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

by Sir William Francis Butler

Camp was pitched at sunset in the bottom of a deep coulee. A night of intense cold followed the storm; but within the leather lodge the fire soon gave light and warmth; and as soon as supper was over we lay down on each side of the embers, wrapped in our robes.

Thus we journeyed on for some days, until, on the afternoon of the fourth from quitting Les Trois Arbres, we drew near the Lake of the Wind.

The weather had again become fine, and, for the season, mild. The snow had partly vanished, and the sun shone with a gentle lustre, that made bright and golden the yellow grasses of the great waste.

For several hours before the lake was reached, the trees that grew near its shores had become visible. I had noticed that these clumps had risen out of the blank horizon straight in front of us, showing how accurate had been the steering of the Sioux across a waste that had presented to the eye of the ordinary beholder apparently not one landmark for guidance.

I asked the Indian by what marks he had directed his course.

“I could not tell you,” replied the Sioux. “It is an instinct born in us; it comes as easy to us as it does to the birds, or to the buffalo. Look up,” he went on; “see that long line of ‘wavies’ sailing to the south. Night and day they keep that line; a week ago they were at the North Sea; in a few days they will be where winter never comes. Before man gave up this free life of the open air, while yet the forest and the plain were his homes, he knew all these things better even than did the birds or the beasts; he knew when the storm was coming; the day and the night were alike to him when he travelled his path through the forest; his course across the lake was clear to him: but when he grew to be what you call civilized then he lost the knowledge of the sky, and of the earth; he became helpless. It is so with the red men; year by year, we lose something of the craft and knowledge of wood, plain, and river. One hundred years ago, our young men hunted the buffalo and the wapiti with the weapons they had themselves made; now it is the gun or the rifle of the white man that is used by them. Without these things, which they buy from the traders, they would die, because they have mostly forgotten the old methods of the chase. Before the horse came to us from the Spaniard, we hunted the buffalo on foot, and our young men could chase the herds from sunrise until dusk of evening; before the gun came to us from the French we killed even the grizzly bears with our arrows, and straight and true they flew from the bow drawn on horseback or on foot.”

As thus the Sioux showed how deeply he had studied the past history of his race, the scattered woods that fringed the lake took better defined form, and soon the sheen of water became visible through openings in the belts of forest.

As we drew still nearer, the whole outline of the lake was to be seen. It lay between deeply indented shores at its northern, or nearer end, but farther off to the south it stretched out into a broader expanse of water. The evening was perfectly calm, the branches of the trees did not move, but the water, still unfrozen in the centre of the lake, was agitated with many waves, and a restless surge broke upon the edges of ice with a noise which was plainly audible on the shore. It was a singular scene, this restless lake lying amid this vast rigid waste. The Sioux bent his way into one of the long promontories, and soon a spot was selected amid a thick screen of aspens and maple, where the tent was pitched in shelter, and all made comfortable against the now approaching night.

Next day broke fresh and fair; the air was keen and cold, but the dry fuel, now obtainable in plenty, had kept the lodge warm; and soon after sunrise the sun came out, glistening upon the white branches of the leafless trees, and the hoar-frosted grass, and shallow snow of the plain, and making all things look bright and cheerful. We were soon in the saddle. The Sioux led the advance, and swinging round by the southern end of the lake we gained some high and broken ground. The Sioux had ridden on some distance in advance, and I was about to quicken my pace in order to overtake him, when suddenly I caught sight of a dark object appearing above a depression in a ridge some way to my right; the ridge itself concealed lower ground beyond it, and the object, which for a second had caught my eye was the back of some animal that was standing partially hidden within this lower space.

I was glad to have thus caught first sight of game, before even the quick eye of the Sioux had lighted upon it. Keeping low upon my horse, I galloped forward, and told my companion what I had seen. He immediately reconnoitred the hollow, and came back to say that it held three animals, two buffalo cows and one calf! As I had first discovered the game, I was to have first shot. We both dismounted, and crept cautiously up to the edge of the ridge and looked over. From this edge to where the animals stood was about one hundred and fifty yards. I laid my rifle over the ridge top, took a steady aim, and fired at the cow that stood nearest to me. Then [we both sprang to our feet, and ran with all speed down the hill towards the animals]. The cow I had fired at moved off with difficulty, the others bounded away up the opposite ridge. It was now the Sioux’ turn. Stopping short in his long stride he fired quickly, and ran on again. The buffalo at which he fired had gained the summit of the distant ridge, and was for a moment clearly shown on the white hill-top and against the blue sky beyond it. I was so intent upon watching my own animal that I had no time to take note of whether his shot had struck; but, reloading as I ran, I soon reached the bottom of the little valley. My buffalo was still moving quietly up the incline, evidently sorely wounded. Another shot from my rifle ere the beast had reached the top of the ridge brought her to the ground, no more to rise. We breasted quickly up the incline until the top was gained, and there, just beyond the summit, lay the Sioux’ buffalo, quite dead in the snow. What a scene it was as we stood on this prairie ridge! Away on all sides spread the white and yellow prairie, the longer grasses still showing golden in the sunlight above the sparkling layer of snow; there was not a cloud in the vast blue vault that hung over this glistening immensity; the Lake of the Wind lay below us, its line of shore-wood showing partially dark against its snow, and its centre of open water lying blue as the sky above it, set in a frame of snow-crusted ice. Close at hand, on either side of the ridge where we stood, lay the dark bodies of our buffalo, stretched upon the shallow snow.