arrows from the quiver of thy storms. No man's word can be heard when thy voice is among the clouds. No man's hand is strong when thy hand lets loose the wind. The wolf gnaws the heads of our fathers and the scalps of their murderers hang not in the lodges of our mothers. Great Father Spirit, send not thine anger out. Hold in thy hand the winds. Let not thy great voice drown the death yell while we hunt the murderers of our fathers.' I and the five others then built in the middle of the lodge a fire, and in its bright light the Great Spirit saw the wampum and the skins and the white buffalo hide. Five days and nights I and five others danced and smoked the medicine and beat the board with sticks and chanted away the powers of the great Medicine Men, that they might not be evil to us and bring sickness into our bones. Then when the stars were shining in the clear sky, we swore (I must not tell what, for it was in the ear of the Great Spirit), and went out of the lodge with our bosoms full of anger against the murderers of our fathers whose bones were in the jaws of the wolf and went for their scalps, to hang them in the lodges of our mothers." See him strike the aged tree with his war-club; again, again, nine times. "So many Comanches did I slay, the murderers of my father, before the moon was round again and lay upon the eastern plains."
Farnham, continuing, says:
This is not merely an imaginary scene of former times in the Bayou Salado. All the essential incidents related happened yearly in that and other hunting-grounds, whenever the old braves assembled to celebrate valorous deeds of their younger days. When these exciting relations were finished, the young men of the tribe who had not yet distinguished themselves were exhorted to seek glory in a similar way; and woe to him who passed his manhood without ornamenting the door of his lodge with the scalps of his enemies.
This valley is still frequented by these Indians as a summer haunt, when the heat of the plains renders them uncomfortable. The Utes were scouring it when we passed. Our guide informed us that the Utes reside on both sides of the mountains,—that they are continually migrating from one side to the other,—that they speak the Spanish language,—that some few half-breeds have embraced the Catholic faith,—that the remainder yet hold the simple and sublime faith of their forefathers, in the existence of one great, creating, and sustaining Cause, mingled with the belief in the ghostly visitations of their deceased Medicine Men, or Diviners;—that they number one thousand families.
He also stated that the Cheyennes were less brave and more thievish than any of the other tribes living on the plains.
Farnham's description of the incantations practiced by the Utes is in the main probably true; the information on which it was based was doubtless obtained from his guide.