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

by Sir William Francis Butler

“You’d have the fishing and shooting, Donogh,” I would reply. “You’d have the hares and the salmon all to yourself when I was gone.”

“What good would they be to me, ave you wasn’t here with them?” he’d answer. “Sure the duck in November above in Cluen, and the salmon in ’Coose in April, and the grouse here on Seefin in August, would only remimber me of the ould days when we hunted thim together.”

I used at such times to promise him that whenever I did set out on my travels I would take him with me; and indeed, in all my plans for the future his companionship was always reckoned upon.

At the upper end of the glen, a narrow pass, or gap between two mountains, led out upon a wild and lonely lake, around the sides of which the mountains rose in a gloomy precipice of rock for many hundreds of feet.

Cooma-sa-harn, the name of the tarn that lay thus encompassed by cliffs, was a place that in my earliest wanderings filled me with feelings of awe and wonder. Strange echoes haunted it. Stones loosened from the impending cliffs rolled down into the lake with reverberating thunder, and their sullen splash into the dark water was heard repeated for many seconds around the encircling walls. On one side only was the margin of the lake approachable on level ground. Here loose stones and shingle, strewn together, formed a little beach, upon which the sullen waters broke in mimic waves; and here, too, the outflow of the lake escaped to descend the mountain side, and finally add its tribute to the many feeders of the Carragh river.

I was about twelve years of age when I first extended my wanderings to this lonely spot. Later on, Donogh and I made frequent expeditions to it. Its waters held no fish, and its shores rose too steep and high for game. But for all these deficiencies, Cooma-sa-harn held one wonder that sufficed to atone for every other shortcoming, and to make it a place of unceasing interest to us. It had an eagle’s nest. There, 600 feet over the lake, in a smooth piece of solid rock, was a shelf or crevice, and in that hollow a golden eagle had built his nest year after year. From the little beach already mentioned we could see the birds at their work. From the top of the encircling cliffs we could look down and across at them too; but the distance in either case was great, and do what we would to obtain a closer view, we were always baffled by the precipitous nature of the mountain. We tried the mountain immediately above the nest, but could see nothing whatever of the smooth rock. We worked our way along the edge of the water, by the foot of the precipice, but were again baffled in the attempt. Projecting rocks hid the whole side of the cliff. We were fairly puzzled.

Many an hour we spent looking up from the shore at the coveted shelf, which it seemed we were never likely to learn more about. The eagles seemed to know our thoughts, for they frequently soared and screamed high above our heads, as though they rejoiced in our discomfiture. It was not alone in the spring and summer that we were reminded of our enemies thus perched on their inaccessible fortress. In the last hour of daylight of winter evenings a solitary speck over the valley would often be seen sailing downwards through space. It was the golden eagle going home to his ledge at Cooma-sa-harn.

It would be idle to deny that we both felt keenly our inability to get to this eagle’s nest. During four years we had looked across the dark waters, had watched the old birds flying in and out, had seen the young ones sitting on the ledge, and had listened to their screams as their mother came down to them with a prey from the surrounding hills. There was in our cottage an old telescope that had belonged to my father in his early days. This I brought out one day, and looking through it, with elbows resting upon knees, and glass directed upon the shelf of rock, I could discern plainly enough the inmates of the rough nest; but all this only made more tantalizing our helplessness to scale the rock, or to descend from above to the projecting ledge. The day on which I brought out the telescope to make a closer survey of the spot, was bright with sunshine. As the hours grew later the sun moving towards the west, cast its light full upon the face of the nest, which had before been in shadow. The inequalities of the surface, and the formation of the cliffs around the large flat rock, became much more apparent than they had ever been before to me. Among other things, I observed that the ledge in which the nest was made was continued in a shallowed state along the face of the cliff until it touched the end at one side. I noticed also that on the top of the smooth-faced rock there was a ridge, or kind of natural parapet, and that this ridge was connected with a deep perpendicular cleft, or chimney, which opened at top upon the accessible part of the mountain. Scanning with the utmost attentiveness all these places, I began to see what I thought might prove a practicable line of approach to the much-desired nest. That it was possible to reach the top of the smooth-faced rock by means of the chimney shaft appeared tolerably clear, but this top ridge or parapet already mentioned, was fully forty feet above the ledge on which the nest stood.