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

by Sir William Francis Butler

“I stood second in the line. The foremost brave sprang aside to enable me to fire, and also to get clear of our line himself. I levelled my gun and fired full upon the huge beast; one or two other shots sounded about me, but I saw through the smoke that the bear had not been killed by them—he was advancing right upon me. I stepped back on one side, with the intention of running until I could again load my gun, but at that instant the upraised root of a tree caught my foot, and I fell full upon the ground almost at the feet of the advancing animal, now doubly maddened by the wounds he had received. I had only time to draw my knife from my belt when he was full upon me. I struck blindly at him, but it was no use, his claws and his teeth were fastened in my flesh; I was bruised, wounded and torn ere I could repeat the blow with my knife. Then I heard two or three shots above my head, a heavy crushing weight fell upon me, and I knew no more.

“When next I knew what was passing around me everything was changed. I was a helpless cripple; my leg and my arm had both been broken; I was torn all over my body. My companions had carried me back to camp, but what could they do with me? They were all braves whose work is war and the chase; our women and old men lay far away, six long days’ riding, ten easy days’ travel. Besides we were on the war-path. At any moment the Blackfeet might appear. I would be worse than useless to my friends, I would be a burden to them. I read their thoughts in their faces, and my mind was made up.

“‘Dry plenty of buffalo meat,’ I said to them; ‘put it where my hand can reach it; lay me by the edge of the stream of water; then go away and leave me to die here. Destroy the trail as you go away, so that no one will ever find the spot, and my scalp will not hang in the lodge of a Blackfoot.’

“They did as I told them; they put beside me a pile of dry buffalo meat; they loaded my gun and left it at my right hand, so that I could defend myself against a wild beast while my life lasted; and they laid my blanket by the edge of a stream of water, so that I could get drink without moving; then one by one they wished me good-bye, and I saw them depart for ever.

“It was the middle of the day when they thus left me. When they were all gone and I could no more hear the sound of man or horse, I felt very lonely, and wished to die. I saw the daylight growing dim and the night coming down through the trees. Then I felt hungry, and taking some meat from the pile beside me, I ate it, drank some water, and slept.

“When I awoke next morning I felt better. My leg and arm were both useless, but my flesh-wounds were beginning to heal, and I did not seem so weak as I had been. That day passed, and another, and another. I began to get accustomed to the solitude, and to watch everything around me. Two whiskey jacks came and sat looking at me on a branch close to my head. I threw small bits of meat to them, and at last they came so close that they took the food from my hand and hopped over my body. I was glad to have them, they were company to me during the long daylight hours. About ten days passed, and I was still alive—alive, and gaining strength day by day. What was to be done? I looked at my store of meat, and saw that it could not last more than ten days; after that time I would starve to death. I began to think very anxiously on what I could do to save myself from this death. To stay where I was, meant to die a lingering death after ten days. I thought I would try to move and practise myself in moving even on my hands and knees. Each day I crept more and more about the thicket in which I had been. I crept to the edge of it and looked out over the plains. They lay around me to the north and west far as my eye could reach. They never seemed so large to me before. I saw buffalo feeding a long way off towards the north; that was the way we had come. My camp lay away in that direction—but so far. I thought over the direction in my mind; I remembered all the streams we had crossed, the places where we had camped, the hills and the valleys we had passed: it seemed as long as a dream at night.

“For four days I kept moving to and fro, crawling on hands and knees about the thicket. I began to go farther and farther away from it, and each day I found I could move faster. I had the use of one leg and one arm quite strong; the other arm was sound to the elbow, but the hand was helpless; my left leg had been broken below the knee. I felt much pain when I moved, but that did not matter; anything was better than lying in the trees waiting for death. On the sixth day after this I put together all that remained of my dry meat store, and with nothing but my knife in my belt (I never could have carried my gun), I crawled forth from the camp in which I had lain during so many days. I held my slow way towards the north almost along the same line we had travelled but a month earlier, when we swept so swiftly along over the prairie.

“For many hours I plodded on. It seemed as though I could never get out of sight of the thicket; often I looked back, and there it was still close to me; at last the night hid it from sight, and I stretched my aching limbs upon the ground.

“All next day I went on. About noon I came to a stream, drank deeply, and washed my wounds in the cool water; again I crawled on towards the north, and slept again in the middle of the plain.

“By the fifth day I had finished the last scrap of my meat. I now looked about anxiously for the bodies of buffalo that had been killed. On our journey down we had killed many buffaloes, and I was now passing over ground where we had hunted twenty days before; but it is one thing to look for buffalo on horseback, and another thing to seek for it lying level upon the ground. I could not see far before or around me; sometimes I crawled to the top of a hillock for a wider survey of the plain. The night came, I lay down without food or water. Next morning I began to move as soon as it was light enough to see. I made for a small hill that stood a little to one side of my line; from its top I saw, a long distance away from my course, a small black speck. I knew it to be a dead buffalo. I made for it, but it was noon when I had reached it. I ate a little, then cut with my knife as much as I could carry, and set out to find water, for I was very thirsty. I held on in the direction of a valley I had noticed from the top of a hill. It was sunset when I got to it, and to my great joy I found water; then I ate a great deal of my meat and drank plentifully of the water, and lay down to sleep, happy.