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

by Sir William Francis Butler

“There will be no danger to your horses,” said the Indian. “My young men are far away from the trail that leads to the settlement; but you want to get the horses they have taken, not to protect your own. Well, give me the rest of that bottle, and you may take with you the young man who to-day has come from the party. He will lead you where you will find them.”

The bargain was soon struck, and as the trader quitted the lodge the Wolverine was clutching in his bony fingers the fatal fire-water, which, more than war, hunger, or exposure, has destroyed the red man’s race over the wide continent of North America.

McDermott having obtained the chief’s consent to his taking the brave lately arrived from the war-party away with him, without which permission it would have been fatal to his future interests in trade to have moved him, lost no time in setting out on his road. He put together the greater portion of his goods, and leaving a half-breed servant to continue the exchange of those things that it was impossible for him to take away, he departed from the camp at midnight, and by daybreak was far away from the last trace of the Assineboines.

He had with him the Assineboine scout as guide, and two retainers, a French half-breed and a Salteaux Indian. The party rode rapidly; they had a large band of horses, and packs and saddles were frequently changed. By the evening of the first day they drew near the last mountain range of hills. The scout led the way. When night fell upon the plain they were on the edge of the hills; presently a small lake was reached. It was now dark, but the guide knew the track, and he pushed on into the hills.

A long ride further through rough and broken ground, on which they had carefully to pick their way, brought them suddenly face to face with a small fire burning in a glen between abrupt hills. Around the fire were seated several figures. It was the camp of the war-party. The braves sat late around their fires, but there was reason for their doing so. A scout had only lately returned with news of importance. The story he had to tell was to this effect. At sunset he had been looking from a hill over the prairie to the west; he had suddenly observed two horsemen riding from a point in the line of hills farther to the south, out into the plain. Judging from the lateness of the hour, that a camp must be in the neighbourhood of the place from whence those horsemen had gone, the scout had ridden cautiously forward towards that portion of the hills. He had soon discovered a fire, beside which a solitary white man sat. Concealing himself effectually from sight, he had watched and waited.

Soon there had come an Indian and another white man, bearing with them what seemed the dead body of another Indian. But this man was not dead; he shortly began to speak, to eat, to drink. He was a Cree, who told a story of having crawled a long way over the prairies from the south. The scout knew only a little of the Cree language, and he had been able only to follow roughly what the wounded man had said. As for the other men—the white men he had never seen before, but the red man was the Red Cloud, the famous wandering Sioux.

Now the principal item of this story that had interest for the Assineboines, who sat eager listeners around the fire, was that which had reference to the wounded Cree Indian: the Crees were enemies; the war-party had as yet taken no Cree scalps. How could they return to their camp with no trophy to show? The women and children would laugh at them; the old men would say, “Ah! it was different in our time; we did not come in from the war-trail without horses or scalps.” Here then was a great chance of supplying this most pressing want.

It was true that the Red Cloud was well known over all the northern prairies. It would be no easy matter to carry off the Cree from his protection; nor would it be safe to molest the white men who were with him, for the noise of harm done to white men travelled sometimes far over the prairies, and reached even the ears of the Great Mother who dwelt beyond the big sea in the land where the sun rose.

These things considered made it wiser to attempt the capture of the Cree while both the Indian and his white friends were absent from their camp. If this could be effected, then indeed the party might return in triumph to their friends and justly receive the rewards of bravery.