HISTORIC LAND
“There are some friends of ours,” said Hugh, as the stage approached the
hotel, and he raised his hand and made the Indian sign to attract
attention.
“Yes,” said Jack, “I see them. There is Baptiste and there’s Joe, too.
It’s splendid to see them both again.” Jack signaled earnestly and made
the sign for shaking hands, to which his two friends responded.
As the stage drew up, Hugh said, “Now, son, you get down into the boot
and haul out our bags and throw them to me,” and when Hugh had reached
the ground Jack passed him the bags and then sprang down himself. There
were hearty handshakes and many questions between the four delighted
friends, and presently Baptiste said, “Casse-tête, let us go now to my
cabane, and there we will eat and smoke. I have many things to ask you.”
“All right,” said Hugh. “Just wait a minute till I see about our beds.”
In the meantime Jack and Joe had engaged in a sort of war dance,
followed by a wrestling match, to express their joy at meeting again,
and then Jack thought of the beds on the coach and ran and unstrapped
the leather apron which covered the baggage rack, and the two boys,
loosening the lashings, threw the beds on the ground by the hotel door.
“Hello,” said Hugh, “those boys have got our beds off now. We can go
on. Just set those beds inside the office, and tell the clerk we’ll stop
for them with the wagon when we start. Then come on to Bat’s cabin.”
Before long Hugh and Jack were seated in the cabin, while Baptiste and
Joe were busily engaged in the work of preparing breakfast. Soon all
were seated at the table. The fare was simple, but heartily enjoyed, for
all had healthy appetites and contented minds.
“How are you getting on, Bat?” said Hugh. “How do you live? Just about
as you did a couple of years ago?”
“Yes,” said Baptiste; “I live well; I always have lived well since you
and these boys came in from the north and made me that fine present of
the gold that you think I lost many years ago. Every month the bank pays
me my money, and then besides I work a little for the company at the
furs, so they pay me something, and I have some money that I can spend.
I have bought me two horses, and sometimes I go off on a hunt; sometimes
I trap a little. It is not much, but it is pleasant; it brings back to
my mind the old days. Also, my mind is better than it was. I do not
forget things as I used to. It was a good thing for me when you three
men came in from the north and found me here, and you would not have
found me except for the charger that Jack picked up on the prairie.”
“Doesn’t it seem wonderful that the finding of that little piece of
metal should have changed a man’s life as yours has been changed,
Baptiste?” said Jack.
“Yes,” said Hugh; “we, none of us, can ever tell what influence the
smallest thing we do will have on other people. Now, Joe,” he went on,
“have you got a team here, and are you ready to take us out to the camp,
as Mr. Sturgis wrote you?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “the team’s here and the wagon, and I reckon we can
make the agency in three or four days and we can start just whenever you
are ready. I’ve got a mess outfit and some coffee and sugar and bacon
and flour, and if you need anything more we can get it here. I’m ready
to start as soon as you are.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “the sooner we get off the better, I expect. What do
you say, son?”
“Why,” replied Jack, “you can’t start too soon for me. I’m anxious to
get to the camp, and then into the mountains. I always feel as if I
didn’t have much time out here anyhow, and I want to make the most of
what I have.”
“Well, then,” said Hugh, as they pushed back their chairs from the
table, “let’s sit down and smoke a pipe and talk for a little while, and
then you and Jack can go and get the team, and Bat and I will sit here
and chew the rag about old times until you come for us. Get the beds and
the bags when you come by the hotel, and then we can pull right out. I
reckon Joe has grub enough and we won’t have to buy anything here
without it is a piece of fresh meat. We might get beef enough for two or
three meals, but the weather is kind o’ hot now, and likely there’ll be
a chance to get meat at some of the ranches we pass if we need it.”
For a time Hugh and Baptiste sat together talking about the old trapping
days, bringing up one after another the names of men whom they had
known, and relating incidents of hunting, trapping, buffalo chasing,
and Indian fighting. Jack thought it was good to listen to, but at
length Hugh turned to the boys and said, “Well, go on now and get your
wagon and we’ll pull out. It’s a long ways from here to the agency, and
every hour we lose on this end we’ve got to make up on the other.”
The boys started off for the team, leaving the old men to sit in the sun
and talk about the past. A little later the wagon drew up to the door,
and Hugh, after glancing through its contents and tightening one of the
ropes that lashed on the load, said, “Well, we may as well be going.
Good-by, Bat; we’re likely to get back here about two months hence, and
we’ll meet then. I reckon up in the camp we’ll see all the Monroes and
old man Choquette, but those are all the old-timers we’re likely to
meet. So long,” and he climbed into the wagon.
“Good-by, Baptiste,” said Jack, as he shook hands, and Joe, reaching
down from the driver’s seat, pressed the old man’s hand without a word.
“Good-by, my friends, good-by,” said Baptiste. “It has been good to see
you. Always your coming brings joy to my heart. I shall look for you to
come again.”
Joe gathered up the reins, spoke to the horses, and in a moment they
were rattling along the street headed for the road leading up the Teton
River.
It was a beautiful day. The air was cool and pleasant, yet the sun shone
warm. The prairie and the distant hills were still green, and beautiful
flowers dotted the plain. From the top of almost every sage brush came
the sweet, mellow whistle of the meadow lark. In the air all about
birds were rising from the ground, singing as though their throats would
burst, and then after reaching a certain height, slowly floating down
again on outspread wings, the song ending just as they reached the
ground.
After they had gone a short distance away from the town the country
seemed as lonely as the wildest prairie. Far off, here and there, grazed
a few cattle or horses. Ahead of them the white, level road wound about
among the bushes of the sage. To Jack it was all very delightful. The
change from the crowded city was absolute, and as he looked about him
and enjoyed his surroundings his heart seemed to swell within his
breast, and he felt as though he could hardly speak.
Presently Joe said to Hugh, “Have you plenty of room, White Bull? I got
this extra wide seat before I started because I thought we’d all want to
sit on one seat, but I don’t know whether it gives you room enough.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hugh, “there’s lots of room for all of us.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “we could pretty nearly put another man here.”
“Now, Joe,” said Hugh a little later, “I want to ask you something about
the people. I heard that two years ago, and maybe last year also, they
starved, and that many of them died. I heard, too, that even up here the
buffalo have all gone.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that is true. Two years ago and also last year the
people starved, but it was two years ago that the most of them died,
that is, one winter back from this winter that has just passed. Old
Four Bears kept a kind of count on a stick, cutting a notch for every
person that died, and they say that nearly six hundred of the people
starved to death. There was no food. The buffalo had not been seen for
two winters. The people had hunted and sometimes killed an elk or a deer
or a few antelope, but at last these had all been killed, and there was
left nothing but rabbits and such birds as we could shoot or snare. It
was a hard time; everybody was hungry. Everybody got poor. Even people
that had once been heavy and had much fat on their bodies grew lean and
thin. When you looked at the old people, the women and the children, you
could see their bones sticking out against the skin. The little children
and the old people were the ones that died. The men and the women were
very hungry and got weak, but they did not die. White Calf, who is now
the chief, asked the agent to give us what food there was in the
storehouse and let us have one good meal and then die, but the agent
would not do it. He told us to go out and kill food for ourselves. You
know Father Prando?” Hugh nodded.
“Well, he had seen for a long time what was coming and he had written to
people back East, asking that food might be sent out to us, and telling
them that unless it was sent we should all starve to death. Besides
that, he wrote to the commanding officer at Fort Shaw, and during the
winter an officer was sent up to the agency to see how the people were
getting on. This officer came and went around through the camp, and
asked the people to tell him the truth. He didn’t have to ask many
questions; he had eyes and could see for himself. They tell me that in
some of the lodges that officer sat and cried; that the tears ran down
his face as they do down the face of a woman whose child has just died.
“After a while he went away, and we heard nothing more, but presently
the news came that wagons loaded with food were coming from Fort Shaw,
and then a little while after that came a government inspector who asked
many questions and removed the agent and stopped here. This inspector
was a good man, I think. He kept sending messages to Fort Shaw and
trying to hurry the food along, and they say that he sent telegrams to
Washington. Anyhow, about the end of the winter wagons began to come
loaded with flour and bacon, and this was given out to the people, and
then the suffering stopped, and the people stopped dying. After a little
while, too, we got a new agent, a good man, who seems to be trying to
help the people. He taught them how to plow the ground and to put seed
into it. Maybe that is good. The seed grew, but it did not get ripe. We
had plenty of oat straw, but no oats; but ever since the food began to
come a year ago last winter we have been doing better.”
“Well, well, that’s a hard story,” said Hugh. “How did it come that
there was not food enough in the warehouses to help the people along?”
“I heard two of the white men that have married into the tribe talking,”
said Joe, “and they said that the agent had been writing to Washington
that the Indians were doing well and were growing crops and becoming
civilized. They said that he wrote those things so that the people at
Washington would think that he was a great man and was helping the
Indians along. Of course the people never grew any crops; they didn’t
know how. They lived well enough as long as there were buffalo, but when
the buffalo went away, then the people had nothing to depend on.”
“You say nearly six hundred died?” asked Hugh.
“That is what they told me,” replied Joe.
“Good Lord,” said Hugh, “that was about one-fourth of the people. I
don’t suppose there was more than twenty-five hundred or three thousand
Piegans at best.”
“I don’t know,” said Joe, “how many there were, but I know that many
died. You can see their bodies in all the trees along the creeks.”
“But, Hugh,” said Jack, “how is it possible that such a thing should
occur? Why didn’t the people back East know about this suffering and
send food out to relieve it?”
“Well, son,” said Hugh, “you know it’s an awful long way from here back
East, and then it’s hard always to get at the truth about any of these
stories. An Indian reservation is a great place for getting up kicks and
complaints, and I suppose that maybe those people in Washington are so
used to hearing complaints that they don’t pay much attention to them.”
“But just think,” said Jack, “of six hundred people being starved to
death. It’s almost impossible to believe it.”
“I reckon,” said Hugh, “that we’ll find a good many of our old friends
dead when we get to the camp.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “a good many.”
All day long the horses trotted briskly up the level road along the
Teton River. The sun was hot, but a cool breeze blew down from the
mountains to the west and the whole country was fresh, green, and
charming. About three o’clock they camped on the river at the edge of a
grove of cottonwood trees, and unhitching the horses, Joe and Jack
picketed them on the fresh green grass. Hugh, meanwhile, had brought
some wood and built the campfire, and before long supper was ready.
As they sat about after eating, Hugh smoking his pipe, the boys lounging
in the warm sunshine, and all watching the sun as it sank toward the
west, and the shadows of the cottonwoods grow longer minute by minute,
Hugh said to Jack, “We were talking this morning, son, about the hard
times the Piegans have had this winter, and that brought to my mind
another hard time that they had a good many years ago.”
“What was that, Hugh?” said Jack, sitting up to listen, while Joe, who
had been lying on his back with his eyes shut, rolled over so that he
faced the old man.
“Did you ever hear of the Baker massacre?” asked Hugh.
“No,” said Jack, “I never did.”
“I did,” said Joe. “My father was killed that time. I don’t remember
anything about it. I was too little. Only I remember my mother, how she
cried.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “lots of people cried that time.”
“Tell us about it,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Hugh, “it’s quite a long story and it made quite a fuss in
its time, not so much among the white folks out here as among the
Indians and, as I’ve heard, among white people back East. It certainly
was a bad killing. You read in the books about the way Indians massacre
white women and children when they’re on the warpath, but I reckon
Indians never did anything worse than this killing at the Baker
massacre. The way the white men killed and cut up the Cheyenne and
Arapahoe women and children at Sand Creek down in Colorado, and the way
they killed women and children up here on the Marias, no Indians could
ever beat.”
Hugh paused, and looked around for a twig with which to push down the
fire in his pipe.
“I’ve heard about the Sand Creek massacre, Hugh,” said Jack, “though I
never heard the whole story. Some day I’m going to get you to tell me
that; but what was the Baker massacre?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “along in ’66-’67, and from that time up to 1870,
this country up here in Montana was run over by a whole lot of different
Indian tribes. Of course it was Piegan country, and with the Piegans
were the Blackfeet and Bloods, and a part of the time the Gros Ventres
of the prairie. They were all on good terms with each other after the
Gros Ventres made peace with the Piegans along about 1868. Besides
these, there were the Crows, who were hostile to the Blackfeet, and
every now and then the Kootenays would come over the mountains and have
a scrap, and the Crees would come down from the north and steal Piegan
horses, and Assinaboines and other Sioux would come up from the east and
they’d tackle the Blackfeet. Pretty nearly any of these Indians, if they
saw a chance to run off some stock or to kill a lone white man would do
it, but the Piegans, being close at home and always within reach, got
the credit of most of the deviltry that was done. As a matter of fact,
I reckon it was the Sioux and Assinaboines that did most of it. Anyhow,
the trappers and traders and freighters in the country, and there were
quite a number of them, got to thinking that the Piegans made all the
trouble. I reckon that the Bloods from the north, and sometimes a band
of Blackfeet coming down to visit the Piegans, did considerable horse
stealing, and maybe they killed a few white men.
“Along about that time, too, Malcolm Clark took it into his head to
pound up a young Piegan and gave him a terrible beating, and this young
Piegan, who was a brother of Clark’s wife, went off and got a party of
his friends and went back and killed Clark. Meantime all the Piegans
were camping in their country as usual and were passing back and forth,
going into Benton and not looking for any trouble at all; but some of
the toughs in Benton, whose names I won’t mention, because you may meet
some of them, took an old Piegan, a beaver trapper and a good old man,
and killed him and threw him into the river; and another man took out a
young boy, considerably younger than you are, and just shot him down in
the street. A lot of false reports were sent back East about what the
Indians had been doing, and the result was that Colonel Baker was
ordered to march against a certain village of Indians who were camping
up here on the Marias, north of where we are now and about forty miles
from Benton. The troops were guided by two men who are now living on the
Piegan reservation, each of them married to an Indian woman. The orders
given to Colonel Baker were to strike Mountain Chief’s band of Piegans,
because from some information they had it was supposed that these people
had been plundering and perhaps killing white people. As a matter of
fact, the village found by the troops was that of Red Horn and Bear
Chief. The camp consisted of less than forty lodges, and probably had in
it a little more than two hundred people. The troops got up close to the
village in the gray of the morning, without being seen, and their orders
were to shoot to kill when they fired. There were but few people
stirring when the first volley was fired. They were all killed, and then
the people began to stream out of the lodges. At once they saw that they
were being attacked by troops, and thought that it was a mistake. Bear
Chief, unarmed, rushed toward the soldiers holding up a paper given him
by some white man, but before he got to the soldiers he fell, with half
a dozen bullets through him. The women and children were killed just as
the men were, and of all the village only about forty-five got away, and
some of these were off hunting and were not there when the attack was
made. There were a hundred and seventy-six Indians killed, thirty-seven
of them men, ninety women, and about fifty children.
“There was no pretense of a defense by the Indians. They didn’t fight at
all. They were just shot down until the troops got tired of shooting.
The Indians have told me that most of the thirty-seven men that were
killed were old men and young boys. As if to make it a little rougher on
the Indians, there was smallpox in the camp at the time.
“You’ll see old Almost-a-Dog up at the agency, and if you shake hands
with him you’ll notice that his hand is crooked. He got that wound at
the Baker massacre.”
“Why, Hugh, that’s one of the most terrible things I ever heard of,”
said Jack. “A hundred and seventy-six killed, and out of that a hundred
and forty women and little children!”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “it always seemed to me pretty bad. Of course, when
men go to war or try to steal horses or do anything of that kind they
take all the chances that there are. It’s all right to kill them if you
can, but how anybody that’s got any sense can shoot down women and
children the way that man Baker did gets away with me.
“Well,” he went on, “after a while the news of this massacre drifted
East, and I heard that the newspapers took it up and told the truth
about it, and I reckon the army officers most concerned in it got called
a good many names. I’ve heard that Colonel Baker lost his chance of ever
getting very high up in the army on account of this fight, and yet he
only did just what he was ordered to do.”
“That certainly was terribly cruel,” said Jack, “and I don’t see how it
could be excused.”
“Joe,” said Hugh, turning to the Indian, who had said nothing, but still
lay on the grass with his head resting on his hand, “were you in that
camp, or were you somewhere else?”
“No,” said Joe, “I was not in that camp. My mother was and a little
sister and my father, but I was at Three Sun’s Village, stopping with my
aunt. I must have been about three or four years old at that time.”
“Of the people left alive out of that village,” Hugh went on, “there
were nearly forty who were women and little bits of children. They were
turned loose on the prairie--some of them being sick with the smallpox,
you will remember--on the twenty-third of January. Anybody who knows
what winter weather is up here in Montana can tell what that means. It’s
a wonder that any of them lived to get to a camp where they were looked
after.”
Hugh’s story had taken some time in the telling, and by the time he had
finished it was quite dark. Jack and Joe got up and went out to where
the horses were and changed them to fresh grass, and on their way back
brought the beds from the wagon and threw them down close to the fire.
Hugh meanwhile had put fresh wood on it and the cheerful blaze lit up
the white trunks of the cottonwoods and was reflected on the leaves
above. It was a beautiful night, and the three spread their beds near
the fire and were soon asleep.