forget. They were so distant that I could not make out their individual
forms and I at once jumped to the conclusion that they were only an
innumerable lot of crows sitting about upon the knobs and hillocks of
the prairies. But in a few moments, when we came nearer, they
materialized and were, sure enough, real bellowing, snorting, wallowing
buffaloes. At first they appeared to give no heed to our outfit, but
after we saddled and mounted our horses and rode into their midst they
began to scatter and to form into small bands, single file. The herd
separated into long, black swaying strings and each string was headed by
the best meat among its numbers. The leading animal was generally a
three-year-old cow. Each of these strings, or single-file bands, ran in
a general southeast direction and each of the four hunters--Bush, Heth,
Talbot, and the writer--selected a string and went for the preÎminent
animal with enthusiasm, zeal, and impulsive foolhardiness.
In the beginning of the pell-mell, hurry-scurry race it seemed that it
would be very easy to speedily overtake the desired individual buffalo
that we intended to shoot and kill. The whole band seemed to run
leisurely. They made a sort of sidewise gait, a movement such as one
often sees in a dog running ahead of a wagon on a country road. Upon the
level prairie we made very perceptible gains upon them, but when a
declivity was reached and we made a down hill gallop we were obliged to
rein in and hold up the horses, or take the chances of a broken leg or
neck by being ditched in a badger or wolf hole. But the buffaloes with
their heavy shoulders and huge hair-matted heads lumbered along down the
incline with great celerity, gaining so much upon us that every now and
then one of them would drop out from the line upon reaching an
attractive depression, roll over two or three times in his "wallow,"
jump up and join his fleeing fellows before we could reach him.
But finally after swinging and swaying hither and thither with the band
or line as it swayed and swung, the lead animal was reached and with
much exultation and six very nervous shots put to death. My trophy
proved to be a buffalo cow of two or three years of age; and after she
had dropped to the ground, a nimble calf, about three months old,
evidently her progeny, began making circles around and around the dead
mother and bleating pitifully, enlarging the circle each time, until at
last it went out of sight onto the prairie and alone, all the other
parts of the herd having scattered beyond the rising bluffs and far
away.
That afternoon was fuller of tense excitement, savage enthusiasms, zeal
and barbaric ambition than any other that could be assorted from my life
of more than sixty years. There was a certain amount of ancestral
heathenism aroused in every man, spurring a horse to greater swiftness,
in that chase for large game. And there was imperial exultation of the
primitive barbaric instinct when the game fell dead and its whooping
captors surrounded its breathless carcass.
But the wastefulness of the buffalo hunter of those days was wicked
beyond description and, because of its utter recklessness of the future,
wholly unpardonable. Only the hump, ribs, the tongue, and perhaps now
and then one hind-quarter were saved for use from each animal. The
average number of pounds of meat saved from each buffalo killed between
the years 1860 and 1870 would not exceed twenty. In truth, thousands of
buffaloes were killed merely to get their tongues and pelts. The
inexcusable and unnecessary extermination of those beef-producing and
very valuable fur-bearing animals only illustrates the extravagance of
thoughtlessness and mental nearsightedness in the American people when
dealing with practical and far-reaching questions. It also demonstrates,
in some degree, the incapacity of the ordinary every-day law-makers of
the United States. Game laws have seldom been enacted in any of the
states before the virtual extinction of the game they purposed to
protect. Here in Nebraska among big game were many hundreds of
thousands of buffaloes, tens of thousands of elk and deer and antelope,
while among smaller game the wild turkey and the prairie chicken were
innumerable. But today Nebraska game is practically extinct. Even the
prairie chicken and the wild turkey are seldom found anywhere along the
Missouri bluffs in the southern and eastern part of the commonwealth.
Looking back: what might have been accomplished for the conservation of
game in the trans-Missouri country is suggested so forcibly that one
wonders at the stupendous stupidity which indolently permitted its
destruction.
The first night outward and southeastward from Fort Kearny we came to
Turkey creek which empties into the Republican river. There, after dark,
tents were pitched at a point near the place where the government in
previous years established kilns and burned lime for the use of soldiers
in building quarters for themselves and the officers at Fort Kearny
which was constructed in 1847 by Stewart L. Van Vliet, now a retired
brigadier general and the oldest living graduate of West Point. After a
sumptuous feast of buffalo steak, a strong pint of black coffee and a
few pipes of good tobacco, our party retired; sleep came with celerity
and the camp was peacefully at rest, with the exception of two regular
soldiers who stood guard until 12 o'clock, and were then relieved by two
others who kept vigil until sunrise. At intervals I awoke during the
night and listened to the industrious beavers building dams on the
creek. They were shoveling mud with their trowel-shaped tails into the
crevices of their dams with a constantly-resounding slapping and
splashing all night. The architecture of the beaver is not unlike that
which follows him and exalts itself in the chinked and daubed cabins of
the pioneers.
The darkness was followed by a dawn of beauty and breakfast came soon
thereafter, and for the first time my eyes looked out upon the
attractive, fertile and beautiful valley of the Republican river. All
that delightful and invigorating day we zealously hunted. We found
occasionally small bands of buffaloes here and there among the bluffs
and hills along the valley of the Republican. But these animals were
generally aged and of inferior quality. Besides such hunting, we found a
great quantity of blue-winged and green-winged teal in the waters of
the Republican and bagged not a few of them. There is no water-fowl, in
my judgment, not even the redheaded duck and canvasback duck, which
excels in delicate tissue and flavor the delicious teal.
Just a little before sundown, on the third day of our encampment, by the
bluffs land of the Republican, Lieutenant Bush and Mr. Heth in one
party, and John Talbot and I in another, were exploring the steep,
wooded bluffs which skirted the valley. The timber growing at that time
on the sides of these bluffs was, much of it, of very good size and I
shall never forget going down a precipitous path along the face of a
hill and suddenly coming upon a strange and ghastly sight among the top
limbs and branches of an oak tree which sprang from the rich soil of a
lower level. The weird object which then impressed itself upon my memory
forever was a dead Indian sitting upright in a sort of wicker-work
coffin which was secured by thongs to the main trunk of the tree. The
robe with which he had been clothed had been torn away by buzzards and
only the denuded skeleton sat there. The bleached skull leered and
grinned at me as though the savage instinct to repulse an intruder from
their hunting grounds still lingered in the fleshless head. Perfectly I
recall the long scalp-lock, floating in the wind, and the sense of dread
and repellent fear which, for the startled moment, took possession of me
in the presence of this arboreally interred Indian whose remains had
been stored away in a tree-top instead of having been buried in the
ground.
Not long after this incident we four came together again down in the
valley at a great plum orchard. The plum trees covered an area of
several acres; they stood exceedingly close together. The frosts had
been just severe enough to drop the fruit onto the ground. Never before
nor since have my eyes beheld or my palate tasted as luscious fruit as
those large yellow and red plums which were found that afternoon lying
in bushels in the valley of the Republican. While we were all seated
upon the ground eating plums and praising their succulence and flavor we
heard the click-cluck of a turkey. Immediately we laid ourselves flat
upon the earth and in the course of ten minutes beheld a procession of
at least seventy-five wild turkeys feeding upon plums. We remained
moveless and noiseless until those turkeys had flown up into the tall
cottonwood trees standing thereabouts and gone to roost. Then after
darkness had settled down upon the face of the earth we faintly
discerned the black forms or hummocks of fat turkeys all through the
large and leafless limbs of the cottonwoods which had been nearly
defoliated by the early frosts of October. It required no deft
marksmanship or superior skill to bring down forty of those birds in a
single evening. That number we took into camp. In quick time we had
turkey roasted, turkey grilled, turkey broiled; and never have I since
eaten any turkey so well flavored, so juicy and rich, as that fattened
upon the wild plums of the Republican Valley in the year 1861.
At last, surfeited with hunting and its successes, we set out on our
return to Fort Kearny. When about half way across the divide, a
sergeant, one of the most experienced soldiers and plainsmen of the
party, declared that he saw a small curl of smoke in the hazy distance
and a little to the west and south of us. To my untrained eye the smoke
was at first invisible, but with a field glass I ultimately discerned a
delicate little blue thread hanging in the sky, which the soldiers
pronounced smoke ascending from an Indian camp. Readjusting the glasses
I soon made out to see three Indians stretched by the fire seemingly
asleep, while two were sitting by the embers apparently cooking, eating
and drinking. Very soon, however, the two feasters espied our wagons and
party. Immediately they came running on foot to meet us; the other
three, awaking, followed them; speedily they were in our midst. They
proved, however, to be peaceful Pawnees. Mr. John Heth spoke the
language of that tribe and I shall never forget the coolness with which
these representatives of that nomadic race informed him that Mrs. Heth
and his little two-years-of-age daughter, Minnie, were in good health in
their wigwam at Fort Kearny; they were sure of it because they had
looked into the window of the Heth home the day before and saw them
eating and drinking their noonday meal.
These Indians then expressed a wish for some turkey feathers. They were
told to help themselves. Immediately they pulled out a vast number of
the large feathers of the wings and tails and decorated their own heads
with them. The leader of the aboriginal expedition, in conversation with
Mr. Heth, informed him that although they were on foot they carried the
lariats which we saw hanging from their arms for the purpose of
hitching onto and annexing some Cheyenne ponies which they were going
south to steal. They walked away from home, but intended to ride back.
The barbaric commander in charge of this larcenous expedition was named
"The Fox," and when questioned by Mr. Heth as to the danger of the
enterprise, and informed that he might probably lose his life and get no
ponies at all, Captain Fox smiled and said grimly that he knew he should
ride back to the Pawnee village on the Loup the owner of good horses;
that only a year or two before that time he had been alone down into the
Cheyenne village and got a great many horses safely out and up onto the
Loup fork among the Pawnees without losing a single one. "The Fox"
admitted, however, that even in an expedition so successful as the one
which he recalled there were a great many courage-testing inconveniences
and annoyances. But he dwelt particularly upon the fact that the
Cheyennes always kept their ponies in a corral which was in the very
center of their village. The huts, habitations, tipis, and wigwams of
the owners of the ponies were all constructed around their communal
corral in a sort of a circle, but "The Fox" said that he nevertheless,
in his individual excursion of which he proudly boasted, crawled during
the middle of the night in among the ponies and was about to slip a
lariat on the bell-mare without her stirring, when she gave a little
jump, and the bell on her neck rang out pretty loudly. Then he laid down
in the center of the herd and kept still, very still, while the horses
walked over him and tramped upon him until he found it very unpleasant.
But very soon he saw and heard some of the Cheyennes come out and look
and walk about to see if anything was wrong. Then he said he had to stay
still and silent under the horses' hoofs and make no noise, or die and
surely be scalped. At last, however, the Cheyennes, one after another,
all went back into their wigwams to sleep, and then he very slowly and
without a sound took the bell off from the mare, put his lariat on her
neck quietly, led her out and all the herd of Cheyenne ponies followed.
He never stopped until he was safe up north of the Platte river and had
all his equine spoils safe in the valley of the Loup fork going towards
the Pawnee village where Genoa now stands.
The Fox was an "expansionist" and an annexationist out of sympathy for
the oppressed ponies of the Cheyennes.
"The Fox" declared that the number of horses he made requisition for at
that time on the stables of the Cheyennes was three hundred. At this
statement some incredulity was shown by Mr. Heth, myself, and some
others present. Immediately "The Fox" threw back his woolen blanket
which was ornamented on the inside with more than two hundred small
decorative designs of horses. Among the Pawnees, and likewise, if I
remember rightly, among the Otoes and Omahas, robes and blankets were
thus embellished and so made to pass current as real certificates of a
choice brand of character for their wearers. Each horse depicted on the
robe was notice that the owner and wearer had stolen such horse.
Finally, after expressions of friendship and good will, the expedition
in charge of "The Fox" bade us adieu and briskly walked southward on
their mission for getting horses away from their traditional enemies.
It is perhaps worth while to mention that, it being in the autumn of the
year, all these Indians were carefully and deftly arrayed in
autumn-colored costumes. Their blankets, head-gear and everything else
were the color of dead and dried prairie grass. This disguise was for
the purpose of making themselves as nearly indistinguishable as possible
on the brown surface of the far-stretching plains. For then the weeds
and grasses had all been bleached by the fall frosts. We were given an
exhibition of the nearly perfect invisibleness of "The Fox" by his
taking a position near a badger hole around which a lot of tall weeds
had grown upon the prairie, and really the almost exact similitude of
coloring which he had cunningly reproduced in his raiment made him even
at a short distance indistinguishable among the faded weeds and grasses
by which he was surrounded.
In due time we reached Fort Kearny and after a pleasant and most
agreeable visit with Mr. Heth and his family, Colonel Alexander and
Lieutenant Bush, I pushed on alone for the Missouri river, by the North
Platte route, bringing home with me two or three turkeys and a quarter
of buffalo meat.
About the second evening, as I remember it, I arrived at the agency of
the four bands of the Pawnee on the Loup fork of the Platte river, near
where the village of Genoa in Nance county now stands. Judge Gillis of
Pennsylvania was the U. S. government agent then in charge of that
tribe, and Mr. Allis was his interpreter. There I experienced the
satisfaction of going leisurely and observingly through the villages of
the four bands of Pawnees, which there made their habitation. The names
of the four confederate bands of Pawnee Indians were Grand Pawnee, Wolf
Pawnee, Republican Pawnee, and Tapage Pawnee. At that time they all
together numbered between four thousand and five thousand.
Distinguished among them for fearlessness and impetuous courage and
constant success in war was an Indian who had been born with his left
hand so shrunken and shriveled that it looked like the contracted claw
of a bird. He was celebrated among all the tribes of the plains as
"Crooked Hand, the Fighter." Hearing me express a wish for making the
acquaintance of this famous warrior and scalp accumulator, Judge Gillis
and Mr. Allis kindly volunteered to escort me to his domicile and
formally introduce me. We took the trail which lay across Beaver creek
up into the village. This village was composed of very large, earthen,
mound-like wigwams. From a distance they looked like a number of great
kettles turned wrong side up on the prairie. Finally we came to the
entrance of the abode of Crooked Hand. He was at home. I was presented
to him by the interpreter, Mr. Allis. Through him, addressing the tawny
hero who stood before me, I said:
It has come to my ears that you are and always have been a very brave
man in battle. Therefore I have made a long journey to see you and to
shake the hand of a great warrior.
This seemed to suit his bellicose eminence and to appeal to his barbaric
vanity. Consequently I continued, saying: I hear that you have skilfully
killed a great many Sioux and that you have kept the scalp of each
warrior slain by you. If this be true, I wish you would show me these
trophies of your courage and victories?
Immediately Crooked Hand reached under a sort of rude settee and pulled
out a very cheap traveling trunk, which was locked. Then taking a string
from around his neck he found the key thereunto attached, inserted it in
the lock, turned it, and with gloating satisfaction threw back the lid
of the trunk. It is fair to state that, notwithstanding Mr. Crooked
Hand's personal adornments in the way of paint, earrings, and battle
mementoes, he was evidently not a man of much personal property, for the
trunk contained not one other portable thing except a string of thirteen
scalps. This he lifted out with his right hand and held up before me as
a connoisseur would exhibit a beautiful cameo--with intense satisfaction
and self-praise expressed in his features.
The scalps were not large, averaging not much more in circumference than
a silver dollar (before the crime of 1873). Each scalp was big enough to
firmly and gracefully retain the scalp-lock which its original possessor
had nourished. Each scalp was neatly lined with flaming red flannel and
encircled by and stitched to a willow twig just as boys so stretch and
preserve squirrel skins. Then there was a strong twine which ran through
the center of each of the thirteen scalps leaving a space of something
like three or four inches between each two.
After looking at these ghastly certificates of prowess in Indian warfare
I said to the possessor: "Do you still like to go into fights with the
Sioux?" He replied hesitatingly:
"Yes, I go into the fights with the Sioux but I stay only until I can
kill one man, get his scalp and get out of the battle."
Then I asked: "Why do you do this way now, and so act differently from
the fighting plans of your earlier years when you remained to the end of
the conflict?" Instantly he replied and gave me this aboriginal
explanation:
"You see, my friend, I have only one life. To me death must come only
once. But I have taken thirteen lives. And now when I go into battle
there are thirteen chances of my being killed to one of my coming out of
the fight alive."
This aboriginal application of the doctrine of chance is equally as
reasonable as some of the propositions relating to chances found in
"Hedges' Logic," which I studied in the regular college course. There is
more excuse for a savage faith in chance than can be made for the
superstitious belief in it which is held by some civilized people.
My last buffalo hunt was finished and its trophies and its choicest
memories safely stored for exhibition or reminiscence at Arbor Lodge.
More than thirty-seven years afterwards I am permitted this evening by
your indulgence and consideration to attempt faintly to portray the
country and its primitive condition at that time in that particular
section of Nebraska which is now Franklin county.
But in concluding this discursive and desultory narrative I cannot
refrain from referring to and briefly descanting on another and an
earlier and larger expedition into the valley of the Republican which
set out from Mexico in the year 1540 under the command of Coronado.
That explorer was undoubtedly the first white man to visit Nebraska. In
his report to the Spanish government is a description of buffalo which
for graphic minuteness and correctness has never been excelled. Thus it
pictures them as they appeared to him and his followers more than three
hundred and fifty years ago:
"These oxen are of the bigness and color of our bulls, but their horns
are not so great. They have a great bunch upon their foreshoulders, and
more hair upon their fore-part than on their hinder-part; and it is like
wool. They have, as it were, a horse mane upon their back bone, and much
hair, and very long from the knees downward. They have great tufts of
hair hanging down their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beards,
because of the great store of hair hanging down at their chins and
throats. The males have very long tails, and a great knob or flock at
the end, so that in some respects they resemble the lion, and in some
other the camel. They push with their horns, they run, they overtake and
kill a horse when they are in their rage and anger. Finally, it is a
fierce beast of countenance and form of body. The horses fled from them,
either because of their deformed shape, or because they had never seen
them before. Their masters [meaning no doubt the Indians] have no other
riches or substance; of them they eat, they drink, they apparel, they
shoe themselves; and of their hides they make many things, as houses,
shoes, apparel and robes; of their bones they make bodkins; of their
sinews and hair, thread; of their horns, maws and bladders, vessels; of
their dung, fire; and of their calf skins, budgets, wherein they draw
and keep water. To be short, they make so many things of them as they
have need of, or as may suffice them in the use of this life."
It is perhaps a work of supererogation for me after the lapse of three
and a half centuries to endorse and verify the accuracy of that word
picture of the buffalo. A photograph of the great herd which I rode
into during my hunt could hardly better convey to the mind the images of
buffalo. The hundreds of years intervening between my own excursion into
the valley of the Republican and the invasion of Coronado had neither
impaired, improved, nor perceptibly changed either the buffalo or the
soil of that fertile section now comprising the county of Franklin in
the state of Nebraska. Of that immediate propinquity Coronado said: "The
place I have reached is in the fortieth degree of latitude. The earth is
the best possible for all kinds of productions of Spain, for while it is
very strong and black, it is very well watered by brooks, springs and
rivers. I found prunes" [wild plums, no doubt, just as my party and the
wild turkeys were feasting upon in October, 1861] "like those of Spain,
some of which are black; also some excellent grapes and mulberries."
And Jaramillo, who was with Coronado, says: "This country has a superb
appearance, and such that I have not seen better in all Spain, neither
in Italy nor France, nor in any other country where I have been in the
service of your majesty. It is not a country of mountains; there are
only some hills, some plains and some streams of very fine water. It
satisfies me completely. I presume that it is very fertile and favorable
for the cultivation of all kinds of fruits."
And this land whence the Coronado expedition upon foot retraced its
march to Old Mexico, a distance, by the trail he made, of 3,230 miles,
was in latitude forty degrees and distant westward from the Missouri
about one hundred and forty miles. Geographically, topographically, and
in every other way, the description of Franklin and the neighborhood of
Riverton in that county.