On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE COLUMN IN MOTION—RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF BUFFALOES—THE SIGNAL CRY OF THE SCOUTS—THE FIGHT ON THE ROSEBUD—HOW THE KILLED WERE BURIED—SCALP DANCE—BUTCHERING A CHEYENNE—LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER ARRIVES—SENDING BACK THE WOUNDED.

On the 16th of June, by five o’clock in the morning, our whole command had broken camp and was on its way westward; we crossed Tongue River, finding a swift stream, rather muddy from recent rains, with a current twenty-five yards wide, and four feet deep; the bottom of hard-pan, but the banks on one side muddy and slippery.

The valley, as we saw it from the bluffs amid which we marched, presented a most beautiful appearance—green with juicy grasses, and dark with the foliage of cottonwood and willow. Its sinuosities encircled many park-like areas of meadow, bounded on the land side by bluffs of drift. The Indians at first marched on the flank, but soon passed the column and took the lead, the “medicine men” in front; one of the head “medicine men” of the Crows kept up a piteous chant, reciting the cruelties of their enemies and stimulating the young men to deeds of martial valor. In every possible way these savages reminded me of the descriptions I had read of the Bedouins.

Our course turned gradually to the northwest, and led us across several of the tributaries of the Tongue, or “Deje-ajie” as the Crows called it, each of these of good dimensions, and carrying the unusual flow due to the rapid melting of snow in the higher elevations. The fine grass seen close to the Tongue disappeared, and the country was rather more barren, with many prairie-dog villages. The soil was made up of sandstones, with a great amount of both clay and lime, shales and lignite, the latter burnt out. Some of the sandstone had been filled with pyrites, which had decomposed and left it in a vesicular state. There were a great many scrub pines in the recesses of the bluffs. The cause for the sudden disappearance of the grass was soon apparent: the scouts ran in upon a herd of buffaloes whose cast-off bulls had been the principal factor in our meat supply for more than a week; the trails ran in every direction, and the grass had been nipped off more closely than if cut by a scythe. There was much more cactus than we had seen for some time, and a reappearance of the sage-brush common nearer to Fort Fetterman.

In the afternoon, messengers from our extreme advance came as fast as ponies would carry them, with the information that we were upon the trail of a very great village of the enemy. The cavalry dismounted and unsaddled, seeking the shelter of all the ravines to await the results of the examination to be made by a picked detail from the Crows and Shoshones. The remaining Indians joined in a wild, strange war-dance, the younger warriors becoming almost frenzied before the exercises terminated. The young men who had been sent out to spy the land rejoined us on a full run; from the tops of the hills they yelled like wolves, the conventional signal among the plains tribes that the enemy has been sighted. Excitement, among the Indians at least, was at fever heat; many of the younger members of the party re-echoed the ululation of the incoming scouts; many others spurred out to meet them and escort them in with becoming honors. The old chiefs held their bridles while they dismounted, and the less prominent warriors deferentially formed in a circle to listen to their narrative. It did not convey much information to my mind, unaccustomed to the indications so familiar to them. It simply amounted to this, that the buffaloes were in very large herds directly ahead of us, and were running away from a Sioux hunting party.

Knowing the unfaltering accuracy of an Indian’s judgment in matters of this kind, General Crook told the chiefs to arrange their plan of march according to their own ideas. On occasions like this, as I was told by our scouts and others, the young men of the Assiniboines and Northern Sioux were required to hold in each hand a piece of buffalo chip as a sign that they were telling the truth; nothing of that kind occurred on the occasion in question. While the above was going on, the Indians were charging about on their hardy little ponies, to put them out of breath, so that, when they regained their wind, they would not fail to sustain a whole day’s battle. A little herb is carried along, to be given to the ponies in such emergencies, but what virtues are attributed to this medicine I was unable to ascertain. Much solemnity is attached to the medicine arrows of the “medicine men,” who seem to possess the power of arbitrarily stopping a march at almost any moment. As I kept with them, I had opportunity to observe all that they did, except when every one was directed to keep well to the rear, as happened upon approaching a tree—juniper or cedar—in the fork of whose lower branches there was a buffalo head, before which the principal “medicine man” and his assistant halted and smoked from their long pipes.

Noon had passed, and the march was resumed to gain the Rosebud, one of the tributaries of the Yellowstone, marking the ultimate western limit of our campaign during the previous winter. We moved along over an elevated, undulating, grassy tableland. Without possessing any very marked beauty, there was a certain picturesqueness in the country which was really pleasing. Every few rods a petty rivulet coursed down the hill-sides to pay its tribute to the Tongue; there was no timber, except an occasional small cottonwood or willow, to be seen along the banks of these little water-courses, but wild roses by the thousand laid their delicate beauties at our feet; a species of phlox, daintily blue in tint, was there also in great profusion, while in the bushes multitudes of joyous-voiced singing-birds piped their welcome as the troops filed by. Yet this lovely country was abandoned to the domination of the thriftless savage, the buffalo, and the rattlesnake; we could see the last-named winding along through the tall grass, rattling defiance as they sneaked away. Buffalo spotted the landscape in every direction, in squads of ten and twelve and “bunches” of sixty and seventy. These were not old bulls banished from the society of their mates, to be attacked and devoured by coyotes, but fine fat cows with calves ambling close behind them. One young bull calf trotted down close to the column, his eyes beaming with curiosity and wonder. He was allowed to approach within a few feet, when our prosaic Crow guides took his life as the penalty of his temerity. Thirty buffaloes were killed that afternoon, and the choice pieces—hump, tenderloin, tongue, heart, and rib steaks—packed upon our horses. The flesh was roasted in the ashes, a pinch of salt sprinkled over it, and a very savory and juicy addition made to our scanty supplies. The Indians ate the buffalo liver raw, sometimes sprinkling a pinch of gall upon it; the warm raw liver alone is not bad for a hungry man, tasting very much like a raw oyster. The entrails are also much in favor with the aborigines; they are cleaned, wound round a ramrod, or something akin to it if a ramrod be not available, and held in the hot ashes until cooked through; they make a palatable dish; the buffalo has an intestine shaped like an apple, which is filled with chyle, and is the bonne bouche of the savages when prepared in the same manner as the other intestines, excepting that the contents are left untouched.

While riding alongside of one of our Crow scouts I noticed tears flowing down his cheeks, and very soon he started a wail or chant of the most lugubrious tone; I respected his grief until he had wept to his heart’s content, and then ventured to ask the cause of such deep distress; he answered that his uncle had been killed a number of years before by the Sioux, and he was crying for him now and wishing that he might come back to life to get some of the ponies of the Sioux and Cheyennes. Two minutes after having discharged the sad duty of wailing for his dead relative, the young Crow was as lively as any one else in the column.

We bivouacked on the extreme head-waters of the Rosebud, which was at that point a feeble rivulet of snow water, sweet and palatable enough when the muddy ooze was not stirred up from the bottom. Wood was found in plenty for the slight wants of the command, which made small fires for a few moments to boil coffee, while the animals, pretty well tired out by the day’s rough march of nearly forty miles, rolled and rolled again in the matted bunches of succulent pasturage growing at their feet. Our lines were formed in hollow square, animals inside, and each man sleeping with his saddle for a pillow and with arms by his side. Pickets were posted on the bluffs near camp, and, after making what collation we could, sleep was sought at the same moment the black clouds above us had begun to patter down rain. A party of scouts returned late at night, reporting having come across a small gulch in which was a still burning fire of a band of Sioux hunters, who in the precipitancy of their flight had left behind a blanket of India-rubber. We came near having a casualty in the accidental discharge of the revolver of Mr. John F. Finerty, the bullet burning the saddle and breaking it, but, fortunately, doing no damage to the rider. By daylight of the next day, June 17, 1876, we were marching down the Rosebud.