On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Mackinaw boats, manned by adventurous traders from Montana, had descended the river loaded with all kinds of knick-knacks for the use of the soldiers; these were retailed at enormous prices, but eagerly bought by men who had no other means of getting rid of their money. Besides the “Mackinaw,” which was made of rough timber framework, the waters of the Yellowstone and the Missouri were crossed by the “bull-boat,” which bore a close resemblance to the basket “coracle” of the west coast of Ireland, and, like it, was a framework of willow or some kind of basketry covered with the skins of the buffalo, or other bovine; in these frail hemispherical barks squaws would paddle themselves and baggage and pappooses across the swift-running current and gain the opposite bank in safety.

At the mouth of Powder there was a sutler’s store packed from morning till night with a crowd of expectant purchasers. To go in there was all one’s life was worth: one moment a soldier stepped on one of your feet, and the next some two-hundred-pound packer favored the other side in the same manner. A disagreeable sand-storm drove Colonel Stanton and myself to the shelter of the lunette constructed by Lieutenant William P. Clarke, Second Cavalry, who had descended the Yellowstone from Fort Ellis with a piece of artillery. Here we lunched with Clarke and Colonel Carr, of the Fifth Cavalry, stormbound like ourselves. The Ree scouts attached to Terry’s column favored our Utes and Shoshones with a “pony” dance after nightfall. The performers were almost naked, and, with their ponies, bedaubed and painted from head to foot. They advanced in a regular line, which was not broken for any purpose, going over every obstruction, even trampling down the rude structures of cottonwood branches erected by the Utes and Shoshones for protection from the elements. As soon as they had come within a few yards of the camp-fires of the Shoshones, the latter, with the Utes, joined the Rees in their chant and also jumped upon their ponies, which staggered for some minutes around camp under their double and even treble load, until, thank Heaven! the affair ended. Although I had what might be called a “deadhead” view of the dance, I did not enjoy it at all, and was not sorry when the Rees said that they would have to go back to their own camp.

There was not very much to eat down on the Yellowstone, and one could count on his fingers the “square” meals in that lovely valley. Conspicuous among them should be the feast of hot bacon and beans, to which Tom Moore invited Hartsuff, Stanton, Bubb, Wasson, Strahorn, Schuyler, and myself long after the camp was wrapped in slumber. The beans were cooked to a turn; there was plenty of hard-tack and coffee, with a small quantity of sugar; each knew the other, there was much to talk about, and in the light and genial warmth of the fire, with stomachs filled, we passed a delightful time until morning had almost dawned.

On the 20th of August, our Utes and Shoshones left, and word was also received from the Crows that they were afraid to let any of the young men leave their own country while such numbers of the Sioux and Cheyennes were in hostility, and so close to them. General Crook had a flag prepared for his headquarters after the style prevailing in Terry’s column, which served the excellent purpose of directing orderlies and officers promptly to the battalion or other command to which a message was to be delivered. This standard, for the construction of which we were indebted to the industry of Randall and Schuyler, was rather primitive in design and general make-up. It was a guidon, of two horizontal bands, white above, red beneath, with a blue star in the centre. The white was from a crash towel contributed by Colonel Stanton, the red came from a flannel undershirt belonging to Schuyler, and an old blouse which Randall was about to throw away furnished the star. Tom Moore had a “travois” pole shaved down for a staff, the ferrule and tip of which were made of metallic cartridges.

Supper had just been finished that day when we were exposed to as miserable a storm as ever drowned the spirit and enthusiasm out of any set of mortals. It didn’t come on suddenly, but with slowness and deliberation almost premeditated. For more than an hour fleecy clouds skirmished in the sky, wheeling and circling lazily until re-enforced from the west, and then moving boldly forward and hanging over camp in dense, black, sullen masses. All bestirred themselves to make such preparations as they could to withstand the siege: willow twigs and grasses were cut in quantities, and to these were added sage-brush and grease-wood. Wood was stacked up for the fire, so that at the earliest moment possible after the cessation of the storm it could be rekindled and afford some chance of warming ourselves and drying clothing. With the twigs and sage-brush we built up beds in the best-drained nooks and corners, placed our saddles and bridles at our heads, and carbines and cartridges at our sides to keep them dry. As a last protection, a couple of lariats were tied together, one end of the rope fastened to a picket pin in the ground, the other to the limb of the withered Cottonwood alongside of which headquarters had been established; over this were stretched a couple of blankets from the pack-train, and we had done our best. There was nothing else to do but grin and bear all that was to happen. The storm-king had waited patiently for the completion of these meagre preparations, and now, with a loud, ear-piercing crash of thunder, and a hissing flash of white lightning, gave the signal to the elements to begin the attack. We cowered helplessly under the shock, sensible that human strength was insignificant in comparison with the power of the blast which roared and yelled and shrieked about us.

For hours the rain poured down—either as heavy drops which stung by their momentum; as little pellets which drizzled through canvas and blankets, chilling our blood as they soaked into clothing; or alternating with hail which in great, globular crystals, crackled against the miserable shelter, whitened the ground, and froze the air. The reverberation of the thunder was incessant; one shock had barely begun to echo around the sky, when peal after peal, each stronger, louder, and more terrifying than its predecessors, blotted from our minds the sounds and flashes which had awakened our first astonishment, and made us forget in new frights our old alarms. The lightning darted from zenith to horizon, appeared in all quarters, played around all objects. In its glare the smallest bushes, stones, and shrubs stood out as plainly as under the noon sun of a bright summer’s day; when it subsided, our spirits were oppressed with the weight of darkness. No stringing together of words can complete a description of what we saw, suffered, and feared during that awful tempest. The stoutest hearts, the oldest soldiers, quailed.

The last growl of thunder was heard, the last flash of lightning seen, between two and three in the morning, and then we turned out from our wretched, water-soaked couches, and gathering around the lakelet in whose midst our fire had been, tried by the smoke of sodden chips and twigs to warm our benumbed limbs and dry our saturated clothing. Not until the dawn of day did we feel the circulation quicken and our spirits revive. A comparison of opinion developed a coincidence of sentiment. Everybody agreed that while perhaps this was not the worst storm he had ever known, the circumstances of our complete exposure to its force had made it about the very worst any of the command had ever experienced. There was scarcely a day from that on for nearly a month that my note-books do not contain references to storms, some of them fully as severe as the one described in the above lines; the exposure began to tell upon officers, men, and animals, and I think the statement will be accepted without challenge that no one who followed Crook during those terrible days was benefited in any way.

I made out a rough list of the officers present on this expedition, and another of those who have died, been killed, died of wounds, or been retired for one reason or another, and I find that the first list had one hundred and sixteen names and the second sixty-nine; so it can be seen that of the officers who were considered to be physically able to enter upon that campaign in the early summer months of 1876, over fifty per cent, are not now answering to roll-call on the active list, after about sixteen years’ interval. The bad weather had the good effects of bringing to the surface all the dormant geniality of Colonel Evans’s disposition: he was the Mark Tapley of the column; the harder it rained, the louder he laughed; the bright shafts of lightning revealed nothing more inspiriting than our worthy friend’s smile of serene contentment. In Colonel Evans’s opinion, which he was not at all diffident about expressing, the time had come for the young men of the command to see what real service was like. “There had been entirely too much of this playing soldier, sir; what had been done by soldiers who were soldiers, sir, before the war, sir, had never been properly appreciated, sir, and never would be until these young men got a small taste of it themselves, sir.”

General Merritt’s division of the command was provided with a signal apparatus, and the flags were of great use in conveying messages to camp from the outlying pickets, and thus saving the wear and tear of horse-flesh; but in this dark and rainy season the system was a failure, and many thought that it would have been well to introduce a code of signals by whistles, but it was not possible to do so under our circumstances.

The “Far West” had made several trips to the depot at the mouth of the Rosebud, and had brought down a supply of shoes, which was almost sufficient for our infantry battalions, but there was little of anything else, and Bubb, our commissary, was unable to obtain more than eleven pounds of tobacco for the entire force.