On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

After enduring the hardships and discomforts of the march from the head of Heart River, the situation in the bivouac on the Whitewood, a beautiful stream flowing out of the Hills at their northern extremity, was most romantic and pleasurable. The surrounding knolls were thickly grassed; cold, clear water stood in deep pools hemmed in by thick belts of timber; and there was an abundance of juicy wild plums, grapes, and bull berries, now fully ripe, and adding a grateful finish to meals which included nearly everything that man could desire, brought down in wagons by the enterprising dealers of Deadwood, who reaped a golden harvest. We were somewhat bewildered at sitting down before a canvas upon which were to be seen warm bread baked in ovens dug in the ground, delicious coffee, to the aroma of which we had been for so long a time strangers, broiled and stewed meat, fresh eggs, pickles, preserves, and fresh vegetables. Soldiers are in one respect like children: they forget the sorrows of yesterday in the delights of to-day, and give to glad song the same voices which a few hours ago were loudest in grumbling and petty complaint. So it was with our camp: the blazing fires were surrounded by crowds of happy warriors, each rivalling the other in tales of the “times we had” in a march whose severity has never been approached by that made by any column of our army of the same size, and of which so little is known that it may truly be said that the hardest work is the soonest forgotten.

Crook bade good-by to the officers and men who had toiled along with him through the spring and summer, and then headed for the post of Fort Robinson, Nebraska, one hundred and sixty miles to the south. For one-half this distance our road followed down through the centre of the Black Hills, a most entrancing country, laid out apparently by a landscape artist; it is not so high as the Big Horn range, although Harney’s and other peaks of granite project to a great elevation, their flanks dark with pine, fir, and other coniferæ; the foot-hills velvety with healthful pasturage; the narrow valleys of the innumerable petty creeks a jungle of willow, wild rose, live oak, and plum. Climbing into the mountains, one can find any amount of spruce, juniper, cedar, fir, hemlock, birch, and whitewood; there are no lakes, but the springs are legion and fill with gentle melody the romantic glens—the retreat of the timid deer.

A description of Deadwood as it appeared at that time will suffice for all the settlements of which it was the metropolis. Crook City, Montana, Hills City, Castleton, Custer City, and others through which we passed were better built than Deadwood and better situated for expansion, but Deadwood had struck it rich in its placers, and the bulk of the population took root there. Crook City received our party most hospitably, and insisted upon our sitting down to a good hot breakfast, after which we pressed on to Deadwood, twenty miles or more from our camping place on the Whitewood. The ten miles of distance from Crook City to Deadwood was lined on both sides with deep ditches and sluice-boxes, excavated to develop or work the rich gravel lying along the entire gulch. But it seemed to me that with anything like proper economy and care there was wealth enough in the forests to make the prosperity of any community, and supply not alone the towns which might spring up in the hills, but build all the houses and stables needed in the great pastures north, as far as the head of the Little Missouri. It was the 16th of September when we entered Deadwood, and although I had been through the Black Hills with the exploring expedition commanded by Colonel Dodge, the previous year, and was well acquainted with the beautiful country we were to see, I was unbalanced by the exhibition of the marvellous energy of the American people now laid before us. The town had been laid off in building lots on the 15th of May, and all supplies had to be hauled in wagons from the railroad two hundred and fifty miles away and through bodies of savages who kept up a constant series of assaults and ambuscades.

The town was situated at the junction of the Whitewood and Deadwood creeks or gulches, each of which was covered by a double line of block-houses to repel a sudden attack from the ever-to-be-dreaded enemy, the Sioux and Cheyennes, of whose cruelty and desperate hostility the mouths of the inhabitants and the columns of the two newspapers were filled. I remember one of these journals, The Pioneer, edited at that time by a young man named Merrick, whose life had been pleasantly divided into three equal parts—setting type, hunting for Indians, and “rasslin’” for grub—during the days when the whole community was reduced to deer-meat and anything else they could pick up. Merrick was a very bright, energetic man, and had he lived would have been a prominent citizen in the new settlements. It speaks volumes for the intelligence of the element rolling into the new El Dorado to say that the subscription lists of The Pioneer even then contained four hundred names.

The main street of Deadwood, twenty yards wide, was packed by a force of men, drawn from all quarters, aggregating thousands; and the windows of both upper and lower stories of the eating-houses, saloons, hotels, and wash-houses were occupied by women of good, bad, and indifferent reputation. There were vociferous cheers, clappings of hands, wavings of handkerchiefs, shrieks from the whistles of the planing mills, reports from powder blown off in anvils, and every other manifestation of welcome known to the populations of mining towns. The almond-eyed Celestial laundrymen had absorbed the contagion of the hour, and from the doors of the “Centennial Wash-House” gazed with a complacency unusual to them upon the doings of the Western barbarians. We were assigned quarters in the best hotel of the town: “The Grand Central Hotel, Main Street, opposite Theatre, C. H. Wagner, Prop. (formerly of the Walker House and Saddle Rock Restaurant, Salt Lake), the only first-class hotel in Deadwood City, D. T.”

This was a structure of wood, of two stories, the lower used for the purposes of offices, dining-room, saloon, and kitchen; the upper was devoted to a parlor, and the rest was partitioned into bedrooms, of which I wish to note the singular feature that the partitions did not reach more than eight feet above the floor, and thus every word said in one room was common property to all along that corridor. The “Grand Central” was, as might be expected, rather crude in outline and construction, but the furniture was remarkably good, and the table decidedly better than one had a right to look for, all circumstances considered. Owing to the largeness of our party, the escort and packers were divided off between the “I. X. L.” and the “Centennial” hotels, while the horses and mules found good accommodations awaiting them in Clarke’s livery stable. I suppose that much of this will be Greek to the boy or girl growing up in Deadwood, who may also be surprised to hear that very many of the habitations were of canvas, others of unbarked logs, and some few “dug-outs” in the clay banks. By the law of the community, a gold placer or ledge could be followed anywhere, regardless of other property rights; in consequence of this, the office of The Pioneer was on stilts, being kept in countenance by a Chinese laundryman whose establishment was in the same predicament. Miners were at work under them, and it looked as if it would be more economical to establish one’s self in a balloon in the first place.

That night, after supper, the hills were red with the flare and flame of bonfires, and in front of the hotel had assembled a large crowd, eager to have a talk with General Crook; this soon came, and the main part of the General’s remarks was devoted to an expression of his desire to protect the new settlements from threatened danger, while the citizens, on their side, recited the various atrocities and perils which had combined to make the early history of the settlements, and presented a petition, signed by seven hundred and thirteen full-grown white citizens, asking for military protection. Then followed a reception in the “Deadwood Theatre and Academy of Music,” built one-half of boards and the other half of canvas. After the reception, there was a performance by “Miller’s Grand Combination Troupe, with the Following Array of Stars.” It was the usual variety show of the mining towns and villages, but much of it was quite good; one of the saddest interpolations was the vocalization by Miss Viola de Montmorency, the Queen of Song, prior to her departure for Europe to sing before the crowned heads. Miss Viola was all right, but her voice might have had several stitches in it, and been none the worse; if she never comes back from the other side of the Atlantic until I send for her, she will be considerably older than she was that night when a half-drunken miner energetically insisted that she was “old enough to have another set o’ teeth.” We left the temple of the Muses to walk along the main street and look in upon the stores, which were filled with all articles desirable in a mining district, and many others not usual in so young a community. Clothing, heavy and light, hardware, tinware, mess-pans, camp-kettles, blankets, saddlery, harness, rifles, cartridges, wagon-grease and blasting powder, india-rubber boots and garden seeds, dried and canned fruits, sardines, and yeast powders, loaded down the shelves; the medium of exchange was gold dust; each counter displayed a pair of delicate scales, and every miner carried a buckskin pouch containing the golden grains required for daily use.

Greenbacks were not in circulation, and already commanded a premium of five per cent, on account of their portability. Gambling hells flourished, and all kinds of games were to be found—three card monte, keno, faro, roulette, and poker. Close by these were the “hurdy-gurdies,” where the music from asthmatic pianos timed the dancing of painted, padded, and leering Aspasias, too hideous to hope for a livelihood in any village less remote from civilization. We saw and met representatives of all classes of society—gamblers, chevaliers d’industrie, callow fledglings, ignorant of the world and its ways, experienced miners who had labored in other fields, men broken down in other pursuits, noble women who had braved all perils to be by their husbands’ sides, smart little children, and children who were adepts in profanity and all other vices—just such a commingling as might be looked for, but we saw very little if any drinking, and the general tone of the place was one of good order and law, to which vice and immorality must bow.

We started out from Deadwood, and rode through the beautiful hills from north to south, passing along over well-constructed corduroy roads to Custer City, sixty miles to the south; about half way we met a wagon-train of supplies, under charge of Captain Prank Guest Smith, of the Fourth Artillery, and remained a few moments to take luncheon with himself and his subordinates—Captain Cushing and Lieutenants Jones, Howe, Taylor, and Anderson, and Surgeon Price. Custer City was a melancholy example of a town with the “boom” knocked out of it; there must have been as many as four hundred comfortable houses arranged in broad, rectilinear streets, but not quite three hundred souls remained, and all the trade of the place was dependent upon the three saw and shingle mills still running at full time. Here we found another wagon-train of provisions, under command of Captain Egan and Lieutenant Allison, of the Second Cavalry, who very kindly insisted upon exchanging their fresh horses for our tired-out steeds so as to let us go on at once on our still long ride of nearly one hundred miles south to Robinson; we travelled all night, stopping at intervals to let the horses have a bite of grass, but as Randall and Sibley were left behind with the pack-train, our reduced party kept a rapid gait along the wagon road, and arrived at the post the next morning shortly after breakfast. Near Buffalo Gap we crossed the “Amphibious” Creek, which has a double bottom, the upper one being a crust of sulphuret of lime, through which rider and horse will often break to the discomfort and danger of both; later on we traversed the “Bad Lands,” in which repose the bones of countless thousands of fossilized monsters—tortoises, lizards, and others—which will yet be made to pay heavy tribute to the museums of the world. Here we met the officers of the garrison as well as the members of the commission appointed by the President to confer with the Sioux, among whom I remember Bishop Whipple, Judge Moneypenny, Judge Gaylord, and others.

This terminated the summer campaign, although, as one of the results of Crook’s conference with Sheridan at Fort Laramie, the Ogallalla chiefs “Red Cloud” and “Red Leaf” were surrounded on the morning of the 23d of October, and all their guns and ponies taken from them. There were seven hundred and five ponies and fifty rifles. These bands were supposed to have been selling arms and ammunition to the part of the tribe in open hostility, and this action of the military was precipitated by “Red Cloud’s” refusal to obey the orders to move his village close to the agency, so as to prevent the incoming stragglers from being confounded with those who had remained at peace. He moved his village over to the Chadron Creek, twenty-two miles away, where he was at the moment of being surrounded and arrested.