THE FIGHT FOR THE HERD
Chatanskah's village was a group of buffalo-hide teepees on the bank
of a creek flowing into the Missouri, constituting with several
similar communities the Wahpeton Council Fire. This was one of the
seven divisions, or sub-tribes, of the Dakota, who held the north
bank of the Missouri as far as the foothills of the Sky Mountains,
and whose political organization, in some ways, reminded me of the
great Iroquois Confederacy, an opinion which Tawannears also
entertained.
There was about these sons of the open savannahs the same sturdy
self-reliance and classic dignity which marked the People of the Long
House, dwelling beneath the shadow of the primeval forest which
covered most of the Wilderness country east of the Mississippi. They
were all big men, lithely-muscled, handsome, with clean-cut,
intelligent features, fearless warriors, clever hunters, splendid
orators. Like the Iroquois, too, they had conceived the advantages
of union, and were consequently feared by all the neighboring tribes.
We had dwelt with them upwards of a week, resting from the fatigue of
our recent adventures, when a party of young men came in with news of
the approach of a gigantic herd of buffalo from the north. The end
of Summer was at hand, and the herds ranging north were beginning to
turn back for the southward migration to the Spanish countries, an
event of the utmost importance for the Dakota, for whom the buffalo
furnished the staples of existence.
They fed largely upon its flesh. They clad themselves in its fur.
They wove rope from its hair. Its dung they used for fuel in a
country nearly destitute of wood. From its sinews they devised
bow-strings. Its horns were employed for weapons or to strengthen
their bows or for containers.
For them the buffalo represented the difference between hunger and
repletion, between cold and warmth, between nakedness and
protection--as it did for all the surrounding tribes, for hundreds of
thousands of wild, free-roving people, inhabiting a country equal to
the area of western Europe. And the buffalo was most valuable in the
late Summer or Fall, after it had fattened for months upon the juicy
grasses of the boundless savannahs, and its fur was grown long and
silky in preparation for the Winter.
There was a flurry of preparation amongst the teepees, and as every
man counted, we volunteered to accompany the hunting party, which
Chatanskah mustered within the hour. The second day we came upon
isolated bunches of buffalo, but the chief would not permit his
warriors to attack them, claiming, with reason, that if the animals
continued in their present direction they would pass close by the
village, and might be attended to by the home-stayers. The third day
we saw several large herds of many thousands each, but the young men
who had brought the news of the migration claimed that the main herd
was yet ahead of us.
We proved this true the next morning when the prairies showed black
under the migratory hordes. North and west they filled the
landscape. Eastward they stretched for a bare half-mile, and
Chatanskah hastened to lead his hunters across the front of the
serried columns, so as to be able to attack the herd in flank and
maintain a constant forward pressure. No man would have cared to
attempt to stop in front of that animal mass. Their hoofs shook the
ground, and a slight haze of dust rose over them.
To gain our flanking position we were compelled to dip into the bed
of a small creek shaded by dwarf trees, and we followed this for
perhaps a quarter of a mile. Coming out into the open again, an
entirely different spectacle presented itself. Bearing down upon the
herd from the northeast appeared a second party of warriors fully as
numerous as our own. Exclamations broke from the Dakota ranks, and
although at that distance the strangers looked to me no different
from our allies, none of Chatanskah's men were in doubt as to their
identity, and Tawannears answered my question without hesitation.
"Cheyenne, brother. They are the Striped-arrow People, so-called
from their custom of using turkey feathers on their arrow-shafts."
"Are they friends or enemies?"
He smiled.
"When two tribes have one herd of buffalo, Otetiani, they cannot be
anything else but enemies."
"Yet surely there are buffalo enough here for all the Indians in the
Wilderness!"
"My brother forgets that once the buffalo are attacked they will
begin to run, and no man can tell which way they will go."
"Then we must fight the Cheyenne?"
"So it seems, brother," he replied with truly savage indifference.
Chatanskah and his people were equally convinced that there was but
one way out of the difficulty, and they advanced upon the opposing
party at a run. The Cheyenne, of course, had seen us as soon as we
saw them, and they made it their business to meet us half-way. But
both bands halted as though by command a long bow-shot apart, and
stood, with weapons ready, eyeing each other provocatively.
A curious scene! Less than a mile away the buffalo poured south like
a living river of flesh. There was some tendency on the part of the
outer files to edge away from us, but the bulk of the vast herd paid
us no attention whatsoever. They were terrifying in their numbers
and inexorable progress. There must have been millions of them. And
here were we, so relatively few, preparing to dispute with an equally
insignificant body the right to slaughter some few units of their
multitudes.
The chief of the Cheyenne stood forward, a giant of a man, his arms
and chest gashed by the ordeals of the Sun Dance.
"Why do the Dakota interfere with the hunting of the Cheyenne?" he
demanded. "Have they painted for war?"
"The Cheyenne know best whether there is war," retorted Chatanskah.
"It is they who interfere with the Dakota's hunting."
"There is war only if the Dakota make it," asserted the Cheyenne.
"The Cheyenne have pursued these buffalo for a day. Let the Dakota
retire to their own country, and await there the coming of the
buffalo."
"Since when have the Cheyenne said what the Dakota shall do?" flashed
Chatanskah. "My young men have an answer ready for you."
The Cheyenne surveyed our array before replying.
"Nakuiman* sees that the Dakota have with them two of the
Mazzonka,"** he remarked. "One of them is a large man, but very fat.
Send him out here and let him show the warriors if he has strength in
that big belly. Tell him to lay aside his weapons, all save his
knife, and Nakuiman will do the same. If he comes, Nakuiman will
tear out the Mazzonka's heart with his fingers and eat it before the
Dakota. But the Mazzonka will not come. He is afraid."
* The Bear.
** Iron-makers, Indian name for white men.
Chatanskah somewhat dubiously translated this speech to Corlaer.
"The Bear is a strong warrior," he added. "He has counted more coups
than any man of his tribe."
"_Ja_," said Corlaer, and putting down musket, tomahawk, powder-horn
and shot-pouch, he pulled his leather shirt over his head.
Still Chatanskah hesitated. As it happened, the Dakota had never
seen the big Dutchman at hand's-grips with an enemy, and whilst they
had respect for his marksmanship and quiet sagacity they were
inclined to make fun of him behind his back because of his excessive
corpulence.
"Chatanskah need not be concerned," spoke up Tawannears, smiling.
"Our brother Corlaer is the strongest warrior of his people. The
Cheyenne will choose a new chief tomorrow--those who escape from the
arrows of the Dakota. Tell Nakuiman to lay aside his weapons."
Chatanskah complied none too happily, and a young Cheyenne warrior
advanced from the ranks of his band and relieved his chief of bow and
arrows and tomahawk.
"Nakuiman waits," proclaimed the Cheyenne chief. "The Mazzonka is
not in a hurry to die."
But Corlaer shambled forward as soon as his opponent had given up his
weapons. The Dutchman's legs wobbled comically. His huge paunch
waggled before him as he walked. Fat lay in rolls and ridges all
over his hairy brown torso, and lapped in creases on his flanks.
Only those who had seen him in action knew that beneath his layers of
blubber were concealed muscles of unhuman strength, and that his
placid exterior was a mask for a will that had never yielded to
adversity.
The Cheyenne warriors greeted him with guttural laughter, and the
Dakota pulled long faces. Nor could I blame them, after contrasting
the outward appearance of the two champions. The Cheyenne was the
biggest Indian I have ever seen, well over two yards in his
moccasins, with the shoulders of an ox, clean-thewed, narrow-flanked,
his legs like bronze pillars. He crouched as Corlaer approached and
drew his knife, circling on the balls of his feet, the keen blade
poised across his stomach in position to strike or ward, as need
arose.
Corlaer, on the other hand, had not even drawn his knife, and his
hands hung straight beside him. He slouched along with no attempt at
a fighting posture, his whole body exposed to the Cheyenne's knife.
The Cheyenne warriors passed from laughter to gibes and humorous
remarks--which, of course, Corlaer could not understand--and Nakuiman
evidently decided that they were right in their judgment, for he
commenced a kind of dancing progress around Corlaer, never coming to
close quarters, hut maintaining a constant menace with his knife.
Peter, affecting his customary manner of stolid indifference, turned
clumsily on his flat feet as the Cheyenne circled him, making no
effort to stay the quick rushes by which his opponent gradually drew
nearer and nearer. This went on for so long that the Dakota around
me commenced to fume with rage and humiliation, whilst the Cheyenne
were convulsed with mirth. Then Nakuiman evidently decided to end
the farce. He bounded at the Dutchman like a ball flung at a wall,
and confident as I had been, I experienced a moment of foreboding as
that rush came. Compact with concentrated energy, the Cheyenne drove
home his thrust so fast that we bystanders could not follow it.
But Peter could. The Dutchman came awake as though by magic. His
lolling stupidity vanished. His great body became instinct with the
vitality that flowed inexhaustibly from springs that had never been
plumbed. The Cheyenne struck. There was a flash of steel. Peter's
arms whipped out. Steel flashed again in a wide arc, and the knife
soared high in air and fell, point-down in the sod, twenty feet away.
Remained, then, two heaving bodies. Peter held his man by one wrist
and a forearm. The Cheyenne was struggling with every ounce of
strength to break one of these grips so that he might seize his foe
by the throat. Whilst I watched he stooped his head and fastened his
teeth in Peter's shoulder.
The blood spurted from the wound and a quiver convulsed Peter's
mighty frame. But he refused to be diverted from his purpose.
Slowly, inexorably, he applied his pressure. And slowly, but
inevitably, the Cheyenne's straining sinews yielded to him.
Nakuiman's left arm was forced back--and back. Suddenly there was a
loud crack. The Indian yelped like an animal in pain. The arm fell
limp--and with the swift ferocity of a cat Peter pounced on the man's
throat.
The jaws still fastened in the Dutchman's throbbing shoulder yielded
to that awful pressure. A single gasping cry reached us. The
Cheyenne's head sank back, and by a marvelous coordination of effort,
Peter heaved the man's body at arm's-length over his head. A moment
he held it there, his eyes on the ranks of Cheyenne warriors who had
laughed at him. Then he flung it at them as though it had been a
sack of corn.
It twisted through the air, struck the ground and rolled over and
over into a huddle of inanimate limbs.
Peter shook himself, turned on his heel and walked slowly back to us.
"_Oof_," he remarked mildly. "Dot made me sweat."
That matter-of-fact action, brought the Cheyenne to realization of
what had happened. Carried away by the spectacle of their chief's
end, they abandoned all thought of moderation and charged us,
bow-strings twanging. But the Dakotas were not unprepared.
Chatanskah had fetched along a dozen of the French firelocks, in the
use of which we had instructed his warriors, and we were able to meet
the enemy with a devastating discharge which brought them up short.
Leaderless and doubly dismayed, they had no fight left in them, and
fled across the prairie pursued by the fleetest young men of the band.
We were left with the pleasant task of reaping a full toll of
buffalo-meat, and the remaining Dakota, after scalping the dead
Cheyenne and congratulating Corlaer, formed in a long line and
trotted down toward the flank of the moving herd. The firing of the
muskets had disconcerted the outer files of its mass, but these so
far seemed to have made no impression upon the inner columns, and the
net result of their perturbation was to slow up the herd's pace and
start a confusion which was accentuated to a horrible degree as soon
as the Dakota came within bow-shot.
Chatanskah afterward assured us that this herd must have wandered far
without encountering men because it showed so little evidence of fear
at our approach. He was also of the opinion that any herd of such
enormous dimensions was more difficult to stampede than a herd of
comparatively small size. At any rate, it was several moments after
the booming twang of the bow-strings began that the herd showed a
tendency to mill and change its direction. And during those few
moments the Dakota slew enough meat to last their village through the
Winter. Aiming between the ribs of the shaggy beasts they drove
their flat-headed hunting-arrows into the fat carcasses up to the
feathers, and it was seldom that two shots were required for one
buffalo. Some staggered on a ways, but any buffalo that had a Dakota
hunting-arrow in its vitals was sure to drop.
They dropped so fast and so easily that I was overcome with a pang of
horror. It seemed ghastly, this wholesale slaughter. Bulls, cows,
half-grown calves--but especially cows--fell by the score. It was a
battue. And yet it made no impression at all upon the myriads of the
herd. As far as we could see from horizon to horizon all was
buffalo. They surged up over one skyline and dwindled behind
another. And the only noises they made were the low rumbling of
their countless hoofs and an indescribably plaintive note, part
bellow, part moo--before the fright took them.
Our hunters had slain until their arms ached from pulling the taut
bows, and whilst the thousands of buffalo adjacent to us had threshed
away and striven to gallop either backward or forward or into the
heart of the mass, the mass, itself, had given no indication of
realizing that it was being attacked. I remember thinking that if
the brutes possessed any reasoning power they would turn upon us in
their numbers and trample us in the dust.
Instead, they fled from us. By some obscure process of animal
instinct the warning was conveyed at last from the minor hordes we
had harried so mercilessly to their farther-most brethren on the
unseen western edge of the swarming myriads. One moment they were
trending from north to south like some unsoluble phenomenon of
nature, an endless, dusty procession of shaggy brown hides. The next
they had showed us their sterns, turned westward, and were galloping
away with a deafening roar of hoofs. It was as if the whole world
was in motion. The dust clouds became so dense as to hide all
movement. We stood now on the verge of the prairie. From our feet a
brown desert stretched in the wake of the fugitive herd, a desert of
pulverized earth in which there was not a single growing thing.
The roar of hoofs became faint in the distance. The dust-clouds
slowly settled. A short while afterward I came and looked in the
direction the buffalo had taken, and they were gone. The brown
desert filled the skyline. And all about our Indians were busy with
skinning-knives, wrapping the choice cuts of meat in the bloody
hides; and Chatanskah was dispatching runners to bring out the full
strength of the tribe; for we had made such a killing as seldom fell
to the lot of an Indian community, and it behooved them to lose
nothing of the riches nature had thrown in their way. Whatever might
be the lot of their brothers in the neighboring villages, the Dakota
of the Wahpeton Council Fire knew that for this Winter at least they
were certain to abide snug and well-fed in their teepees.
Chatanskah talked of our deeds as the band clustered about the
camp-fire that night, with sentries thrown out around the area strewn
with dead buffalo to guard the spoil against wolf and wild dog and
the eagles that swooped from the air.
"There will be much spoken of this in the Winter Count," he announced
proudly. "The old men will say we have done well. The other Council
Fires will be envious. But remember, brothers, that it was our white
brother who slew Nakuiman with his bare hands and turned the hearts
of Cheyenne to water. _Hai_, that was the greatest fight I ever saw!
The Cheyenne will go home and creep under their squaws' robes.
"And what shall we say of our white brother who broke Nakuiman in
pieces? The Cheyenne was called The Bear. Is not a warrior who
slays a bear more than a bear? _Hai_, my warriors, I hear you say
yes! So let us give the slayer of The Bear a new name. We will call
him Mahtotopah*--for he is a bear, himself; he is Two Bears."
* Two Bears.
"_Hai, hai_," applauded the circles of warriors who sat around the
fire, first the old men, outside those the youngsters, who had names
to win.
"But Chatanskah will not forget that he has promised to guide
Tawannears and his white brothers to the country of the Teton
Dakota?" reminded Tawannears.
Chatanskah shook his head sorrowfully.
"Chatanskah has not forgotten," he said, "but he hoped that a bird
might come and whisper in the ears of his new brothers and tell them
to stay with the Dakota. In the Sky Mountains you will find no sweet
buffalo meat. There are no teepees to shield you from the wind.
Mahtotopah will waste his strength on the rocks. But you are brave
men, and I know you will go on until the Great Spirit calls you."