young doctor. Ten days later we were in Rawlins, Wyoming, where horses
and a general outfit were purchased and the journey to the Wind River
country in the Shoshone Indian reservation was begun.
July had come and the plains and valleys were beautiful in billowy
green. Cole, always in the lead, headed west of Lander. There was
nothing I could see about the man to indicate that he was other than he
represented, although several of the party whispered suspicions as, day
by day, we penetrated the wild and almost uninhabited country.
We entered the reservation at a point about thirty miles west of Lander,
which town we had purposely avoided, not wishing to incite others to a
gold hunt.
We broke camp and were riding down a beautiful valley one morning, when
we came upon some antelope. I wounded one, and as it was getting away I
spurred my horse after the antelope on the run. My horse stumbled into a
badger hole, and the next thing I remember distinctly was the awful
pain as the doctor of our party was setting my broken ankle.
My horse was also lame, but later in the day I made out to ride him five
miles to the camp of some Shoshone Indians.
The pain in my limb was so great I could go no further, and as the
Indians were friendly and hospitable, I begged to be left in their camp.
A bed was made for me upon the ground in one of the tepees, and after
giving me surgical attention, and leaving me such comforts as we
carried, the party proceeded, at my request, for I knew it would be
weeks before I could travel, and even then I would be a hindrance.
I felt secure from the kindly attention I had received from the Indians,
who seemed desirous in many ways of alleviating my sufferings. Knowing
that the Indian despises any manifestation of pain, I managed never to
utter a groan, or show distress in my face, no matter how excruciating
was Nature’s process of healing.
After three or four days an Indian cut away the doctor’s splints and
bound my limb in a huge pack of wet clay. From that moment the pain
grew less, and as I felt more like talking, the Indians would gather in
the tepee and sit about like children. I made pictures to amuse them,
taught them the game of mumbledy-peg, and in various ways won their
simple affections.
The days had been dragging wearily, when the monotony was broken by an
Indian wedding. Bright Eyes, a damsel of no exceeding beauty, was of
that age when the consent of her father could be secured for her
marriage for a consideration of ponies.
Several young bucks had been staking their ropes for the catch, each
hoping he would be the fortunate one in securing her for a partner. Some
of them had offered as high as nine ponies. But Wah-ne-a-tah, which
means in English, “it is hurting him,” came forward with a dozen ponies
and secured the prize. A beef from the Agency had been secured and
roasted, as well as other things good to the palate of a hungry Indian.
At about 4 o’clock the bride was taken to a tepee set apart from the
others, where some twenty squaw attendants dressed her out in a “rig”
that for decoration resembled a general or an admiral’s uniform.
Not wishing to get married at this time, she kept her attendants in
tears by her lamentations. Some one in Lander had sold her father an old
hearse as being just the thing for a family carriage. The top had been
taken off, but the plumes remained, and into it she was loaded. The
horses were gaily decorated and an Indian walked at the head of each
horse. As she took her seat in the carriage, I obtained the first good
view of the bride. A description of her dress is impossible, but it was
a curious mixture of every color imaginable. She had proceeded but a
little way down the valley, when at breakneck speed came a buck and
three squaws who were running to the bride. The first squaw to reach the
bride was to receive her raiment, the second a pony and the third a
blanket. The bride was escorted to a tepee belonging to a relative of
the groom. Here she was placed on a blanket and wrapped up until no part
of her was visible and then carried to the tepee set apart for the happy
couple. Arriving there she was unwrapped in the presence of the guests
and her clothing immediately claimed by the squaw who came out best in
the race. The bride was re-dressed, the groom summoned and seated on the
blanket beside her. They were now married in the eyes of the Indians.
Then came a feast, participated in only by the happy couple and the
guests departed to the general feast.
Three weeks had passed when one day an officer of the Indian police came
to our camp and through him I learned of Cole’s former camp on a
tributary of Wind River, and he said the gulches and sands of the stream
were plentifully besprinkled with nuggets, that the reason white men
were not there in multitudes was they were kept away by the Indian
police.
He said that Cole was permitted to stay because he furnished the Indians
with whisky. This Cole doubtless made from drugs.
At the end of another week my party returned without Cole. They came
hastily and seemed in a hurry to get away. I asked if they found gold.
They replied, “Yes, plenty of it, but Cole’s treachery has defeated
every plan.” Beyond this they would say nothing.
As I was in no condition to accompany them and was as comfortable as
circumstances would permit, they left me in the Indian camp. Here I
remained for a month longer, when Red Jacket and Spotted Horse rode with
me to Rawlins. Two truer hearts I never expect to find among any race. I
had our photographs taken and made them presents, as well as sending a
flour sack of candies back to the camp. When our train rolled away they
stood on the platform and watched us out of sight.
The mystery of the fate of Cole was cleared some years later when I
called on one of the parties in Kansas City. It seems they reached
Cole’s cabin in the wilds of the Wind River country and that he showed
them fine placer mines, and that after a few days he produced a vile
decoction of whisky which he and a younger member of the party drank. A
quarrel between the two men, crazed with the drink, ensued, in which
Cole was killed.
XI.
ACROSS THE PALM DESERT.
An ancient fight--as ancient as the time dividing the bird from the
serpent, a fight thousands of times repeated in the lonely places of the
earth each year, but which man seldom sees, was witnessed by Mark
Witherspoon and myself on the borders of the Palm Desert in California,
where we had come in the search for gold. It was a struggle to the
finish between an eagle and a big rattlesnake. Death was the referee, as
he is in all the contests waged under nature’s code of fang and claw.
There are two things men may not know, so it is said: “The way of the
serpent upon the rock; the eagle soaring in the sky.” Each has a
wonderful power which man does not understand--does not understand any
more than he does why they always fight when they meet and that they
always should and will, so long as there are serpents upon the rocks
and eagles soaring in the sky. If there were no eagles, the rattlesnakes
would have no enemy in the sky or upon the earth, save man, to fear. The
eagle likewise has no fear of anything, unless it be the glistening
yellow and brown poisonous creature of the rocks--the rattler.
Thus it lives forever--the death feud of the eagle of the Montezumas and
the serpent father of the Moki’s--the rattler.
How it began I did not see. I was standing near the top of a big stony
crag that glistened in the bright light looking over the vast opens and
great basins of the Palm Desert which we were to cross, when my
attention was attracted by the flop of something striking the sands a
hundred feet away. I could not see what it was, but a moment later I saw
an eagle swoop down and rise slowly, holding within its mailed claws, a
snake. The big bird soared up a hundred feet or more and shook the snake
loose, which fell twisting and coiling with a distinctly audible
“flop”--the noise that first attracted my attention. Again and again the
bird swooped, arose with the serpent and dropped it, while
Witherspoon drew closer and closer to watch.
[Illustration: Truer hearts I never expect to find (page 78).]
Then the eagle--a young one, as we could tell by its size and
plumage--struck and failed to rise. Witherspoon was now close enough to
see everything that happened.
The young bird had almost exhausted itself in its struggles with the
snake, and may, too, have been bitten by it. At any rate, it was upon
the sands, its wings slightly spread, as if from the heat--its mouth
open. The snake was recovering from its jolting fall, and slowly
gathering its coils.
It rested a moment in position, and then struck the eagle, the fangs
entering the corner of the bird’s mouth, in the soft tissues at the base
of the beak.
The eagle recovered from the shock, stood motionless a few seconds,
while the rattler watched as only a rattler can, and spreading out its
wings, toppled over.
Then the man--man who hates serpents as the eagle does--put forth his
hand, using a power more wonderful than that of either. There was a puff
of white smoke in the clear air and the report of a pistol rang among
the glistening wind-polished rocks, and the snake was a mangled,
bright, still thing that the ants began to gather about.
“It was unjust maybe,” remarked Witherspoon. “The snake had won
fairly--he was entitled to go his way, a terror for all the furry little
bright things hereabouts.” “But I couldn’t help it.” “Someway that
slaying by poison, even if it is done in the open, doesn’t seem fair.”
“Then, too, a man hates to see the emblem of his country’s armies and
navies, the triumphant eagle of thunderbolts, lying in the sunshine
dead, and that by a serpent.”
We had purchased a mustang in San Luis Obispo and loaded him with our
stock of flour, bacon, frying pans, blankets, etc., and was resting on
the borders of the Palm Desert, which we intended to cross the next
morning, to the Mexican dry diggings, in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains, when the battle between the eagle and rattler
furnished the topic of conversation all the afternoon. From San Luis
Obispo we had taken the trail that led over the mountains and through
the beautiful Santa Margarita Valley. Of all the places I have ever
seen, I think this valley came the nearest to being an earthly
paradise. It is seven miles in length, five in breadth, and is walled on
all sides, except a narrow pass, by the lofty Santa Lucia Mountains.
Through the center of the valley flows the headwaters of the Salanis
River. Giant live oak trees studded the valley at almost regular
intervals, as if they had been planted by the hand of man. The earth was
a carpet of green verdure, with splashes of the yellow wild mustard and
varied hues of the many different semi-tropical flowers. Two days after
passing through this Eden, we began our toilsome march across an arm of
the Palm Desert. When we reached the diggings we found a group of motley
Mexicans, who good naturedly swarmed about us and showed us a camping
place near a spring, but its waters were so impregnated with sulphates
of magnesia and sodium, that we found it impossible to use it. We moved
our camp about a mile further up the canyon, near the quarters of a
sheep herder, where we found good water and were free from the Mexicans.
They taught us, however, the art of dry washing the gold from the loose
earth of the placer claim which we had staked off. Here, for more than
three months, we toiled. When our supplies run short, we sent for more
by the man who came once a week to bring provisions and look after his
interests on the sheep ranch. I always pitied that sheep herder. He had
several hundred to care for, and their continual bleating sounded
dismally in the solitude of the mountains, and when he lighted his
bivouac fire at night, it always seemed like a signal of distress.
From the red earth we gathered the golden grains, and when the stars
came out at night, and the mountains took on their shadowy gloom, we
talked of home two thousand miles away, and often wondered at the enigma
of creation. Then came a time when by exposure to the damp and dews, and
living upon poor food, we both began to fall sick. Medicine was out of
the question, and so with our precious packet of gold dust upon our
persons, we loaded our mustang with our camp equipments and took up our
march toward San Luis Obispo.
It was in the early dawn of the morning when we started across the arm
of the Palm Desert. The sun rose like a ball of fire in a cloudless sky
and heated the sands until they parched and blistered our faces. By
noon our water supply was exhausted, and soon after I threw away the
Winchester which I carried, for I could no longer bear the burden. If it
has not been found by some weary pilgrim it lies there today with its
barrel as bright in that rainless valley as it was when I threw it down.
We walked in silence all that torrid afternoon. The poor mustang crept
along, led by Mark, while we, with bloodshot eyes and fevered brains,
could but feebly keep in sight the jutting mountain spur where we would
find a haven of rest.
Exhausted, I sat down in the scant shade of a desert palm. Its sparse
branches rattled in the hot wind like dried sunflower stalks, and then,
in my imagination, I stood a few feet away and saw myself lying dead on
the sands, with face drawn and withered and dead eyes staring at the
skies.
I roused myself from the horrible dream and walked on. It was long after
the sun had dipped beyond the mountain crest, and the Palm Desert was
shrouded in the gloom of night, that we reached a pool of clear water,
fed by a generous spring. We drank of its waters and bathed our fevered
brows, and lay down in the warm sands to awake ever and anon in fitful
dreams. It seemed I was buried in the stone coffins of Egypt, where I
lay for a thousand years in torrid heat, with unquenchable thirst.
Whenever I awoke, I drew myself to the edge of the pool, drank deeply of
its refreshing waters, and fell asleep again, repeating the same thing
perhaps twenty times during the night.
How soon we forget our troubles, and oh, how soon we forget that we have
passed through the valley of the shadow, and that a merciful God has
watched over our destinies. Within a week after this, when Mark and I
came so near perishing on the Palm Desert, we had purchased new summer
clothes and were sitting about the best hotel in San Luis Obispo,
smoking fine cigars and playing the part of high-toned young gentlemen
generally.
XII.
THE LAST STAND OF A DYING RACE.
The battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, occurred December 29, 1890. It
was the last stand of a dying race, the last Indian battle fought on the
soil of the United States.
Whatever views I may have held at the time, and whatever part I may have
taken in the engagement is mitigated by previous experiences and
circumstances; but with time there comes a belief that somebody
grievously erred.
Nearly every nation in its decline has looked for the coming of a
Redeemer to lead them back to the glory and valor of former days. This
has been especially true of the Indian races. The few remaining Aztec
tribes yet look for the coming of Montezuma, while the Indians in
the mountains of Peru believe that Huascar will again appear and
re-establish the magnificent empire of which the mailed heels of a
conquering Pizarro host clanked the dying knell nearly four centuries
ago.
In the autumn of 1890 there appeared in an Indian village in Nevada a
man who was strange to them and to the neighboring tribes. He told them
a wondrous story. He had come from a far-off land beyond the setting
sun, and was sent by the Great Spirit to rescue the redmen from the
oppression of the paleface, to restore to them their hunting grounds and
to populate the plains once more with the buffalo and the antelope. He
taught them a new form of the death dance and made a garment, decorated
it with hieroglyphics and blessed it, and said that it would turn the
bullets of the white man. They received his tale with great rejoicing
and started immediately to carry the tidings to the tribes on the plains
to the east. Great enthusiasm among the Indians marked the progress of
the march across the country, and when he reached the Rosebud Agency in
South Dakota, so exaggerated were the wondrous stories that preceded
him, he was fairly worshipped as a deity. Chiefs Red Cloud, Crow Dog and
Two Strikes brought him before the Great Council at Pine Ridge
Agency, some fifty miles distant from Rosebud.
[Illustration: Battlefield at Wounded Knee (page 87).]
For more than three months after his arrival thousands of the Sioux
warriors kept up the ghost dance almost nightly. The quantities of
unbleached domestic that they were purchasing at the agency stores and
making up into “ghost shirts,” together with the ammunition they were
known to be hoarding convinced the agency authorities at Pine Ridge that
an outbreak was imminent. A call was made for United States troops, but
before any considerable number arrived hostilities had begun. A cattle
herder was killed and a large herd of cattle belonging to the government
was driven into the bad-lands. The same night Chief Red Cloud, who had
become almost blind in his extreme old age, was taken forcibly from his
home near the Pine Ridge agency building and made to lead the hostile
attack on the Jesuit Mission some four miles distant. A desultory
firing was kept up on the agency for some nights afterward, when a
reinforcement of troops arrived and the hostiles withdrew to the natural
fortresses of the bad-lands.
Chief American Horse appears to have doubted the divine origin of the
Indian Messiah, and held in check some six or seven thousand of his
people encamped on a creek near the agency. In the meantime General
Miles arrived with a strong force of cavalry and artillery. Batteries
were trained on the tepees of the Brule Sioux under American Horse, and
they were ordered not to congregate, which order was respected up to the
close of the campaign.
Rumors of Indian depredations were of every day occurrence. Settlers
were fleeing from their homes and seeking refuge in the villages. So
great was the terror in northwestern Nebraska that General John M.
Thayer, then governor, ordered out the entire force of the National
Guard, numbering about two thousand men, under Brigadier General Leonard
W. Colby, to protect the Nebraska frontier.
The main body of hostiles was safely intrenched in the bad-lands and was
only awaiting the springtime, when grass would furnish provender for
their ponies; when they intended to begin their work of destruction on
the white settlements.
Up to this time no Indian had been killed or wounded, although there
was some heavy firing done in defense of the mission and the agency.
This fact tended to strengthen their belief in the invulnerability of
the ghost shirt which, by this time, was worn by all the warriors. So
great was their faith in the efficacy of this garment to turn the
bullets of their white foe, that Big Foot and a band of about four
hundred ventured to leave the stronghold and commit some petty
depredations within thirty miles of Pine Ridge.
General Miles promptly dispatched Colonel Forsythe and a troop of two
companies of the Seventh Cavalry to subdue them. It will be remembered
that the Seventh was General Custer’s old regiment that met the Indians
on the Little Big Horn on that memorable 25th of June, 1876, when every
man taking part in the engagement was massacred by this _same tribe of
Sioux Indians_ which this detachment under Colonel Forsythe was seeking.
On the evening of the twenty-eighth of December, Colonel Forsythe came
upon Big Foot’s band. No resistance was offered at the time, although
the demeanor of the braves foreboded the terrible tragedy soon to
follow. The Indians were escorted some miles distant and ordered to go
into camp on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, which flows through a
wide, open valley skirted for miles on either side by high, sandy bluffs
and scant growth of fir, cedar and pine. The Indians were made to pitch
their tepees in a semi-circle and park their wagons and ponies behind
them. The soldiers formed in a triangle in front of the semi-circle with
a Hotchkiss gun under command of Sergeant Wingate in the center of the
triangle. The men stood by their guns throughout the bitter cold of the
Dakota night, while the Indians were comfortably wrapped in their
blankets within the shelter of the tepees. As the first rays of the sun
were slanting across the bleak and cheerless plain, the shrill notes of
a bugle rang out on the frosty air. It was the signal to arouse the
Indian camp. They came from their tepees with blankets swathed about
them, and desperation was stamped upon their faces. Big Foot, who was
ill with pneumonia, was first carried out and laid upon a bed of fur in
front of his tepee, and then two hundred and fifty braves seated
themselves in rows about him. Through an interpreter they were ordered
by Captain Wallace to lay down their arms. They were armed mostly with
Winchesters which were concealed beneath the blankets about them.
Suddenly the medicine man of the tribe sprang to his feet and threw a
handful of dirt into the air. It was a signal, and in another instant
the death-like shrieks--the Sioux war-cry, “Hi-yi-hip-yi!” echoed up and
down the valley, and the blaze of two hundred Winchesters sent their
deadly missiles into the faces of the soldiers not over thirty feet
away. There was an instant of hush--then a crash of musketry, and the
last Sioux Indian battle was on! There were wavering ranks of blue as
men fell to the ground wounded or dying; frantic horses dashed riderless
over the plain; forms in red blankets were running hither and thither as
the deadly triangle poured a withering crossfire into the struggling
mass about the tepees. There were swift retreats of small parties,
followed by swifter pursuit of horsemen. Indians were shot right and
left as the mellow cadence of the bugle said, “Fire at will.” Squaws
were dashing right and left, attempting to stab the soldiers with their
long, copper-handled scalping knives; boys kneeled on the ground and
coolly fired rifles at the soldiers. They, too, were shot, and
meanwhile the terrible Hotchkiss gun boomed death. Small fleeing parties
gained the sand bluffs and shot the pursuing soldiers. A wagon, drawn by
two ponies and loaded with bucks and squaws who were trying to get away,
was struck by a six-inch shell and literally blown to pieces. Brave
Captain Wallace was killed with a blow from a stone battle-ax as he was
entering a tepee.
The field of carnage is a dreadful sight. The mind shrinks from
contemplating it. Human life has there passed away. Agony and suffering
is everywhere. Gloom is on men’s faces and dark frowns on their brows.
One wishes it were effaced from memory, for in years to come one must
see in fancy and hear again in fitful slumber the dying shrieks and
piteous cries of agony.
That evening the sun set behind a bank of crimson clouds. Sickening
odors came from the smouldering tepees. Stark faces, stiffening in
death, were turned to the skies. There, too, were the wounded with the
dew of death already upon their brows. Strong lines were drawn upon the
faces of the dead that told of the awful desperation of the soul at the
moment they fell. Weapons were clutched in pulseless hands, and piteous
was the sight of the struggling, wounded horses in their vain attempt to
join their mates in the wild chase among the hills. Amid these scenes
could be heard the prattle of childish voices about the Indian tepees.
In the tenderness of their years and the savagery of their nature they
were unable to comprehend the awfulness of the hour. When darkness came
over the scene like a pall, the booming gun had ceased, but the plains
were aglow with the lurid fires in the high grass--a weird and fantastic
scene. Two hours later and the crimson clouds, which at sunset had
portended evil, burst into fury, and a blizzard, with icy winds and
drifting snows, raged as if to aid the soldiers in their determination
that no living thing should survive the day.