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

by Sir William Francis Butler

Making snowshoes.

By the time the snowshoes were finished the snow was deep enough on the river and the plains to fully test their capabilities. I determined to accustom myself early to the use of the shoes, so that I might be able to keep pace with my friends, whose power of snowshoe-walking had grown from infancy. With this object I was out every morning as soon as breakfast was over, tramping along the frozen and snow-covered expanse of the rivers, or forcing my way through the thicket-lined shores, and up the hills and slopes of the surrounding country. At first I found it no easy matter to tread my way over soft and deep snow, or through places where the brambles and weeds lay half-buried in the drifts and dazzling banks; but in a few days my step grew more firm, my stride became longer and more rapid, and after a week I was not ashamed to join Red Cloud for a hunt after game.

Thus we four denizens of this wild and lonely spot ranged over the land surrounding our solitary dwelling; and ere the new year had come there was not a pine-bluff or a thicket of aspens—there was not a bend on the rivers, or a glade among the hills, which was not known and explored. It was a strange, wild life, this winter roving over the great untamed wilderness of snow.

At times the days were bright and calm—the sun shone with dazzling lustre upon the unspotted surface of the earth. The branches of the trees glistened in the white rime of the morning, the dry powdery snow sounded hard as sand under the shoe.

Again the scene would change, and wild storms swept sky and earth; the bitter blast howled through the thickets, the pine-trees rocked and waved, and the short daylight closed into a night of wrack and tempest. Such days and nights would run their courses, and again the scene would change; the wild wind would sink away, the snow would cease to fall or to drift, a death-like stillness would ensue, and with a brilliancy of untold beauty the moon would be seen above the still and tapering pine-tops, and the white light of frosted silver, set with myriad sparkling gems, would overlay all the land.

The new year came; January drew to a close. Colder and colder the iron hand of winter seemed to grasp the forest and the ridge, the silent frozen rivers, and the lonely hills.

One day the Sioux set out with me to visit a large wood of pines and poplars, the tops of which could be discerned from a ridge lying a few miles away from the hut. It was a long tramp, and the dogs were taken to carry kettle, blankets, and food, in preparation for camping during the night in the wood in order to continue the hunt on the following day.

As the morning was fine, the sun shone brightly on the snow, and the dogs followed closely in the footsteps of the Sioux, as with rapid strides he passed over the white ridges and intervening gullies drifted deep in snow. I walked behind the sled that carried the supplies for the camp.

The day passed away, varied by nothing save exercise, broken only by the mid-day halt for food. It was the middle of the afternoon when we drew near the broad belt of wood which was to be our home for the night.