Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux: A Story of the Great Prairie

by Sir William Francis Butler

So saying he unsaddled his horse, and throwing saddle, bridle, and blanket on the ground, sat down by the fire and began to smoke. When supper was ready I gave him a share of our meal, and he camped with us that night.

We were astir very early on the next morning. In order to travel with greater speed the Indian divided our baggage into three portions, which he placed equally on the three horses, adjusting the loads in front and behind the saddles. This enabled Donogh to ride; and although it put a heavy load on all the horses, it would only be for one day. What plan the Indian had formed I had at this time no idea of, but I already looked upon him in the light of a true benefactor, and I was prepared to follow implicitly his guidance. The sun had just risen when we quitted our camping-place and took the old trail to the west; but an hour or so after starting, the Indian, who led the way, quitted the trail and bent his course across the plain in a south-westerly direction. During some hours he held his way in this direction; there was no trail, but every hill and hollow seemed to be familiar to our guide, and he kept his course in a line which might have appeared to me to be accidental, had I not observed that when we struck streams and water-courses the banks afforded easy means of crossing. About mid-day we quitted the open prairie, and entered upon a country broken into clumps of wood and small copses of aspen; many lakelets were visible amid the thickets; and the prairie grouse frequently rose from the grass before our horses’ feet, and went whirring away amid the green and golden thickets of cotton-wood and poplars.

It was drawing towards evening when our little party emerged upon the edge of a deep depression which suddenly opened before us. The bottom of this deep valley was some two or three miles wide; it was filled with patches of bright green meadow, and dotted with groups of trees placed as though they had been planted by the hand of man. Amidst the meadows and the trees ran a many-curved stream of clear silvery water, now glancing over pebble-lined shallows, now flowing still and soft in glassy unrippled lengths.

Drawing rein at the edge of this beautiful valley, the Indian pointed his hand down towards a small meadow lying at the farther side of the river. “There is the Souri river,” he said, “and those specks in the meadow at the far side are my horses. Our halting-place is in the wood where you see the pine-tops rise above the cotton-trees.” So saying he led the way down the ridge. We soon became lost in the maze of thickets in the lower valley; but half an hour’s ride brought us to the meadows bordering upon the river, and soon we gained the Souri itself. The Indian led the way into the stream, and heading for a shelving bank on the other side ascended the opposite shore. On the very edge of the stream at the farther side stood the grove of pines which we had seen from the upper level half an hour before.

Into this grove we rode, pushing through some poplar brushwood that fringed its outer edges. Once inside this brushwood, the ground beneath the pine-trees was clear. Almost in the centre of the “bluff” an Indian lodge was pitched. It stood quite hidden from view until we were close upon it. I soon saw that the pine bluff occupied a “point” on the river; that is to say, the stream formed almost a complete curve around it, encircling the bluff upon three sides. From the doorway of the lodge a view could be obtained of the ground within and beyond the narrow neck formed by the river’s bend as they approached each other.

Immediately on arrival the Indian had dismounted.

“Here,” he said, “is my home for the present, and whenever I wander into these regions. To-night we will rest here, and to-morrow continue our way towards the west. This morning you gave me food from your small store; to-night you will eat with me.”

So saying he set about his preparations for evening.

From a branch overhead he let down a bag of dry meat and flour; from a pile of wood close by he got fuel for a fire in the centre of the lodge; from a cache in the hollow trunk of one of the trees he took a kettle and other articles of camp use; and before many minutes had passed our evening meal was ready in the lodge, while the horses were adrift in the meadow beyond the “neck,” with the others already grazing there.