portent, all those assembled within the council lodge rapidly moved
themselves from the presence of In-ne-cose. He however sat stoically
smoking, apparently not the least disturbed by the fearful predictions
of the doctor. In a few moments the old chief rose again, and thus
addressed himself to the presumptuous white man:
"The Great Spirit lives in the clouds. If he wills that all my people
shall go to him, they must obey. My little ones slept on the mystery
blanket last night; they awoke this morning and were well. Will the Bad
Spirit touch them?"
Then drawing the "death-blanket" closer around him, In-ne-cose
apparently defied the evil effects of the wrap. But shortly afterward
his dusky skin showed a slight pallor and he seemed strangely agitated.
He again spoke, though this time in a disturbed voice, addressing
himself, as before, directly to the doctor:
"The chief of the Mandans is rich. He has four squaws already. If the
young pale-face will drive away the Bad Spirit from the little ones of
In-ne-cose, he may take Ah-key-nes-tou for his wife."
The doctor, delighted at these words of the head chief, grasped the
old man's hand, and told him that he would do his best to save the
children. Then, ordering Ah-key-nes-tou's brother to lead his sister
to his lodge on the knoll, he told another Indian to go and bring his
medicine chest to the lodge of In-ne-cose. He then went to the chief's
lodge himself, but on examining the little ones discovered it was too
late for vaccination: the blanket had done its work!
The next day the pestilence broke out in a hundred lodges. Very soon
the Indians were not able to bury their dead--the latter outnumbering
the living. In less than a month, out of three thousand families only
eight survived. Where the Mandan village once stood, even as late as
thirty years ago the traces of over eight thousand graves could be
seen. It was an awful visitation, almost annihilating a whole nation!
In-ne-cose, as predicted by the doctor, was the first to die.
Ah-key-nes-tou was saved by prompt vaccination. The doctor took her
to St. Louis, where they were married, the ceremony being performed
by that grand and good old Catholic priest, Father DeSmet, who was
stationed there at the time, and whose memory is kept green by every
tribe of Indians on the continent. Ah-key-nes-tou was educated at one
of the convents in the Mound City, became the pet of society, and her
worthy husband a State Senator.
CARSON'S "FIRST INDIAN."
[Illustration: KIT CARSON.]
I have been requested by several parties to offer something of Kit
Carson's early days on the Plains. Having been intimate with that
famous man during the declining years of his eventful life, and having
heard from his own lips many of the adventures of his youth, while
sitting around the camp-fire on several little "outings" with him and
Maxwell in the mountains of New Mexico, I have chosen for my sketch
Kit's first shot at an Indian.
That portion of the great central plains of Kansas which radiates from
the Pawnee Fork as its center, including the bend of the Arkansas,
where that river makes a sudden sweep to the southeast, and the
beautiful valley of the Walnut,--in all an area of nearly a thousand
square miles,--was from time immemorial a sort of debatable ground,
occupied by none of the tribes, but claimed by all to hunt in, for it
was a famous resort of the buffalo.
None of the various bands of savages had the temerity to attempt its
permanent occupancy, for whenever they met there--which was of frequent
occurrence--on their annual hunt for their winter's supply of meat, a
bloody battle was sure to ensue. The region referred to has perhaps
been the scene of more sanguinary conflicts than any other portion of
the continent. Particularly was this the case when the Pawnees, who
claimed the country, met their hereditary enemies, the Cheyennes.
Through this region, hugging the margin of the silent Arkansas, and
running under the very shadow of Pawnee Rock, the old Santa Fé trail
wound its course, now the actual road-bed of the Santa Fé Railway,--so
closely are the past and present transcontinental highways cemented at
this point: one, a mere memory; the other, one of the great railways
now spanning the continent.
Who, among the bearded and grizzled old fellows like myself, has
forgotten that most exciting and sensational (at least it was so to
my boyish mind) of all the miserably executed illustrations in the
geographies of their school-days fifty years ago--"Santa Fé Traders
Attacked by Indians"? The picture located the scene of the fight
at Pawnee Rock, which formed a sort of a nondescript shadow in the
background of a crudely drawn representation of the dangers of the
trail.
I witnessed a spirited encounter between a small band of the Cheyennes
and Pawnees in the fall of 1867. It occurred on the open prairie, just
north of the mouth of the Walnut, about four miles from where the city
of Great Bend now stands. Both tribes were hunting the buffalo, and
when each by accident discovered the presence of the other, with a
demoniacal yell that fairly shook the sand-dunes of the Arkansas they
rushed at once into the shock of battle.
The Pawnees were of course friendly to the whites, and had permission
from their agent to leave their reservation in the valley of the
Neosho, near Council Grove. At that particular time, for a wonder, the
Cheyennes too were temporarily at peace with the Government. So I had
nothing to do but passively witness the savage combat.
Both bands of the savages soon exhausted their ammunition, and then
the chiefs of the contending factions appealed to me most earnestly to
supply them with more, of which there was plenty at Fort Zarah, only
half a mile away. I was necessarily forced to remain neutral, but my
sympathies were with the "under dog" in the fight,--which happened to
be the Cheyennes, whom the Pawnees drove off disgraced and discomfitted.
That evening, in a grove of timber on the Walnut, the victors had a
grand dance in which scalps, ears and fingers of their enemy, suspended
by strings to poles, were important accessories to their weird orgies
around the huge camp-fires.
How true it is, as Longfellow declares: "The thoughts of youth are
long, long thoughts." I remember that map in the geographies of fifty
years ago (already referred to) on which was depicted "the Great
American Desert," over which I pored in the little log school-house
at the crossroads in the country, near my home in one of the Eastern
States. How distinctly I remember seeing Bent's old fort marked on the
western edge of the "Desert" on that quaint map. Then, in the "long,
long thoughts" of my boyhood's fancy, it seemed to me to be away out
on the confines of another world, for then I had never been thirty
miles away from the farm on which I was reared. I have slept under
the old fort's hospitable roof many times since, but long before the
era of railroads, where, gathered around its huge adobe fireplaces, up
whose cavernous throats the yellow flames crackled and roared, were the
mighty men of the Ute nation, with Kit Carson, Lucien B. Maxwell, Bent,
and other famous characters of the border, conversing in the beautiful
but silent sign-language, that is so perfect in its symbolization. Of
those who were present then, all but myself are long since dead, and
the scenes of those days are only hidden pictures in the storehouse of
my brain, to be called back in the quiet of the gloaming, with their
host of accompanying pleasant memories of a shadowy past.
In my boyhood days I honestly believed that Kit Carson was at least
eight feet tall; that he always dressed in the traditional buckskin,
fringed at the seams, and beaded and "porcupined" all over; that
he carried innumerable eleven-inch bowie-knives, his rifle of huge
dimensions--so large and heavy that, like Warwick's sword, no ordinary
man could even lift it. I believed his regular meal to be an entire
buffalo, which he raised with both hands to his mouth, and picked its
immense bones as easily as the average mortal does a chicken's wing,
and that he drank out of nothing smaller than a river. Boys, probably
by the thousands, had the same "long thoughts," for boy-nature is the
same everywhere.
Kit Carson was really a man under the average height, rather
delicate-looking in physical make-up than otherwise, but in fact,
wiry and quick, though cautious, possessing nerves of steel and an
imperturbability in the moment of supreme danger that was marvelous to
contemplate.
He was fond of cards and horse-racing, a famous rider in his younger
days, having entered the lists in many a contest with the Indians, who
are generally passionately devoted to trials of speed between rival
ponies. I have myself seen, in the long-ago, as many as eight hundred
horses bet by contending bands, whose wealth was counted by the number
of animals they possessed.
Kit once, years before he became famous, fought a duel, mounted; he
escaped with a bullet-wound behind his left ear, the scar of which he
carried to his grave, but he winged his equally youthful antagonist in
the quarrel.
Kit's nature was composed of the noblest of attributes: he was brave,
but never reckless like Custer; unselfish, a veritable exponent of
Christian altruism; and as true to his friends as steel to the magnet.
He died in 1868, at Fort Lyon, on the Arkansas, while on his way to
Fort Harker to make me a long-promised visit. For some time after
his passing away he rested peacefully under the gnarled and knotted
old cottonwoods which fringe the river--that Nile of America--in the
vicinity of Lyon. Later, his remains were moved to Taos, his former
New Mexico home, where an appropriate monument was erected over them;
in the plaza of quaint and curious Santa Fé, too, there is a massive
cenotaph which records his deeds and name.
Kit was born in Kentucky, on the 24th of December, 1809. While a mere
infant his parents emigrated to what is now Howard county, Missouri,
which at that early date was literally a "howling wilderness" filled
with "varmints" of all kinds.
There, as soon as he was big enough to lift a rifle, the old-fashioned
patch-and-ball, flint-lock affair, the embryo great frontiersman began
to hunt, and by the time he was fifteen he became the most expert shot
in the whole settlement. He could hit the eye of a squirrel every time
he pulled the trigger, or it didn't count.
At this period, however, his father apprenticed him to a saddler, with
whom he worked faithfully for two years, spending all his leisure
moments in the primitive forest, hunting bear, deer, and other large
game that abounded there.
In two years more, when Kit had reached the age of seventeen, the
trade with Santa Fé began, with its initial point in the hamlet of Old
Franklin, in Howard county, near where Kit lived (from which place it
did not move to Independence until 1836).
In the late spring of 1826, Col. St. Vrain, a prominent agent of the
great fur companies, (a grand old gentleman whom I knew intimately,)
arrived at Franklin and made preparations to fit out a large caravan
destined for the far-off Rocky Mountains, loaded with goods to be used
in trading with the Indians for the skins of the valuable fur-bearing
animals of that remote and but little known region.
Kit, as green as any boy of his age who had never been twenty miles
from his home, was infatuated by the stories told by the old trappers
of the Colonel's outfit, regarding the wonderful game in the land to
which they were going, and he was easily persuaded to join the caravan
in the capacity of hunter, his prowess with the rifle having reached
the ears of the major-domo of the train. Kit ran away from home, I
suspect, though he never told me so.
The expedition was composed of twenty-six mule-wagons, some loose
stock, and forty-two men. In addition to his employment as hunter,
young Kit was to help drive the extra animals, take his turn in
standing guard, and make himself generally useful.
The party marched wearily along, day after day, Kit proving his right
to the reputation of being a mighty hunter, without any adventure
worthy of recording, until they arrived at the Walnut, where they
discovered the first signs of Indians. They had halted for that day;
the mules were unharnessed, the camp-fires lighted, and the men about
to indulge in their ever-welcome black coffee, when they were suddenly
surprised by half a dozen Pawnees, who, mounted on their ponies,
hideously painted and uttering the most diabolical yells, rushed out of
the tall grass on the Arkansas bottom, and swinging their buffalo robes
attempted to stampede the animals of the caravan.
Every man in the outfit was on his feet in an instant with his rifle in
hand, so that all the impudent savages got for their pains were a few
harmless shots as they scampered back to the river and over into the
sand-hills out of sight.
The next night the caravan camped at the foot of Pawnee Rock, and of
course, after the experience of the afternoon before, every precaution
was employed to prevent another surprise. The wagons were formed into
a corral, so that the animals might be protected in the event of a
prolonged fight with the savages. The guards were instructed to be
doubly vigilant, and every man slept with his rifle on his arm, for
the old Colonel assured them the savages would never rest content with
their defeat on the Walnut, but true to their thieving propensities and
their desire for revenge, would seize the first favorable opportunity
to renew the attack.
All this was a new and strange experience to young Carson, who had
never before seen any Indians except a few friendly Shawnees and
Osages. Of the methods and tactics of the wild Plains tribes, he
literally knew nothing.
When everything was arranged for the night, Kit was posted as a
sentinel immediately in front of the south face of the Rock, nearly two
hundred yards from the wagon corral. The other men who were on guard
were posted on top, and on the open prairie on either side.
About half-past eleven, as near as he could guess, Kit told me, one of
the guards yelled out "Indians!" and ran the mules that were grazing
near, into the corral, while the entire company turned out of their
blankets on the report of a rifle on the midnight air coming from the
direction of the Rock.
In a few minutes young Kit came running down toward the corral, where
the men had collected, and Col. St. Vrain asked him if he had seen any
Indians.
[Illustration: THE TRAIN AT PAWNEE ROCK.]
"Yes," replied Kit, "I killed one of the red devils--I saw him fall."
There was no further disturbance that night; it proved to be a false
alarm; so all who were not standing guard that night were soon
peacefully sleeping again.
The next morning at the first streak of day, every one was up and
anxious to see young Carson's dead Indian. They went out _en masse_ to
the Rock, when instead of finding a painted Pawnee, they discovered
Kit's riding-mule, dead--shot through the head.
The boy felt terribly mortified over his ridiculous blunder, and it was
a long time before he heard the last of his midnight shot at his mule.
He explained to me the circumstances: He had not slept any the previous
night, and he had watched so earnestly for a chance to kill a Pawnee
that he supposed he must have fallen asleep leaning against the face of
the Rock; "but I was wide enough awake to hear the cry of 'Indians!'"
said he. "I had picketed my mule about twenty steps from where I stood,
and I suppose it had been lying down. All I know is that the first
thing I saw after the alarm was something rising up out of the grass. I
thought sure it was an Indian; I took aim, and pulled the trigger. It
was a center shot; I don't believe that mule kicked once after he was
hit!"
In the morning, a few minutes after the men had returned from a visit
to Kit's dead mule, a real battle commenced. The Pawnees attacked the
camp in earnest, and kept the little outfit busy all that day, the
next night, and till the following night--nearly three whole days, the
animals all that time shut up in the corral without food or water.
On the second midnight the men harnessed up and attempted to drive out,
but were driven back and had to give it up.
The third night, just before morning, they tried it again, determined
to reach the ford at Pawnee Rock to water their animals, or all would
perish. It was a little more than ten miles distant from the Rock (and
is now within the corporate limits of Larned).
They succeeded in keeping off the savages, and arrived at the ford in
comparative safety. The trail at that point crossed the creek in the
shape of a horseshoe; or rather, in consequence of a double bend in the
stream as it debouches into the Arkansas, the road crossed it twice,
as all who have traveled the old Santa Fé trail in the early days will
remember.
In making this crooked passage many of the wagons were badly wrecked in
the creek, because the mules were terribly thirsty, and their drivers
could not control them.
The caravan was hardly "strung out" again on the opposite bank of the
Pawnee, when the Indians poured a shower of arrows and a volley of
bullets from both sides of the trail into the train. But before they
could reload or draw their arrows a desperate charge was made among
them, headed by the Colonel, and it took only a few minutes to clear
out the savages, and then the caravan moved on.
During the whole fight at the Rock and at Pawnee Fork, the party lost
four men killed, seven wounded, and eleven mules killed (not including
Kit's), and twenty wounded.
From this fight Kit said Pawnee Rock was named.
A THEORY AS TO GEN. CUSTER'S DEATH.
DID HE COMMIT SUICIDE?
[Illustration: GEN. GEORGE A. CUSTER.]
Little is known of the origin of scalp-taking, and that, vague and
indefinite: nearly every tribe has some wild, weird legend to account
for the custom, but these traditions vary widely as to the cause. That
"raising the hair" of an enemy is of great antiquity, there is no
doubt, as in the Bible it is related how the soldiers tore the skin
from the heads of their whipped foes. All, or at least all Indian
tribes with which I am acquainted, scalp their enemies killed in battle.
With the Indian there appears to be some close affiliation between the
departed spirit and his hair. I have questioned many a blood-begrimed
warrior why he should want a dead man's hair, and invariably there
have been assigned a number of reasons, three of which are most
prominent: First, it is an evidence to his people that he has triumphed
over an enemy; second, the scalps are employed very prominently in the
incantations of the "medicine lodge"--a part of their religious rites;
third, the savage believes there is a wonderfully inherent power in
the scalp of an enemy. All the excellent qualities of the victim go
with his hair the moment it is wrenched from his head. If it be that of
a renowned warrior, so much the more are they anxious to procure his
scalp, for the fortunate possessor then inherits all the bravery and
prowess of its original owner.
I have known of but one instance in all my experience among the
Indians, where a white man taken prisoner in battle escaped death.
It was a great many years ago; the party, a dear friend, still
living, was a grand old mountaineer,--but the homeliest man on earth,
probably. He was red-faced, wrinkled, and pockmarked, with a mouth as
large and full of teeth as a gorilla's, and there was no more hair
on any part of his head than there is on the head of a cane. He was
captured in a prolonged fight and taken to the village of the tribe
where the principal chief resided. The latter gave one look at the
prisoner, shook his head, and said he was "bad medicine"; that if he
was not the "evil spirit" himself, he was closely allied to him. He
then ordered his subordinates to furnish him with a pony, loaded him
with provisions, provided him with a rifle, and told him to go to his
people. This incident, which is a fact, shows that you cannot account
for the occasional vagaries of the North-American savage.
The Indians of the Plains and Rocky Mountains would rather, for the
reason last above stated, take one scalp of a famous scout or army
officer who has successfully chastised them, like Custer, Sully, and
Crook, than a dozen of those of ordinary white men.
Twenty-six years ago next November I was camping on the high "divide"
between the Arkansas river and the Beaver, with a party of Government
Indian scouts, members of three friendly tribes,--Osages, Pawnees,
and Kaws,--employed by order of Gen. Sheridan in his winter campaign
against the hostile Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas. It was a terribly
gusty day, one of those so characteristic of our Plains region at
certain times of the year. As with closely wrapped blankets we huddled
around our little fire of buffalo-chips, the dust and ashes would rise
in miniature whirlwinds and go dancing over the prairies until they
exhausted themselves.
I asked a venerable chief of the Osages who was present, "Little
River," nearly eighty years old, what those fitful spirals indicated,
in order to draw from his savage mind his ideas of the forces of
nature. He replied: "They are the spirits of some southern Indians,
killed and scalped up north, going back to the lodges of their people."
I thought that if he had substituted the word "matter" for
"spirit"--for everywhere we tread upon the dust of a lost
civilization--probably he would have been nearer the truth than in the
statement of one of the superstitions of his race.
[Illustration: LITTLE RIVER.]
Among the many myths of the American savage, the disposition of the
soul after its separation from the body, and its close connection with
its scalp, vary according to the religion of the tribe. With some,
the "journey to the happy hunting-grounds" begins immediately; with
others, the spirit remains near the grave. Again, if an Indian dies
away from the lodges of his people, the spirit returns at once to them,
where it hovers, as if reluctant to leave. Among the "upper-river
tribes" it is believed that before the spirit finally departs from
those who have died of wounds received in battle, "it floats toward a
great cliff overhanging the Missouri, and carves upon the wall of rock
a picture showing the manner of death." It is believed by most Plains
tribes that the soul attaches itself to the scalp; that the soul of a
person scalped does not suffer from the wounds inflicted on the body,
but that the converse is the case where the scalp is not torn off.
There are many instances on record where men have been scalped and yet
survived the terrible ordeal, but in every case the scalper supposed
his victim dead, the latter taking good care that the foeman should not
be disabused of the supposed fact.
One who kills himself in battle, accidentally or purposely, has
positively no hereafter; he is irrevocably lost. Those who are struck
by lightning, or die by any other apparently direct operation of the
"Manitou" (the Great Spirit), are hurriedly buried where they fall,
without any ceremony, and no mound or other mark is erected over them.
If after a battle there are found corpses not scalped or their bodies
not mutilated, it is certain that those persons came to death by their
own hand, for it is part of the religion of an Indian not to scalp or
mutilate the body of an enemy who commits suicide. His superstition in
regard to persons dying by suicide or by lightning is as religiously
observed as any other of his myths.
Knowing this deep-rooted superstition as well as I do, I have been led
to believe--though the statement may provoke discussion among those who
know nothing of the Indian character--that the death of the lamented
Gen. Custer in that awfully unequal battle of the "Little Big Horn"
was not according to the accepted theory at that time, viz.: that he
was killed by the Indian chief "Rain-in-the-face." The tale (which I
regard as an idle fiction so far as the facts are concerned) as it has
been told a thousand times and copied in the newspapers of the world,
is, that one day the General's brother Tom, at one of the military
posts where the regiment to which he was attached, the famous Seventh
Cavalry (commanded by the General), was stationed, had a dispute with
Rain-in-the-face, and struck him. The savage was furious with rage,
but suppressed it, and mounting his pony rode off sullenly to his lodge.