As we sat very disconsolate in the open veranda, five Indians stalked in, and the biggest and burliest of the party, a middle-aged man, with the long, straight Indian hair, high, harsh features, and face bald of eyebrows and beard, after offering his paw to Mrs. Dana and the rest of the party, sat down with a manner of natural dignity somewhat trenching upon the impertinent. Presently, diving his hand into his breast, the old rat pulled out a thick fold of leather, and, after much manipulation, disclosed a dirty brown, ragged-edged sheet of paper, certifying him to be “Little Thunder,” and signed by “General Harney.” This, then, was the chief who showed the white feather at Ash Hollow, and of whom some military poet sang:
“We didn’t make a blunder,
We rubbed out Little Thunder,
And we sent him to the other side of Jordan.”
Little Thunder did not look quite rubbed out; but for poesy fiction is, of course, an element far more appropriate than fact. I remember a similar effusion of the Anglo-Indian muse, which consigned “Akbar Khan the Yaghi” to the tune and fate of the King of the Cannibal Isles, with a contempt of actualities quite as refreshing. The Western Indians are as fond of these testimonials as the East Indians: they preserve them with care as guarantees of their good conduct, and sometimes, as may be expected, carry about certificates in the style of Bellerophons’ letters. Little Thunder was en route to Fort Laramie, where he intended to lay a complaint against the Indian agent, who embezzled, he said, half the rations and presents intended for his tribe. Even the whites owned that the “Maje’s” bear got more sugar than all the Indians put together.
Nothing can be worse, if the vox populi occidentalis be taken as the vox Dei, than the modern management of the Indian Bureau at Washington. In former times the agencies were in the hands of the military authorities, and the officer commanding the department was responsible for malversation of office. This was found to work well; the papers signed were signed on honor. But in the United States, the federal army, though well paid, is never allowed to keep any appointment that can safely be taken away from it. THE INDIAN DEPARTMENT.The Indian Department is now divided into six superintendencies, viz., Northern, Central, Southern, Utah, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon Territories, who report to the Indian Office or Bureau of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Washington, under the charge of the Department of the Interior. The bond varies from $50,000 to $75,000, and the salary from $2000 to $2500 per annum. The northern superintendency contains four agencies, the central fourteen, the southern five, the Utah three, New Mexico six, and the miscellaneous, including Washington, eight. The grand total of agents, including two specials for Indians in Texas, is forty-two. Their bond is between $5000 and $75,000, and the salary between $1000 and $1550. There are also various sub-agencies, with pay of $1000 each, and giving in bonds $2000. There ought to be no perquisites; an unscrupulous man, however, finds many opportunities of making free with the presents; and the reflection that his office tenure shall expire after the fourth year must make him but the more reckless. As fifty or sixty appointments = 50 or 60 votes, × 20 in President electioneering, fitness for the task often becomes quite a subordinate consideration; the result is, necessarily, peculation producing discontent among the Indians, and the finale, death to the whites. To become a good Indian agent, a man requires the variety of qualifications which would fit him for the guardianship of children, experience and ability, benevolence and philanthropy: it would be difficult to secure such phœnix for $200 per annum, and it is found easier not to look for it. The remedy of these evils is not far from the surface—the restoration of the office into the hands of the responsible military servant of the state, who would keep it quamdiu se benè gesserit, and become better capable of serving his masters, the American people, by the importance which the office would give him in the eyes of his protégés. This is the system of the French Bureau Arabe, which, with its faults, I love still. But the political mind would doubtless determine the cure to be worse than the disease. After venting his grievances, Little Thunder arose, and, accompanied by his braves, remounted and rode off toward the east.
While delayed by the mules and their masters, we may amuse ourselves and divert our thoughts from the battle, and, perhaps, murder and sudden death, which may happen this evening, by studying the geography of the Black Hills. The range forms nearly a right angle, the larger limb—ninety miles—running east to west with a little southing along the Platte, the shorter leg—sixty miles—trending from north to south with a few degrees of easting and westing. Forming the easternmost part of the great trans-Mississippian mountain region, in the 44th parallel and between the 103d and 105th meridians, these masses cover an area of 6000 square miles. They are supposed to have received their last violent upheaval at the close of the cretaceous period; their bases are elevated from 2500 to 3500 feet—the highest peaks attaining 6700 feet—above river level, while their eastern is from 2000 to 3000 feet below the western foundation. Their materials, as determined by Lieutenant Warren’s exploration, are successively metamorphosed azoic rock, including granite, lower Silurian (Potsdam sandstone), Devonian (?), carboniferous, Permian, Jurassic, and cretaceous. Like Ida, they are abundant in springs and flowing streams, which shed mainly to the northeast and the southeast, supplying the Indians with trout and salmon trout, catfish (Prinelodus), and pickerel. They abound in small rich valleys, well grown with grass, and wild fruits, choke-cherries (P. Virginiana), currants, sand-buttes fruit (C. pumila?), and buffalo berries (Shepherdia argentea, or grains de bœuf). When irrigated, the bottoms are capable of high cultivation. They excel in fine timber for fuel and lumber, covering an area of 1500 square miles; in carboniferous rock of the true coal measures; and in other good building material. As in most of the hill ranges which are offsets from the Rocky Mountains, they contain gold in valuable quantities, and doubtless a minute examination will lead to the discovery of many other useful minerals. The Black Hills are appropriately named: a cloak of gloomy forest, pine and juniper, apparently springing from a rock denuded of less hardy vegetation, seems to invest them from head to foot. The Laramie Hills are sub-ranges of the higher ridge, and the well-known peak, the Pharos of the prairie mariner, rises about 1° due west of Fort Laramie to the height of 6500 feet above sea level. Beyond the meridian of Laramie the country totally changes. The broad prairie lands, unencumbered by timber, and covered with a rich pasturage, which highly adapts them for grazing, are now left behind. We are about to enter a dry, sandy, and sterile waste of sage, and presently of salt, where rare spots are fitted for rearing stock, and this formation will continue till we reach the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
At length, the mules coming about 10 45 A.M., we hitched up, and, nothing loth, bade adieu to Horseshoe Creek and the “ladies.” The driver sentimentally informed us that we were to see no more specimens of ladyhood for many days—gladdest tidings to one of the party, at least. The road, which ran out of sight of the river, was broken and jagged; a little labor would have made it tolerable, but what could the good pastor of Oberlin do with a folk whose only thought in life is dram-drinking, tobacco-chewing, trading, and swapping?[80] The country was cut with creeks and arroyos, which separated the several bulges of ground, and the earth’s surface was of a dull brick-dust red, thinly scrubbed over with coarse grass, ragged sage, and shrublets fit only for the fire. After a desolate drive, we sighted below us the creekLA BONTÉ. La Bonté—so called from a French voyageur—green and bisected by a clear mountain stream whose banks were thick with self-planted trees. In the labyrinth of paths we chose the wrong one: presently we came to a sheer descent of four or five feet, and after deliberation as to whether the vehicle would “take it” or not, we came to the conclusion that we had better turn the restive mules to the right-about. Then, cheered by the sight of our consort, the other wagon, which stood temptingly shaded by the grove of cotton-wood, willows, box elder (Negundo aceroides), and wild cherry, at the distance of about half a mile, we sought manfully the right track, and the way in which the driver charged the minor obstacles was “a caution to mules.” We ought to have arrived at 2 45 P.M.; we were about an hour later. The station had yet to be built; the whole road was in a transition state at the time of our travel; there was, however, a new corral for “forting” against Indians, and a kind of leafy arbor, which the officials had converted into a “cottage near a wood.”
[80] The civilized Anglo-Americans are far more severe upon their half-barbarous brethren than any stranger; to witness, the following:
A Hoosier (native of Indiana) was called upon the stand, away out West, to testify to the character of a brother Hoosier. It was as follows: