THE BLACK HILLS
We traveled eastward for two days, and then the gloomy ridges of the
Black Hills rose up before us. The village passed along for some miles
beneath their declivities, trailing out to a great length over the arid
prairie, or winding at times among small detached hills or distorted
shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we entered a wide defile of the
mountains, down the bottom of which a brook came winding, lined with
tall grass and dense copses, amid which were hidden many beaver dams and
lodges. We passed along between two lines of high precipices and rocks,
piled in utter disorder one upon another, and with scarcely a tree, a
bush, or a clump of grass to veil their nakedness. The restless Indian
boys were wandering along their edges and clambering up and down their
rugged sides, and sometimes a group of them would stand on the verge of
a cliff and look down on the array as it passed in review beneath them.
As we advanced, the passage grew more narrow; then it suddenly expanded
into a round grassy meadow, completely encompassed by mountains; and
here the families stopped as they came up in turn, and the camp rose
like magic.
The lodges were hardly erected when, with their usual precipitation, the
Indians set about accomplishing the object that had brought them there;
that is, the obtaining poles for supporting their new lodges. Half the
population, men, women and boys, mounted their horses and set out for
the interior of the mountains. As they rode at full gallop over the
shingly rocks and into the dark opening of the defile beyond, I thought
I had never read or dreamed of a more strange or picturesque cavalcade.
We passed between precipices more than a thousand feet high, sharp
and splintering at the tops, their sides beetling over the defile or
descending in abrupt declivities, bristling with black fir trees. On our
left they rose close to us like a wall, but on the right a winding brook
with a narrow strip of marshy soil intervened. The stream was clogged
with old beaver dams, and spread frequently into wide pools. There were
thick bushes and many dead and blasted trees along its course, though
frequently nothing remained but stumps cut close to the ground by
the beaver, and marked with the sharp chisel-like teeth of those
indefatigable laborers. Sometimes we were driving among trees, and then
emerging upon open spots, over which, Indian-like, all galloped at
full speed. As Pauline bounded over the rocks I felt her saddle-girth
slipping, and alighted to draw it tighter; when the whole array swept
past me in a moment, the women with their gaudy ornaments tinkling as
they rode, the men whooping, and laughing, and lashing forward their
horses. Two black-tailed deer bounded away among the rocks; Raymond shot
at them from horseback; the sharp report of his rifle was answered by
another equally sharp from the opposing cliffs, and then the echoes,
leaping in rapid succession from side to side, died away rattling far
amid the mountains.
After having ridden in this manner for six or eight miles, the
appearance of the scene began to change, and all the declivities around
us were covered with forests of tall, slender pine trees. The Indians
began to fall off to the right and left, and dispersed with their
hatchets and knives among these woods, to cut the poles which they had
come to seek. Soon I was left almost alone; but in the deep stillness of
those lonely mountains, the stroke of hatchets and the sound of voices
might be heard from far and near.
Reynal, who imitated the Indians in their habits as well as the worst
features of their character, had killed buffalo enough to make a
lodge for himself and his squaw, and now he was eager to get the poles
necessary to complete it. He asked me to let Raymond go with him and
assist in the work. I assented, and the two men immediately entered the
thickest part of the wood. Having left my horse in Raymond’s keeping,
I began to climb the mountain. I was weak and weary and made slow
progress, often pausing to rest, but after an hour had elapsed, I gained
a height, whence the little valley out of which I had climbed seemed
like a deep, dark gulf, though the inaccessible peak of the mountain was
still towering to a much greater distance above. Objects familiar from
childhood surrounded me; crags and rocks, a black and sullen brook that
gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the crevices, a wood of mossy
distorted trees and prostrate trunks flung down by age and storms,
scattered among the rocks, or damming the foaming waters of the little
brook. The objects were the same, yet they were thrown into a wilder and
more startling scene, for the black crags and the savage trees assumed
a grim and threatening aspect, and close across the valley the opposing
mountain confronted me, rising from the gulf for thousands of feet, with
its bare pinnacles and its ragged covering of pines. Yet the scene was
not without its milder features. As I ascended, I found frequent little
grassy terraces, and there was one of these close at hand, across which
the brook was stealing, beneath the shade of scattered trees that seemed
artificially planted. Here I made a welcome discovery, no other than a
bed of strawberries, with their white flowers and their red fruit, close
nestled among the grass by the side of the brook, and I sat down by
them, hailing them as old acquaintances; for among those lonely and
perilous mountains they awakened delicious associations of the gardens
and peaceful homes of far-distant New England.
Yet wild as they were, these mountains were thickly peopled. As I
climbed farther, I found the broad dusty paths made by the elk, as
they filed across the mountainside. The grass on all the terraces was
trampled down by deer; there were numerous tracks of wolves, and in
some of the rougher and more precipitous parts of the ascent, I found
foot-prints different from any that I had ever seen, and which I took to
be those of the Rocky Mountain sheep. I sat down upon a rock; there was
a perfect stillness. No wind was stirring, and not even an insect could
be heard. I recollected the danger of becoming lost in such a place,
and therefore I fixed my eye upon one of the tallest pinnacles of the
opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright from the woods below, and by an
extraordinary freak of nature sustained aloft on its very summit a large
loose rock. Such a landmark could never be mistaken, and feeling once
more secure, I began again to move forward. A white wolf jumped up
from among some bushes, and leaped clumsily away; but he stopped for a
moment, and turned back his keen eye and his grim bristling muzzle. I
longed to take his scalp and carry it back with me, as an appropriate
trophy of the Black Hills, but before I could fire, he was gone among
the rocks. Soon I heard a rustling sound, with a cracking of twigs at
a little distance, and saw moving above the tall bushes the branching
antlers of an elk. I was in the midst of a hunter’s paradise.
Such are the Black Hills, as I found them in July; but they wear a
different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the fir
tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and the dark mountains
are whitened with it. At that season the mountain-trappers, returned
from their autumn expeditions, often build their rude cabins in the
midst of these solitudes, and live in abundance and luxury on the game
that harbors there. I have heard them relate, how with their tawny
mistresses, and perhaps a few young Indian companions, they have spent
months in total seclusion. They would dig pitfalls, and set traps for
the white wolves, the sables, and the martens, and though through the
whole night the awful chorus of the wolves would resound from the frozen
mountains around them, yet within their massive walls of logs they would
lie in careless ease and comfort before the blazing fire, and in the
morning shoot the elk and the deer from their very door.