Fort Randall was the extreme frontier post occupied by troops. The fort was located on a beautiful site on the left bank. The boat landing and remaining here awaited the preparations of an officer, Captain Wessells, and a squad of soldiers to accompany the Indian agents as a guard.
The officers’ quarters and barracks occupied two sides of a quadrangle of about ten acres, forming a level parade ground of prairie sod, in the center of which stood a flag-staff and bandstand. In the afternoon a fine regimental band regaled us with delightful music that seemed to be enjoyed even by the Indians loafing around the fort. The officers were exceeding courteous, showing us everything of interest to be seen about the post, and when Captain Wessells and his squad of men, twenty soldiers, were ready to come on board on our departure, we were heartily and boisterously cheered by a multitude of officers and soldiers assembled on the river bank. A lieutenant who had perhaps imbibed too freely at the bar shouted at the top of his voice, throwing his hat into the river as the boat floated away.
Our next prominent landing was Fort Pierre, the main trading post of the great Sioux nation. Here we found them assembled in force, the entire tribe being present except one band, that of “Big Head,” awaiting the arrival of Colonel Redfield, their agent. The river bottom above the fort was dotted with their lodges as far as we could see from the hurricane deck of the boat. The cabin would not accommodate even the chiefs of this vast assemblage, so the council was held in the open plain a short distance from the landing. The chiefs were splendid-looking fellows when they got together, hardly one among them less than six feet high. The Sioux then mustered a larger number of stalwart, fine-looking, bronze-colored men than could be assembled elsewhere on the continent. They were then subdivided into eight bands, all present on that occasion except the band of “Big Head,” the most unfriendly and hostile of the Sioux. The previous year when Colonel Vaughn was their agent, Big Head got mad at him, and while he was speaking, jerked the spectacles off his nose, declaring that he allowed no man “to look at him with two pair of eyes.”
The council with the Sioux continued the greater part of the day with a great flow of Indian eloquence. A large quantity of goods was brought from the boats and piled in heaps—enough, it seemed, to stock a large wholesale house, but, in accepting the goods, the Indians did not seem to show any pleasure, much less gratitude; on the contrary, they looked about with their usual indifference as if they felt they were being put under obligations not easily discharged. But in truth little of their talk was understood by me, and less of their actions.
The fur trade at Fort Pierre was more extensive than at any other point on the river, and both the trading companies had many employees residing there, and kept large stocks of goods. Here I made the acquaintance of two young gentlemen, natives of St. Louis, members of the forty or four hundred porcelain of that town, now, however, on duty at the fort directing the Indian trade, and each supporting two squaws, the mothers of several children. They seemed in fine health and spirits, and enjoying life in spite of isolation from refined society.
As the boat was leaving Fort Pierre, we gained a passenger that would be a conspicuous person in any crowd from his unusual good looks. Soon after coming on board he joined in the poker game, being well known to all the upper river men. A man of twenty-five years, tall, well built and remarkably handsome, a quarter-blood Sioux, his mother being a half-blood, his father a Frenchman long a resident of the Indian country, and who had given this son all the advantages of a good education at some eastern college. He was affable, agreeable and gentlemanly in his conduct, and I shall never forget the man although I do not recall his name. He remained with us only a few days, stopping off at a trading post some distance above Fort Pierre.
At Fort Pierre we had another addition to our passengers in the person of Colonel Vaughn’s Indian wife and children. The colonel, being a widower when appointed by President Pierce agent for the Sioux, married (according to the custom of the Indians) a member of that tribe, and in the early spring she had accompanied the colonel from the Blackfoot Agency, down the river on a keel-boat, to Fort Pierre, where she had remained with some relatives awaiting the colonel’s return. Being thus identified, Colonel Vaughn’s influence and popularity with the Indians was greatly increased, and in fact so thoroughly established that he remained at the agency on Sun River, Montana, surrounded by Indians, without a guard and with perfect safety.
A day or two after leaving Fort Pierre the boat was signalled by Big Head and his band who came approaching the river from the northeast, across a vast bottom prairie, and who were conspicuous on account of their absence at the council at Fort Pierre, and this fact was construed by the agent and others connected with the Indians as an indication of his continued unfriendliness or possible open hostility. The boat was steaming along against a strong current, but near the shore, when this band was seen approaching, giving signals for the boat to land, which the agent immediately ordered. While the landing was being made, the band, several hundred in number, had approached within two hundred yards of the river bank, when they formed an irregular line and halting, fired towards us a number of guns, the bullets from which went whistling through the air above us. For a while it was thought they had attacked us, but in a few moments it was discovered that this demonstration of fire arms was intended as a salute for the agent. The boat having landed, Big Head and his sub-chiefs and warriors came on board, assembled in the cabin, where a council was duly organized. Big Head made a great speech, in which he gave some excuse for not attending the general council at Fort Pierre, claiming to be altogether peaceful and friendly, and anxious to accept the annuities from the great father at Washington. Big Head was a heavy built ugly Indian unlike most of his tribe, who were generally tall, well proportioned, fine-looking fellows.
Singularly enough, no buffalo were seen by us while ascending the river in 1858. Several years later, in 1865, going up the river to the mines in Montana, we saw great herds of them along the river for more than a thousand miles, and killed as many as were needful to supply the boats with meat. They were frequently found crossing the river in such numbers as to prevent navigation of the boat. Occasionally we would approach them massed under a bluff-bank, after swimming the river, too steep to allow exit from the water, and here they would stand or swim around in the water (accumulated here from the opposite side of the river) exhausted and apparently bewildered.
Under these circumstances, if we were in need of meat, the captain would land the boat below them, the yawl-boat would be lowered, manned with oarsmen, and a man provided with a rope and butcher-knife, and rowed up to the heads of the animals as they swam around. The rope would be tied around the horns, the buffalo killed with the butcher-knife, the carcass floated down to the boat, when the hoisting tackle would be attached to it and lifted aboard, where it was handily skinned and quartered.