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

by Sir William Francis Butler

Donogh and I had in fact been enjoying the utmost bliss of perfect freedom—that only true freedom in life, the freedom of fording streams, crossing prairies, galloping over breezy hill-tops, watching wild herds in their daily habits of distance, seeing them trail along slowly into golden sunsets, or file in long procession to some prairie stream for the evening drink; or better still, marking some stray wolf into a valley where he thought himself unseen, and dashing down upon him with wild hulloo ready for the charge, while the silent echoes wake to the clash of hoof and ring of cheer. All these things, and many more, had filled the hours of our life in the past month to such a degree, that our spirits seemed to have widened out to grasp the sense of a freedom as boundless as the wilderness itself.

It was on the third day following the conversation above recorded, that we came in sight of a low dark ridge, showing itself faintly above the northern horizon.

Flowing in many serpentine bends, a small creek wound through the prairie at our left hand, cotton-wood clusters fringed the “points” of this stream, and long grass grew luxuriantly between the deep bends, which sometimes formed almost a figure eight in the roundness of their curves. Our party moved in a straight line, which almost touched the outer points of these deep curves, and from the higher ground along which we marched, the eye could at times catch the glint of water amid the ends of grasses, and mark the wild ducks sailing thickly on the rushy pools. I had used my gun frequently during the morning, and when the mid-day hour had come we had a plentiful supply of wild ducks hanging to our saddles.

In this life in the wilderness I had early learned the lesson of killing only what was needed to supply the wants of the party. When wild ducks were so plentiful, it would of course have been easy to shoot any quantity of them; but that habit of civilized sport which seeks only the “bag” had long since ceased to influence me, and I had come to regard the wild creatures of the prairie, birds and beasts, as far more worthy of study in life than in death. That terrible misnomer “good sport” had for me a truer significance. It meant watching the game by little and little, and killing only what was actually required for the use of our fellow travellers and myself. During the mid-day halt on this day Red Cloud held a long conversation with the other Indians upon the place they were now tending to. The Assineboine had never visited the spot, the Cree had been there on a war-party two summers ago; but it was now, he thought, so late in the season that there would be little danger of meeting any roving bands of Blackfeet, and the Crees he knew to be far away towards the eastern prairies.

It would have been difficult to have imagined a more perfect scene of a mid-day camp than that in which our little party found itself on this bright autumnal day. The camp fire was made at the base of a round knoll, which ran from the higher plateau of the prairie into one of the deep bends of the creek; upon three sides a thick fringe of cotton-wood lined the edges of the stream; the golden leaves of poplars and the bronzed foliage of the bastard maple hung still and bright in the quiet September day. Immediately around the camp grew small bushes of wild plum, covered thickly with crimson and yellow fruits of delicious flavour.

Ah, what a desert that was! When the wild ducks and the flour gelettes had been eaten, a single shake of the bush brought down showers of wild sweet fruit, and when we had eaten all we could, bags were filled for future use.

But even such prairie repasts must come to an end, and it was soon time to saddle and be off. So the horses were driven in, and resuming our course, the evening found us on the banks of the Red Deer river, not far from its point of junction with the Medicine. We camped that night upon the banks of the stream, and early next day reached the point of junction. A ford was soon found, and to the Sioux’ great joy no trace of fire was to be seen in the meadows between the rivers, or on the range of hills that lay to the north and east; all was still and peaceful as he had last seen it. The pine bluff yet stood dark and solemn at the point where the rivers met, and the meadows, as our party rode through them, were knee-deep in grasses and long trailing plants.

And now began in earnest a period of hard work. First the small lodge of dressed skins was pitched upon a knoll amid the pine-trees; then the saddles and stores were all made safe, upon a rough stage supported upon poles driven fast into the ground. Next began the clearing of trees and brushwood on the site selected for the hut. It was a spot close to the point formed by the meeting of the two rivers, but raised about twenty feet above the water, and partly hidden by trees and bushes. Tall pines grew on the site, but the axe of the Sioux and the scout soon brought down these giants, and made clear the space around where the hut was to stand.

It was wonderful to watch the ready manner in which the Indians worked their hatchets; never a blow missed its mark, each falling with unerring aim upon the spot where the preceding one had struck; then a lower-struck cut would cause the huge splinters to fly from the trunk, until, in a few moments the tree crashed to the earth in the exact line the Indians wished it to fall.