Red Cloud.
When “Red Cloud” and his party reached “Crazy Horse” they found the statements made by the latter Indian were strictly correct. The thousands of square miles of country burned over during the preceding season were still gaunt and bare, and “Crazy Horse” was compelled to march with his famished ponies over a region as destitute as the Sahara. The rations taken out for the women and children were well bestowed; there was no food in the village, and some of the more imprudent ate themselves sick, and I may add that one of “Crazy Horse’s” men sent on in advance to Camp Robinson surfeited himself and died.
While Red Cloud was absent there were several small brushes with petty bands of prowling hostiles. Lieutenants Lemly, Cumings, and Hardie, of the Third Cavalry, did spirited work near Deadwood and Fort Fetterman respectively, and a battalion of the same regiment, under Major Vroom, was kept patrolling the eastern side of the Hills.
Time did not hang heavy upon our hands at Robinson: there were rides and walks about the post for those who took pleasure in them; sometimes a party would go as far as Crow Butte, with its weird, romantic story of former struggles between the Absaroka and the Dakota; sometimes into the pine-mantled bluffs overlooking the garrison, where, two years later, the brave Cheyennes, feeling that the Government had broken faith with them, were again on the war-path, fighting to the death. There were visits to the Indian villages, where the courteous welcome received from the owners of the lodges barely made amends for the vicious attacks by half-rabid curs upon the horses’ heels. The prismatic splendors of the rainbow had been borrowed to give beauty to the raiment or lend dignity to the countenances of Indians of both sexes, who moved in a steady stream to the trader’s store to buy all there was to sell. Many of the squaws wore bodices and skirts of the finest antelope skin, thickly incrusted with vari-colored beads or glistening with the nacreous brilliancy of the tusks of elk; in all these glories of personal adornment they were well matched by the warriors, upon whose heads were strikingly picturesque war-bonnets with eagle feathers studding them from crown to ground. These were to be worn only on gala occasions, but each day was a festal one at that time for all these people. Almost as soon as the sun proclaimed the hour of noon groups of dancers made their way to the open ground in front of the commanding general’s quarters, and there favored the whites with a never-ending series of “Omaha” dances and “Spoon” dances, “Squaw” dances and “War” dances, which were wonderfully interesting and often beautiful to look upon, but open to the objection that the unwary Caucasian who ventured too near the charmed circle was in danger of being seized by stout-armed viragoes, and compelled to prance about with them until his comrades had contributed a ransom of two dollars.
Neither were we altogether ignorant of the strange wonders of the “Bad Lands,” which began near by, and are, or were, filled with the skeletons of mammoth saurians and other monsters of vanished seas. “Old Paul”—I don’t think he ever had any other name—the driver of General Mackenzie’s ambulance, had much to relate about these marvellous animal cemeteries. “Loo-o-tin-int,” he would say, “it’s the dog-gonedest country I ever seed—reg’lar bone-yard. (Waugh! Tobacco juice.) Wa’al, I got lots o’ things out thar—thighs ’n jaw-bones ’n sich—them’s no account, th’ groun’s chock full o’ them. (Waugh! Tobacco juice.) But, pew-trified tar’pin ’n snappin’ torkle—why, them’s wallerble. Onct I got a bone full o’ pew-trified marrer; looks like glass; guess I’ll send it to a mew-see-um.” (Waugh! Tobacco juice.)
The slopes of the hills seemed to be covered with Indian boys, ponies, and dogs. The small boy and the big dog are two of the principal features of every Indian village or Indian cavalcade; to these must be added the bulbous-eyed pappoose, in its bead-covered cradle slung to the saddle of its mother’s pony, and wrapped so tightly in folds of cloth and buckskin that its optics stick out like door-knobs. The Indian boy is far ahead of his white contemporary in healthy vigor and manly beauty. Looking at the subject as a boy would, I don’t know of an existence with more happiness to the square inch than that of the young redskin from eight to twelve years old. With no one to reproach him because face or hands are unclean, to scowl because his scanty allowance of clothing has run to tatters, and no long-winded lessons in geography or the Constitution of the United States, his existence is one uninterrupted gleam of sunshine. The Indian youngster knows every bird’s nest for miles around, every good place for bathing, every nice pile of sand or earth to roll in. With a pony to ride—and he has a pony from the time he is four years old; and a bow—or, better luck still, a rifle—for shooting: he sees little in the schools of civilization to excite his envy. On ration days, when the doomed beeves are turned over to each band, what bliss to compare to that of charging after the frenzied steers and shooting them down on the dead run? When the winter sun shone brightly, these martial scions would sometimes forget their dignity long enough to dismount and engage in a game of shinny with their gayly-attired sisters, who rarely failed to bring out all the muscle that was in them.
It would be impossible to give more than the vaguest shadow of the occurrences of that period without filling a volume. Indian life was not only before us and on all sides of us, but we had also insensibly and unconsciously become part of it. Our eyes looked upon their pantomimic dances—our ears were regaled with their songs, or listened to the myths and traditions handed down from the old men. “Spotted Tail” said that he could not remember the time when the Sioux did not have horses, but he had often heard his father say that in his youth they still had dogs to haul their “travois,” as their kinsmen, the Assiniboines, to the north still do.
“Friday” said that when he was a very small child, the Arapahoes still employed big dogs to haul their property, and that old women and men marched in front laden with paunches filled with water, with which to sprinkle the parched tongues of the animals every couple of hundred yards.
“Fire Crow,” a Cheyenne, here interposed, and said that the Cheyennes claimed to have been the first Northern Indians to use horses, and thereupon related the following story: “A young Cheyenne maiden wandered away from home, and could not be found. Her friends followed her trail, going south until they came to the shore of a large lake into which the foot-prints led. While the Indians were bewailing the supposed sad fate of their lost relative, she suddenly returned, bringing with her a fine young stallion, the first the Cheyennes had ever seen. She told her friends that she was married to a white man living near by, and that she would go back to obtain a mare, which she did. From this pair sprung all the animals which the Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahoes now have.”