unpack and put up the tepees, for very likely we should stay there for
a while. He told us that about sundown the Crows broke and ran and that
Washakie with the other half of our Indians was following them to try
to head them off and keep them from getting away. Washakie thought that
he and his warriors could stop them until morning, and then all of his
band could attack them again. The War Chief sent twenty Indians with
one hundred fresh horses to overtake the Indians that were following
the Crows, for their horses had been on the go all day and were about
worn out. He said that he had seen twenty-five of our Indians that were
dead. How many more had been killed he did not know. Mother told them
that they might take two of her horses and I let them have my roan pony
to help them in their chase after the fleeing Crows.
By this time three or four hundred squaws and papooses were wailing and
moaning till they could be heard for two miles. I asked mother when our
turn would come.
“Do hush and go to sleep,” said Hanabi; but there was not much sleep
that night.
When day came, I saw such a sight as I had never seen before. About one
hundred Indians had been brought in during the night, all very badly
wounded. Mother and I went around to see them. One poor fellow had his
nose shot off and one eye shot out. He said he didn’t feel very well.
Many of them were so badly hurt that I knew they could not live until
sundown, and I thought about half of them would die that day. A few
old Indians were sent over to the battle field to keep the eagles and
wolves from eating the Indians that had been killed. The War Chief had
been shot in the arm and in the leg, but was not very badly hurt. He
had gone before I got up that morning and had taken with him all of the
warriors that were able to go.
[Illustration: Indian grave among the rocks, Utah desert.
_Creel_]
That night a little after dark all of our Indians returned. Washakie
said that the Crows had gone into the thick timber from which he could
not get them out, but that there were not many of them left anyhow. Our
men brought in a very large band of Crows’ horses and saddles and when
they were unpacked I never before saw such a pile of buffalo robes,
blankets, bows and arrows, and guns. The next morning we all started
out for the battle ground to bury our dead and oh, what a sight! There
were Indians scattered everywhere all over the battle field. The squaws
and papooses wailed pitifully when they saw their dead Indians lying
around. Wives were hunting for their husbands; mothers were looking for
their sons.
I went about picking up arrows. I had gathered quite a few when mother
saw me with them.
“Throw them down quick,” she said, “the old Indians will come around
and gather them. Don’t touch anything.”
“What do they want with them?” I asked.
“They will keep them for another fight,” was her answer.
The squaws scalped every Crow they could find.
“Why don’t you scalp our Indians and send their scalps to the Crows?” I
asked her.
“Go away,” she said, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”
Our Indians carried our dead to a deep washout in the side of the hill,
put them in and covered them with dirt and rocks. The dead Crows were
left to the wolves and the buzzards.
That night when I got back to camp I was very tired and hungry, and I
had seen so many Indians scalped that I felt sick and wished from the
bottom of my heart that I was home with my kindred.
About two hundred and fifty horses were captured from the Crows.
Thirty-one Indians on our side had been killed and about one hundred
wounded. Eighteen of these afterwards died from their wounds, making
forty-nine in all we lost in that terrible fight. The Crows had
suffered far worse than we did. The men sent out by Washakie to count
the killed came back and reported that they had found one hundred and
three dead Crows. Washakie thought this number would be increased
greatly by those that died from their wounds.
I began to change my mind about our Indians being cowards after seeing
that fight. I have seen other fights between the whites and the
Indians, but I never have seen greater bravery displayed than was shown
by our Indians in this fierce battle with the Crows.
We had to stay in this place about three weeks to give our wounded
warriors a chance to get well. When we could move them, it was too late
to go the grounds that Washakie had planned, so we began to get ready
for winter. Our camp was moved over on the Angitapa (Rock Creek), and
the hunters began to kill buffaloes while the squaws dried the meat.
There were a good many widows and orphans now to take care of. The
worst of it was the man who was best at cutting the hamstrings had been
killed in battle, so we could not get on so fast with our hunting.
However, we soon got all of the buffaloes that we wanted and the squaws
began to make the hides into robes.
Poor old mother and Hanabi worked very hard to get ours ready for the
journey to Salt Lake. Washakie had a good many robes. Besides those
he had got from hunting, he had bought a lot from other Indians, and
he had his chief’s share of those captured from the Crows. We had six
packs of dried meat and our camp outfit made three more. Altogether it
made so heavy a load that we could not travel very fast.
When we got over the divide Washakie said that mother and I had better
stay there with some of the others to take care of the extra horses. I
did not like to do this, for I wanted to go to Salt Lake this time; but
I would do anything that Washakie advised. He told us that we could
come on slowly after them.
[Illustration: Chief Washakie (center) and two of his Shoshone braves
(Wyoming).
_Bur. Am. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution_]
When they started for Salt Lake, they took with them about thirty head
of the Crows’ horses to swap for anything they could get for them.
After they were gone, there were one hundred of us left behind, mostly
squaws and papooses and old and wounded Indians to take care of,
besides six hundred head of horses.
[Illustration: “He said that it ... would have to be cut off.”]
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIVELY TIMES
After the trading party had been gone two days, the rest of our band
moved down the creek to where it sank in the sand hills. Here three of
the wounded Indians got so bad that we had to stop for some time; but
we had the finest of grass for our horses, and the sage hens were as
thick as could be.
One day I was out shooting chickens. I had killed four with arrows and
was coming home, when, as I was passing a tepee, a dog jumped out and
got me by the leg. He tore off quite a piece of my flesh and I shot him
through with an arrow, leaving the feathers on one side of him and the
spike sticking out of the other. As I was trying to catch the dog to
get my arrow back, the old squaw that owned him ran up with a rope. She
threw it over my head and jerked me along to her tepee. And there she
held me while her girl tied my feet and hands. Then the angry old squaw
grabbed a butcher knife and was going to cut my head off.
A sick Indian, who happened to be lying near by, jumped up and held
the squaw while a little boy ran and told mother. Mother came in double
quick time. She grabbed the knife from the squaw, cut the strap that
she had tied me with, took me by the arm, and made me hike for my
tepee. When she saw how the dog had bitten me, oh, she was mad. She
went back to the squaw, with me following her, and said: “If you don’t
kill that dog before sundown, I will kill you. Look here, see this poor
boy with his leg nearly bitten off.”
The old Indians that had gathered around stopped the fracas, or I guess
there would have been another camp fight.
Mother went for the medicine man. When he came he said that it was a
very bad bite, and that we must be very careful or blood poison would
set in. He said that the dog would have to be killed. I told him that I
thought the dog would die if they let him alone.
“But he must be killed before he dies,” said the medicine man.
This made me laugh.
The cut in my leg was “V” shaped, and the piece of flesh hung only by
the skin.
“Ouch!” I cried, when he tried to put it back in place.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Ouch!”
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” he said, going on with his work of patching up my leg. He put
the piece back where it belonged and tied it there with a piece of
something; then he got some weeds, mashed them up and made a poultice
and put it on the wound.
After this he went to have the dog killed. I told him to hurry up or
the dog would be dead before he got there.
When the medicine man told any one to do anything, he had to do it.
He sent a big boy to kill the dog, but when the boy got to the tepee,
the old squaw and her girl pitched on to him and beat the poor fellow
nearly to death. Then the medicine man sent two big Indians to see what
they could do. When they reached the place, I could hear very loud
talking, so I got up and went to the door to see the fun. One Indian
had hold of the old squaw; the other had the girl and they were shaking
them to beat time. I was glad of it. They deserved a good shaking.
Well, they killed the dog before he died, anyway.
When the camp had quieted down again, the medicine man came and changed
the poultice on my leg. It had swollen very badly by this time. He told
mother to boil sage leaves and with the tea to bathe my leg very often.
I could hear mother crying while she was out gathering the sage, and
when she came in I asked her what she was crying about. She said she
was afraid that I should be lame all my life from the hurt. I told her
that I should be well in a week, that a little thing like that would
not make me lame very long; but my leg pained me so that I did not get
much sleep that night.
The next morning the squaw and her girl and their tepee were gone, but
the sick Indian was left lying there alone in his bed. I told mother
to let him come into our tepee and stay until his squaw got back. She
had gone with Washakie to sell her robes and skins, and had left her
sister-in-law to take care of her wounded husband until she returned.
Mother objected to taking care of him, but when I told her he had
saved my life by keeping that old squaw from cutting my head off, she
consented and asked him to come over to our tepee.
The poor old fellow was very sick and so weak he could hardly walk. He
had been shot three times with arrows--in the arm, in the leg, and in
his side. The wound in his side was so bad that the medicine man had to
take out part of his two ribs. It kept the medicine man busy tending to
me and all of the wounded Indians.
Mother bathed my sore leg three times a day with sage tea; the swelling
all went away, and I was getting along fine. In about a week I had
mother get me some sticks and I made some crutches; then I could get
around out of doors. When the other lame Indians saw how well I could
move about, they had me make them crutches also, so that they could
move about.
After staying here nearly two weeks, we had to move, for the wood was
getting scarce close to camp. I hobbled around and helped mother pack
up; then we went over through the sand hills and came to a good-sized
stream which they called Tonobipa. The stream ran south through the
sand hills and lava beds, and farther down it sank out of sight into
the ground.
The sick Indians had a hard time while we were on the move, but I
stood the trip very well. After staying in our new camp for four days,
we packed up again and started for the place where we were to meet
Washakie. That was five days’ travel away. We could not travel very
fast on account of the sick Indians and we could not get a very early
start because of having so many horses to pack, so it seemed a very
long journey.
One day we had to make a twenty-five-mile ride to reach water. That day
was too hard on our sick. We were obliged to leave two of them in the
sand hills, while we pushed on to the Piupa. One old Indian carried
water back to them. It was way after dark when we got to the river.
Oh, how tired I was, and how my leg did hurt before that day’s travel
was over. I was glad to get a good drink of water and to lie down to
rest. My leg hurt so much that mother would not let me do a thing. She
unpacked all the horses and put up the tepee alone.
The medicine man came to take care of my leg. When he unwrapped it to
put on another poultice, he found that it had turned black. He said
that it had begun to mortify and would have to be cut off. Then mother
began to cry so hard that the whole camp heard her, and several Indians
came up to see what was the matter. She told them that her poor boy
must lose his leg.
“Not by a blame sight!” I said. Then I told the old medicine man to
pike away to his tepee and not to come back any more. Mother cried
harder and begged him not to go. She said that I was out of my head and
did not know what I was saying.
“Yes, he does,” said the old rascal, “and I do not care if the little
white devil does die.”
“I know you don’t,” I replied; “if you did, you would not want to cut
my leg off. I know very well what I am saying,” I told him; “now you
get, and mighty quick, too, or when Washakie comes I’ll have him cut
both your legs off.”
Away he went as mad as fire. When he had gone mother said, “Now you
have run the medicine man off, you will die.”
“Not half so quick as I would if he kept putting his poisoned poultices
on my leg,” I said. “I should have been well long ago if he had left me
alone. He has been trying to kill me ever since he began to doctor me.
I am not going to let him do anything for me any more.”
Mother gathered more sage and bathed my leg. The poor old woman worked
with me nearly all night, and the next morning my leg was better, but
I could not move it without a great deal of pain. Mother said that
we should not leave that place until I got well even if it took all
winter. The next morning, when mother got up she said she dreamed that
Washakie came and killed a sage hen and put the entrails on my leg and
it cured it right away. I told her to keep right on with sage tea, and
I thought it would be all right soon.
[Illustration: The sage hen or sage grouse, a beautiful Western bird
that should be saved.
_American Museum of Natural History_]
After we had been here a few days, some of the Indians wanted to go on
to the place where we were to meet Washakie; but mother said she would
not move until I got better, so five tepees stayed with us and the rest
went on. Washakie and his party were at the rendezvous waiting for
them. When they told him how I was, he started out, and in two days he
reached our camp.
The chief was very angry when he saw my leg and was told how I had
been treated. It was bad enough, he said, to be bitten by a dog without
having the squaw threaten to kill me. He said that she would have to
leave the tribe. When I told him how the old medicine man had acted, he
was angrier still.
The chief had left his things in bad shape; he wanted to go back as
soon as I could be moved. I told him I thought I could travel, so the
next morning we packed up for the start; but as I went to get on my
horse it hurt my leg so much that I began to cry.
“Hold on,” said Washakie, “I will fix things so you can ride better.”
Then he and some more Indians tied some tepee poles on each side of two
horses and wove some rope between the poles, making a kind of litter.
Several buffalo robes were thrown on the rope net and this made a fine
bed. Mother led the front horse and away we went in first-class style.
After we got going, Washakie came up and asked me whether they were
traveling too fast.
“No,” I said, “you can run if you want to.”
He laughed and said that I was all right.
That day mother got some boys to shoot some sage hens for her. They
killed three and when we camped she put the entrails on my sore leg. I
slept well that night. It was the first good sleep I had had for more
than a week. As we traveled along, mother took good care of my leg in
this way and by the time we got to the main camp I could walk again on
my crutches.
The next morning after we arrived here, Washakie told the War Chief
to send down the river for the best medicine man in the tribe. I told
Washakie that I would not let any more of his medicine men fool with
my leg. He said that he only wanted him to see it. That day the good
medicine man came, and when he saw my leg, he shook his head and said
that it was a wonder I was alive, for the old medicine man had been
putting poison weeds on it, and if he had kept it up two days longer I
would have been dead.
Washakie sent for the old medicine man. When he came the chief asked
him, “What have you been doing with this boy?”
He said that he had been doing all he could for me.
“I don’t want any more of your lies,” said Washakie. “If this boy had
died, I would have had you tied to the tail of a wild horse and let him
kick and drag you to death. Now, go, and don’t let me see you any more,
for you are hated by every Indian, squaw, and papoose in this camp.”
We stayed in this place till my leg got nearly well, then we moved on
down the river to stop for the winter. Here the fishing was good, and
the white-tailed deer, ducks, and rabbits were very plentiful.
[Illustration: “I used to like to watch him make arrows.”]
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OLD MOROGONAI
During the time that I was disabled and had to stay in the tepee, my
old friend, Morogonai, would come and talk to me for hours. He told
me all about the first white men he ever saw. It was Lewis and Clark.
When they made their trip across the continent, this old Indian had
sold them some horses, and had traveled with them for about ten days,
catching fish and trading them to the whites for shirts and other
articles.
Old Morogonai was respected by all the tribe. He had once been a chief
among the Shoshones, but now that he was too old to lead the Indians,
he became an arrow maker for them.
I used to like to watch him make arrows. It takes skill to make a good
one. Our Indians generally used the limbs of service-berry bushes for
this purpose. They would cut a great many of these and leave them for
a year to dry thoroughly. Old Morogonai would take a bundle of these
seasoned limbs and draw each one through a hole in an antelope horn to
make it perfectly straight. Then he would crease each shaft, and after
this he would feather them and put on the steel spikes. In earlier
times they used flint heads, which they had chipped into shape. If the
arrow was for long-distance shooting, the feathers were made heavier
than the spike; if for short distances, the spike was made heavier so
that it would bring the arrow down more quickly.
The bows were sometimes made of mountain sheep horns, which were thrown
into some hot spring and left there until they were pliable. Then they
were shaped, and a strip of sinew was stuck on the back with some kind
of balsam gum that was about as good as glue. This made a powerful bow.
Not many Indians had this kind; most of our Indians used bows made from
white cedar strung with sinew along the back.
For other weapons, the Indians had spears made of small pine-tree
shafts about twelve feet long and a steel spike about four inches in
length. When they were not using their spears, they would take the
spike off the shaft, sharpen it, and keep it in a little buckskin
scabbard. They traded with the whites for knives and tomahawks and guns.
Old Morogonai told me many things about his experiences with the white
man. He was not unfriendly towards them, but he felt that they had
often mistreated the Indians, and caused a good deal of unnecessary
suffering and trouble for both the red men and the whites.
“At one time,” he said, “an emigrant train, on its way to Oregon,
camped at Humboldt Springs. Some of Pocatello’s Indians went to the
camp to swap buckskins for flour. The white men took three of their
squaws and drove the rest of the Indians away. That made the Indians
mad. They gathered a large band of Indians, followed the train, and
killed every one of the white men in it. Then they took all their
stock and clothing and food and weapons, and afterwards set fire to the
wagons.”
“At another time,” he said, “some mail carriers drove a band of fine
big horses up to my camp of Indians and asked me to take care of the
animals for them for two moons, then they would come and give us
fifteen red blankets. They had stolen the horses from an emigrant
train. We did not know this, however, so we agreed to take care of the
animals for them.
“In a few days the emigrants found the tracks of their horses around
our camp and thinking we had stolen them, they began to shoot before
they gave my Indians a chance to explain. After shooting seven of my
braves, they rode off, driving with them not only their own horses but
some of ours.
“I was away at the time with most of my men. When I returned, I found
my oldest boy and five other Indians dead and another dying. I gathered
what was left of my band and that night we set out in hot pursuit of
the whites; but it was eight days before I got a chance to get even.
There were a good many men in the camp and they kept a strong guard at
night. On the eighth night it grew very stormy, we skipped in through
the darkness, stampeded their horses, and got away with twenty-two of
them. The whites followed us, and they would have overtaken us, if we
had not run into a large camp of Pocatello’s Indians. We did not stop,
but kept right on going.
“When the emigrants came up to Pocatello’s band, they pitched into
these Indians without waiting for explanations. A big fight followed
and men were killed on both sides, but the Indians finally got the
worst of it. The best of it was that we got away with the horses.
“After we got back to the main tribe, Washakie happened to hear about
the trouble and he sent for me. I told him the full story. He said
that he did not blame me; but it was a bad scrape and he did not want
any trouble with the whites.
“He advised me to keep away from the road where the white men travel,
and have nothing to do with them; ‘for,’ said he, ‘they have crooked
tongues; no one can believe what they have to say.’”
[Illustration: “Old Ocean” (at right), one of the Lewis and Clark
Shoshone guides. This picture was taken about 1885, when the noted
Indian guide was more than one hundred years old.
_Dr. T. M. Bridges_]
“We did not know,” said the old arrow maker, “what whooping cough,
measles, and smallpox were until the whites brought these diseases
among us. A train of emigrants once camped near us; some of their
white papooses had the whooping cough; our papooses caught it from
them. Our medicine man tried to cure it as he would a bad cold, and
more than half of our papooses died from the disease and the treatment.
Hundreds of our people have been killed with the smallpox brought to us
by the white man.
“The white men keep crowding the Indians that are east of here out
west, and they keep crowding us farther west. Very soon they will have
us away out in Nevada where there is nothing but lizards and snakes and
horned toads to live on. If they crowd us farther than that, we shall
have to jump off into the Great Water.”
[Illustration: Family of Bannock Indians of Pocatello’s tribe, about
1860.
_Bur. Am. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution_]
When Old Morogonai was telling me these and other tales about the cruel
wrongs the Indians have suffered from the whites, I was not prepared to
sympathize with him as I can now. But I have seen so much since on both
sides that I am sure he told me the truth. Most of the trouble between
the whites and the Indians has been caused by the white men, who had
not white hearts; they did not treat the Indian fairly.
[Illustration: Shoshone and Bannock Indian relics collected by Dr. T.
M. Bridges.]
I know that the Indians were a treacherous and revengeful people. They
always demanded a life to pay for a life, and they would often do
bloodthirsty things. But the whites were mostly to blame. If they had
been fair with the Indians, and treated them kindly, instead of taking
mean advantages of them, the Indians would have been kind and friendly.
I cannot blame the Indians as much as some do. They were good friends
to me, and most of them have peaceful hearts.
[Illustration: “The War Chief asked me some more questions.”]
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BIG COUNCIL
Our winter camp was a very beautiful place with plenty of game and an
abundance of good dry wood. We had nearly everything that was needed to
make us happy. My leg and all of the sick Indians got well, and we were
getting along finely when one day some of Pocatello’s Indians came to
our camp.