good job of tracking. However, hunters down there this winter would have
had snow aplenty to track deer—if deer still remain to be tracked. A
foot of snow and thirteen degrees below zero was recorded January 19th
at Nashville—where I was born, the second son of a tanner, at 11:30 p.m.,
December 31, 1861.
Also in our hunting party, riding a small pony, was a little Indian boy
whom they called—shall I say—Nish-a-shin. This might not be correct.
When we got lined out, Eagle Eye rode first, then my father. I was
third in line and Nish-a-shin was fourth. Three Indians followed in
single-file formation with long rifles carried crosswise in front of
them. The Indians all rode bareback, even Nish-a-shin. My father had
secured two saddles for us.
In the gray of that early Sunday morning after the storm abated and the
white prairie lay still, Eagle Eye headed west toward the John Wolfley
timber. We traveled in silence, never out of a walk. From the head of
Spring creek we went across to Elk creek and Soldier creek.
At that time the whole southwest country was practically virgin prairie.
The Dixon 40-acres where Maurice Savage now lives, and the Bill Rudy
land where Joe Pfrang’s home now is, were the only fenced tracts in that
section of the country. Bill Rudy went to California. Years later when
my father went out there they renewed their friendship. And one time
when I was visiting in Fresno my father took me to see Mr. Rudy. He
owned an 80-acre ranch and seemed to be well pleased with the change
he had made. He had much to say about the intense cold weather he had
endured on his homestead here. The winters Mr. Rudy experienced in
Kansas were very much like the one we are now having, only in the old
days real blizzards were the rule.
On October seventeenth, 1898, Jack Hayden lost nineteen head of cattle,
in a pasture north of the Rudy — or Pfrang — place, in an unusually
early and unusually severe blizzard. The cattle drifted with the
blinding snow-storm over a bank and piled up in a ditch. I was in
Chicago at the time. It rained in Chicago, but coming home on the
Burlington, the first snow appeared near the north line of Missouri, got
heavier toward Atchison, and from Atchison west on the Central Branch,
it was really heavy. That snow, and succeeding falls, kept the ground
here covered in a sea of white until spring.
Those Indians called me “paleface papoose.” I was, of course, beyond the
normal age of a papoose, but your old Indian was no fool. They probably
reasoned that whiteman would not understand Indian’s word for youth.
Eagle Eye had started calling me “paleface papoose” when my father was
saddling the pony. Maybe it was because I had to have a saddle. Little
Nish-a-shin you know rode bareback. He did not make much talk.
It was in the wilds of Soldier creek, in the big timber, where we
made camp for dinner. One of the Indians carried a stew-kettle in a
grain-sack and I carried a flour-sack having in it several loaves of
bread baked by my mother, and maybe four or five links of butcher-shop
bologna. Also two tin-cups, two tin-plates, with knives and forks for
two. My mother did not think to put in spoons, but then of course she
could not know the kind of mess we were in for.
With fallen deadwood dug up out of the snow a rousing fire was made—and
the kettle put on. When the Indian dish corresponding to the whiteman’s
mulligan was ready, all hands squatted down around the fire and devoured
the food ravenishly, including my mother’s nice brown loaves of bread
and the store bologna. My father had told me that I would be expected
to eat of the Indian’s food and that I should pass our bread and meat
around, as a token of friendship.
I cannot say now what kind of meat it was those Indians cooked in that
kettle, but it was something which they had brought along. They had not
killed anything on the hunt that day. However, I do not believe it was
dogmeat. Surely Eagle Eye would not have done that to us. But maybe it
was just as well that I didn’t then know anything about the accredited
habits of Indians in general as with respect to their dogs. I can
however truthfully say this much for the Indian’s stew. That dish—dog
or no dog—didn’t gag me nearly so much as the bowl of Chinese noodles my
father and my brother Frank cajoled me into eating with them and other
members of their party — Harry Maxwell, a former Wetmore boy, and Dan
Conner — while seeing Fresno’s Chinatown.
After traveling all day through the woods, following cow-paths and never
deviating once from the single-file formation which characterized the
start on that white morning away back in the 70’s we got back home at
dusk. From sun-up until sun-down we had traveled, and not one deer did
we see. Some tracks in the fresh snow were followed for miles. Only once
did the Indians dismount and hunt a clump of woods hurriedly on foot,
spreading out fanwise. They had glimpsed something moving among the
trees—something which they did not locate. It was then I learned why
they had brought the incommunicative Nish-a-shin along. Quickly he began
gathering up the reins of the deserted ponies. I learned something else
too. Pronto paleface papoose became a second edition of Nish-a-shin.
Starting up near Goff, the Spring creek deer-run came down to within a
half mile of Wetmore, then went southeast across the prairie to Mosquito
creek, thence up Mosquito creek nearly to Bancroft and across the
prairie again to the head of Spring creek.
Three deer were the most ever seen at one time on this run. They came
into a flock of 4,000 sheep I was herding for old Morgan on the Dan
Williams place a mile south of town, where Clyde Ely now lives. The
sheep were frightened and divided themselves into two bunches as the
deer loped gaily through the flock.
If you don’t know, a deer-run is the feeding grounds of those ruminants.
As long as the deer remain in the country they travel the same route
closely. In the winter—in the old days here—they fed largely on
hazel-brush and Other tender twigs.
We observed in our early hunts that the deer when feeding always
traveled the circle in the same way, never reversing. Sometimes however
when routed suddenly they would backtrack. And when pressed they would
usually run with the wind. Probably that was not so much to gain speed
as it was to camouflage the trail of their own scent and to more readily
themselves catch the scent of their pursuers. When hard pressed they
would sometimes take off with the wind and go ten or twelve miles off
the run—in one instance, nearly to Sabetha. Whenever a deer would
turn tail to wind we were ready to go home. I have seen them break out
against the wind and then when off a reasonable distance circle around
and go the other way. At such times my father would say, “Ah damn it,
now he’s gone with the wind!”
Since I am employing a rather broad drag-line brand of technique, there
is one more thing I might amplify here. In the beginning I said it
would entail a lot of research to do a good Indian story, historically
complete. Reliable information is hard to obtain. The old Indians—the
Indians I knew—have all gone to their “happy hunting grounds.” The
present generation does not seem to have a very clear picture of the old
days.
For instance, I made two trips to the reservation about five years
ago and interviewed a number of the older ones — second generation, of
course—in a vain effort to obtain just one Indian word. You may recall
that the tanyard story was, I might say, predicated on the Indian’s
name of sumac. When a small boy, I had understood Eagle Eye to call it
“sequaw.” I wanted to be accurate, as that flaming little bush played an
important part in the story as well as in the tannery. Not one of them
could tell me the Indian name.
I found one Indian, Henry Rhodd, 64 years old at that time, who said
he could not tell me the Indian name for sumac, but he knew what their
fathers used it for. He said they tanned their deer skins with it. That
was the same thing Eagle Eye had so dexterously managed to convey to my
father and me up in the Wolfley timber sixty-odd years earlier. Henry,
whom I would judge carries a mite of French blood in his veins, sniffed
as if he were inhaling the perfume of a fragrant rose, and said, “And oh
it smelled so good.” This, however, did not coincide with my findings as
a tanner’s helper. Still, I have seen my father sniff his newly tanned
calf skins and say the same thing. Our tan-yard was just about the
“stinkenist” place on earth.
In this connection I might mention that some years later I, myself, shot
a deer on lower Mosquito creek. My brother Sam and I had started out
one afternoon, the two of us riding our old roan mare, Pet. We struck
a fresh trail south of town about where the three deer and the four
thousand sheep had mixed. We followed the tracks to the Frank Purcell
timber. There we ran onto John Dixon and “Dore” Thornton. They said they
had been trailing the deer on foot all day.
John Dixon told me to go around to the south side of the timber; that
they would follow the tracks through the woods. The deer came
out running fast, and I shot it. The charge of buckshot from my
muzzle-loading shotgun hit a little too far back to make a clean kill.
We trailed that crippled deer—it was shot through the body as evidenced
by blood on either side of the trail—for a distance of ten miles to the
very spot where it had been started in the morning. At the line between
the John Wolfley place and the Mary Morris place, now owned by R. M.
Emery, the following morning, we lost the trail because of melting
snow and cattle tracks. The deer was found dead a few days later only a
quarter of a mile away.
After it had been shot that deer laid down three times — at the Joe
Boyce place, at the Bill Rudy place, and on the commons where the Ben
Walters place is now. The first time it laid down the warm blood from
the wound bored a hole in the snow. Darkness caught us at the old Dixon
or Savage place. It was then we remembered the old roan mare was still
tied back in the Purcell timber.
What boy is there who would not have been proud of that feat of
marksmanship—plugging his first deer through and through as it ran past
at almost lightning speed in its mad flight for life? Did I glory in the
feat? I did. At first. As a big-game hunter I had, in my own estimation,
scored high. Following in the footsteps of my father, a born hunter
of big game, I had all but arrived. Plugged my first deer! I was the
“toast” of the town! Or at least I could imagine I was. It would still
be interesting to know just what would have happened had I brought home
the venison. But I cannot now begin to tell you how adversely I was
moved when the deer was found dead.
In a flash I saw it all—how I had dropped back into a crook of the old
worm fence on the Roger O’Mera farm and waited for the deer, driven
out of the Purcell timber by the three other hunters, to come within
gunshot; how, as if it had wings, the deer, after being shot, cleared
that high rail fence; and how its life-blood spurting two ways stained
the fresh white snow where the little animal lit on the opposite side of
the rails; how every few miles we saw it jump up from a brief rest and
run on again, leaving more red on the white; and how, as we discovered
the next morning after leaving the trail at dusk, that a wolf had taken
up the chase and had sent the tired deer on and on without more rest
back to the big timber from whence it had come and where, perhaps, in
the throes of great agony, it sought its mate. And how, still pursued
by the wolf, it had cleared in one great leap—its last grand leap—on a
down-hill slope, a thirty foot hazel thicket.
Something indefinable, something unforgettable, made an impression on
me then. And that something put the “kibosh” on my big-game hunting
aspirations. I do not now count it a weakness. Though there were no game
laws then, that crime was made all the worse because it was a doe.
My brother Sam, who rode with me that day, later, really brought home
the venison, eclipsing all my past glory. But it took two trips all the
way to Arkansas in a horse-drawn covered wagon to do it. The first and
unsuccessful time he had for hunting companions Alex McCreery, John E.
Thomas, and my father. Their bag was a few wild turkeys. The second trip
Sam made with Roy Shumaker. This time they killed two deer. Then, for
the first time, the sons whose father was a veteran deer-hunter, were to
know the taste of venison.
Also, I used to chase wolves and jack rabbits with my horse and the
hounds, and enjoy it—until one particular rabbit chase which spoiled
the “sport” for me. It was on a Sunday afternoon in the quarter section
adjoining town on the northeast—the south half of which is now owned
by-Bill Davis. No horses were in this chase. The crowd from town, with
several trucks, were stationed on the ridge near the southwest corner.
The gray hounds started the rabbit over near the east line, and it ran
north down a draw, out of sight. It swung to the left and topped the
ridge north of the crowd, with the dogs in close pursuit. The rabbit
turned south heading straight for the crowd, and jumped up into Frank
Ducker’s truck, right at my feet. One of the men standing in the truck
grabbed it while the dogs were on both sides of the truck. The rabbit
squealed pitifully. The captor said its sides were thumping like
a trip-hammer. Most of the men thought the rabbit had earned its
freedom—but not so with some of the “sports.” Expecting to see another
chase, they dropped the rabbit on the ground about two rods in front of
the dogs, but when the rabbit saw the dogs it began squealing again—and
the grayhounds rushed in and nabbed both rabbit and squeal before it
realized that it must run again for its life. Every time after this when
a rabbit chase was proposed, I could hear that frightened jack rabbit’s
pitiful squeal.
But I never experienced any sickening wolf chases.
We had grayhounds and trail hounds under foot when we lived on the
Hazeltine farm—but not one that I could call my own. I bought a yellow
half-breed grayhound named Tuck from a farm hand on the Zeke Jennings
place for one dollar, that proved to be a wonder. The unknown half of
him was supposed to be bull dog. With Alex McCreery and his pack
of trail hounds, and a half dozen other horseback riders and some
grayhounds, a wolf was started out of an isolated clump of brush on the
south end of the Len Jones farm, two miles west of Wetmore. I happened
to be on the east side of the brush patch with my dog, while the other
riders with the pack were on the west side. The wolf came out about a
rod in front of my position, and Tuck got an almost even start in the
chase. I had a pretty fast horse, but the chase led across a slough, and
I lost some ground in heading this wash—but even so, I was on hand
soon after the kill, one mile from the start, before Alex and the
other riders and the dogs arrived. Alex said, “You and old Tuck was
to-hell-and-gone before we caught sight of you.” Tuck had caught the
wolf—and drowned it in an eighteen-inch pool of water, along the branch.
I found him sitting on his tail at the edge of the pool—looking very
pleased. In those days it was a boy’s greatest ambition to own a fast
horse, and a fast dog. Now I had both. The only flaw was that I was no
longer a boy.
Tuck also caught a deer in the big bottom south of spring creek on
the Mary Morris farm four miles west of Wetmore. In this chase I was
trailing pretty close, on my horse, when the dog grabbed the deer’s hind
leg, causing both to tumble end-over-end. In the midst of this spill,
it seemed to me as if deer and yellow dogs were scattered all over the
ground. The deer got up first, and ran west toward the John Wolfley
timber. My prized hound did not seem to have the heart to follow after
it. I think there were moments now when Tuck did not know east from
west.
Now, a last word about the Indians—and the Ghost Dance or Messiah Craze
as participated in by the Kickapoos. The “craze” was a sort of spiritual
delusion starting with the Sioux Indians, the same blood-thirsty red
devils who got credit for the ghastly Custer massacre in 1876. This,
and other depredations, were still fresh in the minds of the people,
and there was widespread alarm among the citizens whenever the craze
had taken hold. However, the craze was short-lived. I do not think the
Kickapoos repeated after the first year. The dance that time at the
Mission was kept going for three weeks.
I do not recall in what way this dance differed from the Green Corn
Dance held annually by the Kickapoos, or other tribal dances. But
undoubtedly it carried a threat to the whites. Except for brandishing
tomahawks at certain periods of the dance—it looked to the casual
observer like other Indian dances. Old Sitting Bull, of the Sioux, had
made much bad medicine, and the threat was in the air, if not actually
in the dance. Gold had been discovered earlier in the Black Hills
country. The Government had withdrawn a part of the Indian lands for
development by the whites. This the Sioux resented. There was fear among
the Indians in general that their lands might be taken away from them. I
cannot now be sure of this, but I believe the Government took a hand in
suppressing the Ghost Dance.
I can best explain things with a reprint of what I wrote for the
Spectator at the time. Incidentally, I might say that in looking up the
old files I observe now that this story appeared in the first issue
of The Spectator after I became its owner. Also, that the article
was illustrated with a splendid woodcut engraved by my brother Sam.
Illustrations in that day were engraved on cross-grain box-wood blocks.
The following excerpt is copied from the issue of December 12, 1890:
During the past week or ten days, our people have visited the Indian
Mission, eight miles northwest of Wetmore to witness the Indian pow-wow
which has been in progress for several weeks. Although a more civilized
tribe than the Sioux with which the “Ghost Dance” originated, the
Kickapoos have caught the “Messiah Craze” and have made things lively
for a while. The dance has been watched with considerable interest
and no little alarm by many visitors and citizens living near the
reservation. However, the conclusion now is that there will be no
outbreak. The neighbors along the line look upon their actions merely as
a curious freak of superstition.
When asked how long the Indians kept up the dance, an old Indian who was
too feeble to participate in the festivities, in broken English, said,
“Messiah come at sunrise.” It was afterwards learned that the Indians
continued dancing all night with the expectation of seeing Christ, or
the Messiah, at sunrise. This is, in a manner, following the custom
of the ancient Aztec sun-worshipers of Mexico, who years ago builded
mounds, some of them 600 and 800 feet high, where they would assemble at
sunrise and carry on their festivities in the anticipation of the coming
of some great divinity.
Two Sioux Indians got an inspiration from on High—or elsewhere. It was
only a dream, of course—but then why should not the Indian be allowed
to dream as well as the white man? He has proven his capability, and has
gone the present generation of white men one better.
A careful study of ancient recorded stories shows this one to be no more
fantastic than the feat accredited to Moses, who, with an outstretched
hand caused the waters of the Red Sea to part so that the Children of
Israel might walk across on dry land. But, I believe, Moses credited the
Lord — collaborating no doubt—with making the big wind which actually
drove the water out of their path. Our Kickapoos were not much on the
big blow—but it seems that a couple of Sioux, in this instance, made a
heap lot of big wind.
According to a recent writer on the subject, the Messiah craze is the
out-growth of a startling story related by two Sioux Indians, which, in
substance, lays bare the assertion that Jesus had come down upon earth
again and had appeared to the Indians. According to the report He was
discovered by two Indians who had followed a light in the sky for 18
days over a country destitute of water. The most peculiar part of the
story is that at each camping place they were supplied with water from a
little pool that came up out of the ground and furnished just enough for
their needs and no more. At the end of the 18 days journey they came to
a secluded place near a mountain, and there they found a hut, built of
bull-rushes, and on entering they saw Jesus, who told them that He had
come once to save the white men and they had crucified Him—and this time
He had appeared to the Indians and that they should go back and bear the
news to the other Indians. The two Indians were then borne up in a cloud
and in a very short time were set down at their home where they related
what they had seen.
WHITE CHRISTMAS Published in Wetmore Spectator, and
Seneca Courier-Tribune, January—1943
By John T. Bristow
COURIER-TRIBUNE Editor’s Note:—History can be dry or it can be
interesting. When it is colorful, filled with the lives of people, it
will be remembered far longer than if but dry facts are presented. We
think that this true story by John Bristow of Wetmore is one that will
make the English Colony of old Nemaha County days long remembered.
Although at the outset you will likely be thinking of a current and very
popular song hit, you must read far into this contribution before you
can put your finger on the line from which the above caption stems.
Also, for a clear picture of it all, you must go back with me three
score and five years to a favorite hunting grounds in the upper reaches
of Spring creek.
My father had bought a coon-dog from a traveler. This night—Christmas
Eve—was to have been the try-out but the way it turned out, Dad could
not know then how badly he had been “skinned.” That came later. Old
Drum had a wonderful voice, and though he “lied” a few times on later
occasions, he never did tree a coon.
In the party were Roland Van Amburg, Bill (Thuse) Peters, Jim Scanlan,
Bob Graham, my father and myself. Incidentally, Van Amburg was the last
man to take up a homestead in these parts. He homesteaded the 80 acres
now owned by Ambrose McConwell, almost adjoining town, in the middle
70’s. He was a happy-go-lucky, clownish sort of man.
Well, Van was not exactly the last one to file on a homestead here, but
he was the last one to do it in the regular way. Lawyer F. M. Jefferies,
while publishing the Spectator in Wetmore in the 80’s filed on a
quarter a few miles northwest of town—but it developed that the land
was improved and occupied by Eli Swerdfeger, who had by mistake filed
on another number. When Eli’s neighbor threatened to do mayhem to Lawyer
Jefferies, he relinquished — and Swerdfeger’s correct filing was even
later than Van’s. They called it “claim jumping”—though it was hardly
that, in the true sense of the term. There had, however, been some claim
jumping earlier, where settlers were negligent in fulfilling the lawful
requirements. A claim jumper in the old days was held in about the
same degree of contempt as is now the “scab” workman in a unionized
community.
With team and wagon and dog, we reached the timber about dusk, barely
ahead of a blizzard. Owing to the storm, the projected coon-hunt did not
take place. The whole night was spent around a bonfire out there in
the deep wood. The men talked about going home, but the intervening six
miles of unbroken prairie would have been hard to negotiate with a team
on a night like that.
Fortunately for us, it was not very cold. Disagreeably cold, to be sure,
but in severity—low temperature—it did not compare with the blizzard
which blew in upon us last Monday (Jan. 18, 1943) with a temperature of
10 degrees below zero, to be followed the next morning with 22 degrees
below.
The campfire, built in a sheltered spot, was near a tree which had some
holes cut in a big limb, old choppings which were assumed the work of
Indians. Those holes started Thuse Peters to talking. In telling of an
occurrence alleged to have taken place on the Kickapoo reservation,
in which he himself had figured rather conspicuously, Thuse graciously
endowed the mate of the squaw in his story with a fine growth of
whiskers—which whiskers, however, the Redskin did not have. Or did he?
Thuse was a little wild of the mark in some of his statements, probably
all of them. Bob Graham called him for that one about the Indian’s
whiskers. “I’m surprised,” said Bob, “you living here against the Indian
reservation all your life. You should know Indians do not have beards.”