INDIANS WITH TRAVOIS.
With the poles, that were about fifteen feet long, they would make their travois by placing a number of poles on each side of a pony and tying one end of them to the girth of the saddle from which a strap reached across the breast of the animal. Then two cross-sticks, about four feet apart, were tied to each bunch of poles and close to the horse, and on these sticks a buffalo rawhide was stretched in a basket-like manner on which a stack of robes, pelts and furs was lashed. Each family had one or more of these simple conveyances, arranged as the one to the left in the illustration. In these they would carry their small trinkets, young pappooses, and the old people that were too old to ride a pony. In this way they would move from camp to camp with perfect ease and without delay, following the great herds of buffalo. When they needed meat the chief would give orders to make “a round.” Under the direction of the war chief several hundred would turn out, some on horses, others on foot, and would quietly surround a herd of the buffaloes, and, closing up the circle, the buffaloes would run round and round in a circle, and as the outside ones would go by the Indians killed them with their arrows. The buffalo, the same as sheep, would follow the leaders, and, after getting them started in one direction, they would all follow that way. I know a place near where I used to live on Sun river where the Indians a long time ago used to surround the buffalo and run them over a precipice, and at a point where there was but room for one at a time to go in safety. The Indians would get a few to start, then close up on the big herd and rush them over the cliffs pell-mell; hundreds would be killed and many crippled, and those they would kill with the bows and arrows. They called this manner of hunting “a run.”
There are now on this spot great quantities of decayed bones, and hundreds of flint arrow points have been picked up by settlers. Professor Mortson, of this city, has in his cabinet now several hundreds of these points which he found. There is another place of this kind near St. Peter’s Mission, where these runs were made.
Now the buffaloes are extinct. Where they used to roam, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle now graze. And the Indians’ mode of living, since they are on their reservation, is entirely different. “Now” they live in houses, and the old Indian tepees made of skins cannot be found.
Until but a few years ago, the “Old Town at the head of navigation” was a great Indian trading post; her stores and warehouses were filled with Indian goods and their trade was exclusively with Indians. Today Fort Benton is a modern city with brick blocks, has a fine courthouse, public schools and churches, and many attractive homes. She has a railway depot, water works and many other modern improvements.
At the entrance of one of the main avenues of the city a steel drawbridge spans the Missouri river. And now her business houses carry the same kind and as fine goods as Eastern firms; her warehouses are filled with miners’ tools, machinery, and all kinds of agricultural implements for the trade of hundreds of thrifty farmers, who are cultivating the land which was but a short time ago the red man’s hunting ground.
Robert Vaughn.
July 11, 1898.
