[LITTLE BLUE RIVER VALLEY.]

_The Valley of the Little Blue, 9th August._

A little after midnight we resumed our way, and in the state

which Mohammed described when he made his famous night journey to

heaven--_bayni ’l naumi wa ’l yakzán_--we crossed the deep shingles,

the shallow streams, and the heavy vegetation of the Little Sandy, and

five miles beyond it we forded the Big Sandy. About early dawn we found

ourselves at another station, better than the last only as the hour was

more propitious. The colony of Patlanders rose from their beds without

a dream of ablution, and clearing the while their lungs of Cork brogue,

prepared a neat _déjeûner à la fourchette_ by hacking “fids” off half

a sheep suspended from the ceiling, and frying them in melted tallow.

Had the action occurred in Central Africa, among the Esquimaux, or the

Araucanians, it would not have excited my attention: mere barbarism

rarely disgusts; it is the unnatural cohabitation of civilization with

savagery that makes the traveler’s gorge rise.

Issuing from Big Sandy Station at 6 30 A.M., and resuming our route

over the divide that still separated the valleys of the Big Blue and

the Little Blue, we presently fell into the line of the latter, and

were called upon by the conductor to admire it. It is pretty, but

its beauties require the cosmetic which is said to act unfailingly

in the case of fairer things--the viewer should have lately spent

three months at sea, out of sight of rivers and women. Averaging

two miles in width, which shrinks to one quarter as you ascend, the

valley is hedged on both sides by low rolling bluffs or terraces,

the boundaries of its ancient bed and modern debordements. As the

hills break off near the river, they show a diluvial formation; in

places they are washed into a variety of forms, and being white, they

stand out in bold relief. In other parts they are sand mixed with

soil enough to support a last-year’s growth of wheat-like grass,

weed-stubble, and dead trees, that look like old corn-fields in new

clearings. One could not have recognized at this season Colonel

Frémont’s description written in the month of June--the “hills with

graceful slopes looking uncommonly green and beautiful.” Along the

bluffs the road winds, crossing at times a rough projecting spur,

or dipping into some gully washed out by the rains of ages. All is

barren beyond the garden-reach which runs along the stream; there is

not a tree to a square mile--in these regions the tree, like the bird

in Arabia and the monkey in Africa, signifies water--and animal life

seems well-nigh extinct. As the land sinks toward the river bottom,

it becomes less barren. The wild sunflower (_Helianthus_)--it seldom,

however, turns toward the sun--now becomes abundant; it was sparse

near the Missouri; it will wax even more plentiful around Great Salt

Lake City, till walking through the beds becomes difficult. In size

it greatly varies according to the quality of the soil; six feet is

perhaps the maximum. It is a growth of some value. The oleaginous seeds

form the principal food of half-starved Indians, while the stalks

supply them with a scanty fuel: being of rapid growth, it has been used

in the States to arrest the flow of malaria, and it serves as house

and home to the rattlesnake. Conspicuous by its side is the sumach,

whose leaf, mixed with kinnikinik, the peel of the red willow, forms

the immemorial smoking material of the Wild Man of the North. Equally

remarkable for their strong odor are large beds of wild onions; they

are superlatively wholesome, but they effect the eater like those of

Tibet. The predominant colors are pink and yellow, the former a lupine,

the latter a shrub, locally called the rabbit-bush. The blue lupine

also appears with the white mallow, the eccentric putoria, and the

taraxacum (dandelion), so much used as salad in France and in the

Eastern States. This land appears excellently adapted for the growth

of manioc or cassava. In the centre of the bottom flows the brownish

stream, about twenty yards wide, between two dense lines of tall sweet

cotton-wood. The tree which was fated to become familiar to us during

our wanderings is a species of poplar (_P. monilifera_), called by the

Americo-Spaniards, and by the people of Texas and New Mexico, “Alamo:”

resembling the European aspen, without its silver lining, the color of

the leaf, in places, appears of a dull burnished hue, in others bright

and refreshingly green. Its trivial name is derived, according to some,

from the fibrous quality of the bark, which, as in Norway, is converted

into food for cattle and even man; according to others, from the

cotton-like substance surrounding the seeds. It is termed “sweet” to

distinguish it from a different tree with a bitter bark, also called a

cotton-wood or narrow-leaved cotton-wood (_Populus angustifolia_), and

by the Canadians _liard amère_. The timber is soft and easily cut; it

is in many places the only material for building and burning, and the

recklessness of the squatters has already shortened the supply.

This valley is the Belgium of the adjoining tribes, the once terrible

Pawnees, who here met their enemies, the Dakotahs and the Delawares: it

was then a great buffalo ground; and even twenty years ago it was well

stocked with droves of wild horses, turkeys, and herds of antelope,

deer, and elk. The animals have of late migrated westward, carrying

off with them the “bones of contention.” Some details concerning

the present condition of these bands and their neighbors may not be

uninteresting--these poor remnants of nations which once kept the

power of North America at bay, and are now barely able to struggle for

existence.

In 1853, the government of the United States, which has ever acted

paternally toward the Indians, treating with them--Great Britain

did the same with the East Indians--as though they were a civilized

people, availed itself of the savages’ desire to sell lands encroached

upon by the whites, and set apart for a general reservation 181,171

square miles. Here, in the Far West, were collected into what was then

believed to be a permanent habitation, the indigenes of the land, and

the various bands once lying east of the Mississippi. This “Indian’s

home” was bounded, in 1853, on the north by the Northwestern Territory

and Minnesota; on the south by Texas and New Mexico; to the east lay

Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas; and to the west, Oregon, Utah, and New

Mexico.

The savages’ reservation was then thus distributed. The eastern

portion nearest the river was stocked with tribes removed to it from

the Eastern States, namely, the Iowas, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos,

Delawares, Potawotomies, Wyandottes, Quapaws, Senecas, Cherokees,

Seminoles, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Miamis, and Ottawas. The

west and part of the northeast--poor and barren lands--were retained

by the aboriginal tribes, Ponkahs, Omahas or Mahas, Pawnees, Ottoes,

Kansas or Konzas, and Osages. The central and the remainder of the

western portion--wild countries abounding in buffalo--were granted to

the Western Pawnees, the Arickarees, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas,

Comanches, Utahs, Grosventres, and other nomads.

It was somewhat a confusion of races. For instance, the Pawnees form

an independent family, to which some authors join the Arickaree; the

Sacs (Sauk) and Foxes, Winnebagoes, Ottoes, Kaws, Omahas, Cheyennes,

Mississippi Dakotahs, and Missouri Dakotahs, belong to the Dakotan

family; the Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles are Appalachians; the

Wyandottes, like the Iroquois, are Hodesaunians; and the Ottawas,

Delawares, Shawnees, Potawotomies, Peorians, Mohekuneuks, Kaskaskias,

Piankeshaws, Weaws, Miamis, Kickapoos, and the Menomenes, are, like the

Ojibwas, Algonquins.

The total number of Indians on the prairies and the Rocky Mountains was

estimated roughly at 63,000.

[THE INDIAN TERRITORY.]

Still the resistless tide of emigration swept westward: the federal

government was as powerless to stem it as was General Fitzroy of New

South Wales to prevent, in 1852, his subjects flocking to the “gold

diggings.” Despite all orders, reckless whites would squat upon, and

thoughtless reds, bribed by whisky, tobacco, and gunpowder, would sell

off the lands. On the 20th of May, 1854, was passed the celebrated

“Kansas-Nebraska Bill,” an act converting the greater portion of the

“Indian Territory,” and all the “Northwestern Territory,” into two new

territories--Kansas, north of the 37th parallel, and Nebraska, north

of the 40th. In the passage of this bill, the celebrated “Missouri

Compromise” of 1828, prohibiting negro slavery north of 36° 30′, was

repealed, under the presidency of General Pierce.[26] It provided

that the rights and properties of the Indians, within their shrunken

possessions, should be respected. By degrees the Indians sold their

lands for whisky, as of old, and retired to smaller reservations.

Of course, they suffered in the bargain; the savage ever parts with

his birthright for the well-known mess of pottage. The Osages, for

instance, canceled $4000, claimed by unscrupulous traders, by a

cession of two million acres of arable land. The Potawotomies fared

even worse; under the influence of liquor, ὡς λεγουσι, their chiefs

sold 100,000 acres of the best soil on the banks of the Missouri for

a mere song. The tribe was removed to a bald smooth prairie, sans

timber and consequently sans game; many fled to the extreme wilds,

and the others, like the Acadians of yore, were marched about till

they found homes--many of them six feet by two--in Fever Patch, on the

Kaw or Kansas River. Others were more fortunate. The Ottoes, Omahas,

and Kansas had permanent villages near the Missouri and its two

tributaries, the Platte and the Kansas. The Osages, formerly a large

nation in Arkansas, after ceding 10,000,000 of acres for a stipend of

$52,000 for thirty years, were settled in a district on the west bank

of the Neosho or Whitewater--the Grand River. They are described as

the finest and largest men of the semi-nomad races, with well-formed

heads and symmetrical figures, brave, warlike, and well disposed to

the whites. Early in June, after planting their maize, they move in

mounted bands to the prairies, feast upon the buffalo for months, and

bring home stores of smoked and jerked meat. When the corn is in milk

they husk and sundry it; it is then boiled, and is said to be better

flavored and more nutritious than the East Indian “butah” or the

American hominy. After the harvest in October they return to the game

country, and then pass the winter under huts or skin lodges. Their

chief scourge is small-pox: apparently, all the tribes carry some

cross. Of the settled races the best types are the Choctaws and the

Cherokees; the latter have shown a degree of improvability, which may

still preserve them from destruction; they have a form of government,

churches, theatres, and schools; they read and write English; and

George Guess, a well-known chief, like the negro inventor of the

Vai syllabarium in West Africa, produced an alphabet of sixty-eight

characters, which, improved and simplified by the missionaries, is

found useful in teaching the vernacular.

[26] The “Missouri Compromise” is an important event in

Anglo-American history; it must be regarded as the great parent

of the jangles and heart-burnings which have disunited the United

States. The great Jefferson prophesied in these words: “the Missouri

question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by

revolt, and what more God only knows. From the battle of Bunker’s

Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous a question.”

The origin of the trouble was this. In 1817 the eastern half of

the Mississippi Territory became the Territory of Alabama, and--in

those days events had wings--the 14th of Dec., 1819, witnessed the

birth of Alabama as a free sovereign and independent slave state.

The South, strong in wealth and numbers, thereupon moved toward

legalizing slavery in the newly-acquired Territory of Missouri, and

when Missouri claimed to be admitted as a state, demanded that it

should be admitted as a slave state. The Free-soilers, or opposite

party, urged two reasons why Missouri should be a free state.

Firstly, since the date of the union eight new states had been

admitted, four slave and four free. Alabama, the last, was a slave

state, therefore it was the turn for a free state. Secondly--and here

was the rub--that “slavery ought not to be permitted in any state or

territory where it could be prohibited.” This very broad principle

involved, it is manifest, the ruin of the slave-ocracy. From the days

of Mr. Washington to those of Mr. Lincoln, the northern or labor

states have ever aimed at the ultimate abolition of servitude by

means of non-extension. The contest about Missouri began in 1818, and

raged for three years, complicated by a new feature, namely, Maine

separating herself from Massachusetts, and balancing the admission

of Alabama by becoming a free state. The Lower House several times

voted to exclude the “peculiar institution” from the new state, and

the conservative Senate--in which the Southern element was ever

predominant--as often restored it. Great was the war of words among

the rival legislators; at length, after repeated conferences, both

Senate and House agreed upon a bill admitting Missouri, after her

Constitution should be formed, free of restriction, but prohibiting

slavery north of 36° 30′. Missouri acknowledged the boon by adopting

a Constitution which denied the rights of citizens even to free

negroes. She was not finally admitted until the 10th of August, 1821,

when her Legislature had solemnly covenanted to guarantee the rights

of citizenship to “the citizens of either of the states.” Such is an

outline of the far-famed “Missouri Compromise.” The influence of the

Southern slaveholders caused it to be repealed, as a slip of Texas

happened to lie north of the prohibitative latitude, and the late Mr.

S. A. Douglas did it to death in 1854. The Free-soilers, of course,

fought hard against the “sad repeal,” and what they now fight about,

forty years afterward, is to run still farther south the original

line of limitation. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ!_

[MISSIONARIES.]

Upon the whole, however, the philanthropic schemes of the government

have not met with brilliant success. The chiefs are still bribed,

and the people cheated by white traders, and poverty, disease, and

debauchery rapidly thin the tribesmen. Sensible heads have proposed

many schemes for preserving the race. Apparently the best of these

projects is to introduce the Moravian discipline. Of all missionary

systems, I may observe, none have hitherto been crowned with important

results, despite the blood and gold so profusely expended upon

them, except two--those of the Jesuits and the United Brethren. The

fraternity of Jesus spread the Gospel by assimilating themselves to the

heathen; the Unitas Fratrum by assimilating the heathen to themselves.

The day of Jesuitism, like that of protection, is going by. The

advance of Moravianism, it may safely be prophesied, is to come. These

civilization societies have as yet been little appreciated, because

they will not minister to that ignorant enthusiasm which extracts

money from the pockets of the many. Their necessarily slow progress is

irksome to ardent propagandists. We naturally wish to reap as well as

to sow; and man rarely invests capital in schemes of which only his

grandson will see the results.

The American philanthropist proposes to wean the Indian savage

from his nomad life by turning his lodge into a log tent, and by

providing him with cattle instead of buffalo, and the domestic fowl

instead of grasshoppers. The hunter become a herdsman would thus be

strengthened for another step--the agricultural life, which necessarily

follows the pastoral. Factors would be appointed instead of vicious

traders--_coureurs des bois_, as the Canadians call them; titles to

land would be granted in fee-simple, practically teaching the value of

property in severalty, alienation into white hands would be forbidden,

and, if possible, a cordon militaire would be stretched between the

races. The agricultural would lead to the mechanical stage of society.

Agents and assistant craftsmen would teach the tribes to raise mills

and smithies (at present there are mills without millers, stock without

breeders, and similar attempts to make civilization run before she can

walk), and a growing appreciation for the peace, the comfort, and the

luxuries of settled life would lay the nomad instinct forever.

The project labors only under one difficulty--the one common

to philanthropic schemes. In many details it is somewhat

visionary--utopian. It is, like peace on earth, a “dream of the wise.”

Under the present system of Indian agencies, as will in a future page

appear, it is simply impossible. It has terrible obstacles in the

westward gravitation of the white race, which, after sweeping away the

aborigines--as the gray rat in Europe expelled the black rat--from the

east of the Mississippi in two centuries and a half, threatens, before

a quarter of that time shall have elapsed, to drive in its advance

toward the Pacific the few survivors of now populous tribes, either

into the inhospitable regions north of the 49th parallel, or into the

anarchical countries south of the 32d. And where, I may ask, in the

history of the world do we read of a people learning civilization from

strangers instead of working it out for themselves, through its several

degrees of barbarism, feudalism, monarchy, republicanism, despotism?

Still it is a noble project; mankind would not willingly see it die.

[THE PAWNEES.]

The Pawnees were called by the French and Canadian traders Les Loups,

that animal being their totem, and the sign of the tribe being an

imitation of the wolf’s ears, the two fore fingers of the right

hand being stuck up on the side of the head. They were in the last

generation a large nation, containing many clans--Minnikajus, the Sans

Arc, the Loup Fork, and others. Their territory embraced both sides

of the Platte River, especially the northern lands; and they rendered

these grounds terrible to the trapper, trader, and traveler. They were

always well mounted. Old Mexico was then, and partially is still,

their stable, and a small band has driven off horses by hundreds.

Of late years they have become powerless. The influenza acts as a

plague among them, killing off 400 or 500 in a single season, and the

nation now numbers little more than 300 braves, or rather warriors,

the latter, in correct parlance, being inferior to the former, as the

former are subservient to the chief. A treaty concluded between them

and the United States in the winter of 1857 sent them to a reserve on

the Loup Fork, where their villages were destroyed by the Sioux. They

are Ishmaelites, whose hand is against every man. They have attempted,

after the fashion of declining tribes, to strengthen themselves by

alliances with their neighbors, but have always failed in consequence

of their propensity to plunder developing itself even before the powwow

was concluded. They and the northern Dakotahs can never be trusted.

Most Indian races, like the Bedouin Arabs, will show hospitality to the

stranger who rides into their villages, though no point of honor deters

them from robbing him after he has left the lodge-shade. The Pawnees,

African-like, will cut the throat of a sleeping guest. They are easily

distinguished from their neighbors by the scalp-lock protruding from

a shaven head. After killing white men, they have insulted the corpse

in a manner familiar to those who served in the Affghan war. They

have given up the practice of torturing prisoners, saying that the

“Great Spirit,” or rather, as the expression should be translated,

the “Great Father” no longer wills it. The tradition is, that a few

years ago a squaw of a hostile tribe was snatched from the stake by

a white trader, and the action was interpreted as a decree of heaven.

It is probably a corruption of the well-known story of the rescue of

the Itean woman by Petalesharoo, the son of the “Knife Chief.” Like

the Southern and Western Indians generally, as is truly remarked by

Captain Mayne Reid,[27] “They possess more of that cold continence

and chivalrous delicacy than characterize the Red Men of the forest.”

They are too treacherous to be used as soldiers. Like most pedestrian

Indians, their arms and bodies are light and thin, and their legs are

muscular and well developed. They are great in endurance. I have heard

of a Pawnee, who, when thoroughly “stampeded” by his enemies, “loped”

from Fort Laramie to Kearney--300 miles--making the distance as fast as

the mail. This bad tribe is ever at war with their hereditary enemies

the Sioux. They do not extend westward of Fort Kearney. The principal

sub-tribe is the Arickaree, or Ree, called Pedani by the Dakotah, who

attacked and conquered them. Their large villages, near the mouth of

the Grand River, were destroyed by the expedition sent in 1825-26,

under Colonel Leavenworth, to chastise the attack upon the trading

party of General Ashley.

[27] The Scalp-hunters, chap. xlii.

[THE DELAWARES.]

A more interesting people than the Pawnee is the Delaware, whose oldest

tradition derives him from the region west of the Mississippi. Thence

the tribe migrated to the Atlantic shores, where they took the title

of Lenne Lenape, or men, and the neighboring races in respect called

them “uncle.” William Penn and his followers found this remnant of the

great Algonquin confederacy in a depressed state: subjugated by the

Five Nations, they had been compelled to take the name of “Iroquois

Squaws.” In those days they felt an awe of the white man, and looked

upon him as a something godlike. Since their return to the West their

spirit has revived, their war-path has reached through Utah to the

Pacific Ocean, to Hudson’s Bay on the north, and southward to the heart

of Mexico. Their present abodes are principally near Fort Leavenworth

upon the Missouri, and in the Choctaw territory near Fort Arbuckle,

upon the eastern Colorado or Canadian River. They are familiar with the

languages, manners, and customs of their pale-faced neighbors; they are

so feared as rifle shots that a host of enemies will fly from a few of

their warriors, and they mostly lead a vagrant life, the wandering Jews

of the West, as traders, hunters, and trappers, among the other Indian

tribes. For 185 years the Shawnees have been associated with them in

intermarriage, yet they are declining in numbers; here and there some

are lost, one by one, in travel or battle; they have now dwindled to

about a hundred warriors, and the extinction of the tribe appears

imminent. As hunters and guides, they are preferred to all others by

the whites, and it is believed that they would make as formidable

partisan soldiers as any on this continent. When the government of the

United States, after the fashion of France and England, begins to raise

“Irregular Native Corps,” the loss of the Delawares will be regretted.

Changing mules at Kiowa about 10 A.M., we pushed forward through the

sun, which presently was mitigated by heavy nimbi, to Liberty Farm,

where a station supplied us with the eternal eggs and bacon of these

_mangeurs de lard_. It is a dish constant in the great West, as the

omelet and pigeon in the vetturini days of Italy, when, prompted by the

instincts of self-preservation, the inmates of the dove-cot, unless

prevented in time, are said to have fled their homes at the sight of

Milordo’s traveling carriage, not to return until the portent had

disappeared. The Little Blue ran hard by, about fifty feet wide by

three or four deep, fringed with emerald-green oak groves, cotton-wood,

and long-leaved willow: its waters supply catfish, suckers, and a

soft-shelled turtle, but the fish are full of bones, and taste, as

might be imagined, much like mud. The country showed vestiges of

animal life, the prairie bore signs of hare and antelope; in the

valley, coyotes, wolves, and foxes, attracted by the carcasses of

cattle, stared us in the face, and near the stream, plovers, jays,

the bluebird (sialia), and a kind of starling, called the swamp or

redwinged blackbird, twittered a song of satisfaction. We then resumed

our journey over a desert, waterless save after rain, for twenty-three

miles; it is the divide between the Little Blue and the Platte rivers,

a broken table-land rising gradually toward the west, with, at this

season, a barren soil of sand and clay. As the evening approached, a

smile from above lit up into absolute beauty the homely features of

the world below. The sweet commune with nature in her fairest hours

denied to the sons of cities--who must contemplate her charms through

a vista of brick wall, or over a foreground of chimney-pots--consoled

us amply for all the little hardships of travel. Strata upon strata of

cloud-banks, burnished to golden red in the vicinity of the setting

sun, and polished to dazzling silvery white above, lay piled half

way from the horizon to the zenith, with a distinct strike toward a

vanishing point in the west, and dipping into a gateway through which

the orb of day slowly retired. Overhead floated in a sea of amber and

yellow, pink and green, heavy purple nimbi, apparently turned upside

down--their convex bulges below, and their horizontal lines high in the

air--while in the east black and blue were so curiously blended that

the eye could not distinguish whether it rested upon darkening air or

upon a lowering thunder-cloud. We enjoyed these beauties in silence;

not a soul said, “Look there!” or “How pretty!”

At 9 P.M., reaching “Thirty-two-mile Creek,” we were pleasantly

surprised to find an utter absence of the Irishry. The station-master

was the head of a neat-handed and thrifty family from Vermont; the

rooms, such as they were, looked cosy and clean--and the chickens

and peaches were plump and well “fixed.” Soldiers from Fort Kearney

loitered about the adjoining store, and from them we heard past

fights and rumors of future wars which were confirmed on the morrow.

Remounting at 10 30 P.M., and before moonrise, we threaded the gloom

without other accident than the loss of a mule that was being led to

the next station. The amiable animal, after breaking loose, coquetted

with its pursuers for a while, according to the fashion of its kind,

and when the cerne or surround was judged complete, it dashed through

the circle and gave leg-bail, its hoofs ringing over the stones till

the sound died away in the distant shades.

_The Platte River and Fort Kearney, August 10._

[LA GRANDE PLATTE.]

After a long and chilly night--extensive evaporation making 40° F. feel

excessively cold--lengthened by the atrocity of the musquetoes, which

sting even when the thermometer stands below 45°, we awoke upon the

hill sands divided by two miles of level green savanna, and at 4 A.M.

reached Kearney Station, in the valley of La Grande Platte, seven miles

from the fort of that name. The first aspect of the stream was one of

calm and quiet beauty, which, however, it owed much to its accessories:

some travelers have not hesitated to characterize it as “the dreariest

of rivers.” On the south is a rolling range of red sandy and clayey

hillocks, sharp toward the river--the “coasts of the Nebraska.” The

valley, here two miles broad, resembles the ocean deltas of great

streams; it is level as a carpet, all short green grass without sage

or bush. It can hardly be called a bottom, the rise from the water’s

edge being, it is calculated, about 4 feet per 1000. Under a bank, from

half a yard to a yard high, through its two lawns of verdure, flowed

the stream straight toward the slanting rays of the rising sun, which

glittered upon its broad bosom, and shed rosy light over half the

heavens. In places it shows a sea horizon, but here it was narrowed by

Grand Island, which is fifty-two miles long, with an average breadth of

one mile and three quarters, and sufficiently elevated above the annual

flood to be well timbered.

Without excepting even the Missouri, the Platte is doubtless the most

important western influent of the Mississippi. Its valley offers

a route scarcely to be surpassed for natural gradients, requiring

little beyond the superstructure for light trains; and by following

up its tributary--the Sweetwater--the engineer finds a line laid down

by nature to the foot of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the

dividing ridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific water-beds. At

present the traveler can cross the 300 or 400 miles of desert between

the settlements in the east and the populated parts of the western

mountains by its broad highway, with never-failing supplies of water,

and, in places, fuel. Its banks will shortly supply coal to take the

place of the timber that has thinned out.

The Canadian voyageurs first named it La Platte, the Flat River,

discarding, or rather translating after their fashion, the musical

and picturesque aboriginal term, “Nebraska,” the “shallow stream:”

the word has happily been retained for the Territory. Springing

from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, it has, like all the

valley streams westward of the Mississippi, the Niobrara, or Eau qui

court,[28] the Arkansas, and the Canadian River, a declination to

the southeast. From its mouth to the junction of its northern and

southern forks, the river valley is mostly level, and the scenery is

of remarkable sameness: its singularity in this point affects the

memory. There is not a tributary, not a ravine, in places not a tree to

distract attention from the grassy intermediate bottom, which, plain as

a prairie, extends from four to five and even twelve miles in width,

bounded on both sides by low, rolling, sandy hills, thinly vegetated,

and in few places showing dwarf bluffs. Between the forks and Fort

Laramie the ground is more accented, the land near its banks often

becomes precipitous, the road must sometimes traverse the tongues and

ridges which project into the valley, and in parts the path is deep

with sand. The stream averages about a mile in breadth, and sometimes

widens out into the semblance of an estuary, flowing in eddies where

holes are, and broken by far-reaching sand-bars and curlew shallows.

In places it is a labyrinth of islets, variously shaped and of all

sizes, from the long tongue which forms a vista to the little bouquet

of cool verdure, grass, young willows, and rose-bushes. The shallowness

of the bed causes the water to be warm in summer; a great contrast

to the clear, cool springs on its banks. The sole is treacherous in

the extreme, full of quicksands and gravel shoals, channels and cuts,

which shift, like those of the Indus, with each year’s flood; the site

being nearly level, the river easily swells, and the banks, here of

light, there of dark colored silt, based, like the floor, on sand,

are, though vertical, rarely more than two feet high. It is a river

willfully wasted by nature. The inundation raises it to about six feet

throughout: this freshet, however, is of short duration, and the great

breadth of the river causes a want of depth which renders it unfit

for the navigation of a craft more civilized than the Indian’s birch

or the Canadian fur-boat. Colonel Frémont failed to descend it in

September with a boat drawing only four inches. The water, like that of

the Missouri, and for the same reason, is surcharged with mud drained

from the prairies; carried from afar, it has usually a dark tinge;

it is remarkably opaque after floods; if a few inches deep, it looks

bottomless, and, finally, it contains little worth fishing for. From

the mouth to Fort Kearney, beyond which point timber is rare, one bank,

and one only, is fringed with narrow lines of well-grown cotton-wood,

red willows, and cedars, which are disappearing before the emigrant’s

axe. The cedar now becomes an important tree. It will not grow on the

plains, owing to the dryness of the climate and the excessive cold;

even in the sheltered ravines the wintry winds have power to blight

all the tops that rise above prairie level, and where the locality is

better adapted for plantations, firs prevail. An interesting effect of

climate upon the cedar is quoted by travelers on the Missouri River. At

the first Cedar Island (43° N. lat.) large and straight trees appear in

the bottom lands, those on the bluffs being of inferior growth; higher

up the stream they diminish, seldom being seen in any number together

above the mouth of the Little Cheyenne (45° N. lat.), and there they

are exceedingly crooked and twisted. In the lignite formations above

the Missouri and the Yellow Stone, the cedar, unable to support itself

above ground, spreads over the hill-sides and presents the appearance

of grass or moss.

[28] For an accurate geographical description of this little-known

river, the reader is referred to Lieutenant Warren’s report,

published by the Secretary of War, United States.

[THE WILD GARDEN.]

Beyond the immediate banks of the Platte the soil is either sandy,

quickly absorbing water, or it is a hard, cold, unwholesome clay,

which long retains muddy pools, black with decayed vegetation, and

which often, in the lowest levels, becomes a mere marsh. The wells

deriving infiltration from the higher lands beyond are rarely more than

three feet deep; the produce is somewhat saline, and here and there

salt may be seen efflorescing from the soil around them. In the large

beds of prêle (an equisetum), scouring rush, and other aquatic plants

which garnish the banks, myriads of musquetoes find a home. Flowers

of rich, warm color appear, we remark, in the sandy parts: the common

wild helianthus and a miniature sunflower like chamomile, a thistle

(_Carduus leucographus_), the cactus, a peculiar milk-plant (_Asclepias

syrivea_), a spurgewort (_Asclepias tuberosa_), the amorpha, the

tradescantia, the putoria, and the artemisia, or prairie sage. The

richer soils and ravines produce in abundance the purple aster--violet

of these regions--a green plant, locally known as “Lamb’s Quarters,” a

purple flower with bulbous root, wild flax with pretty blue blossoms,

besides mallow, digitalis, anemone, streptanthis, and a honeysuckle. In

parts the valley of the Platte is a perfect parterre of wild flowers.

After satisfying hunger with vile bread and viler coffee--how far from

the little forty-berry cup of Egypt!--for which we paid 75 cents, we

left Kearney Station without delay. Hugging the right bank of our

strange river, at 8 A.M. we found ourselves at Fort Kearney, so called,

as is the custom, after the gallant officer, now deceased, of that name.

Every square box or block-house in these regions is a fort; no

misnomer, however, can be more complete than the word applied to the

military cantonments on the frontier. In former times the traders to

whom these places mostly belonged erected quadrangles of sun-dried

brick with towers at the angles; their forts still appear in old books

of travels: the War Department, however, has been sensible enough to

remove them. The position usually chosen is a river bottom, where

fuel, grass, and water are readily procurable. The quarters are of

various styles; some, with their low verandas, resemble Anglo-Indian

bungalows or comfortable farm-houses; others are the storied houses,

with the “stoop” or porch of the Eastern States in front; and low,

long, peat-roofed tenements are used for magazines and out-houses. The

best material is brown adobe or unburnt brick; others are of timber,

whitewashed and clean-looking, with shingle roofs, glass windows, and

gay green frames--that contrast of colors which the New Englander

loves. The habitations surround a cleared central space for parade and

drill; the ground is denoted by the tall flag-staff, which does not, as

in English camps, distinguish the quarters of the commanding officer.

One side is occupied by the officers’ bungalows, the other, generally

that opposite, by the adjutant’s and quartermaster’s offices, and the

square is completed by low ranges of barrack and commissariat stores,

while various little shops, stables, corrals for cattle, a chapel,

perhaps an artillery park, and surely an ice-house--in this point India

is far behind the wilds of America--complete the settlement. Had these

cantonments a few more trees and a far more brilliant verdure, they

would suggest the idea of an out-station in Guzerat, the Deccan, or

some similar Botany Bay for decayed gentlemen who transport themselves.

[INDIAN FIGHTING.]

While at Washington I had resolved--as has already been

intimated--when the reports of war in the West were waxing loud,

to enjoy a little Indian fighting. The meritorious intention--for

which the severest “wig,” concluding with something personally

offensive about volunteering in general, would have been its sole

result in the “fast-anchored isle”--was most courteously received

by the Hon. John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, who provided me with

introductory letters addressed to the officers commanding various

“departments”[29]--“divisions,” as they would be called by

Englishmen--in the West. The first tidings that saluted my ears on

arrival at Fort Kearney acted as a quietus: an Indian action had been

fought, which signified that there would be no more fighting for some

time. Captain Sturgis, of the 1st Cavalry, U. S., had just attacked,

near the Republican Fork of Kansas River, a little south of the fort,

with six companies (about 350 men) and a few Delawares, a considerable

body of the enemy, Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes, who apparently

had forgotten the severe lesson administered to them by Colonel--now

Brigadier General--Edwin V. Sumner, 1st Cavalry, in 1857, and killed

twenty-five with only two or three of his own men wounded. According

to details gathered at Fort Kearney, the Indians had advanced under

a black flag, lost courage, as wild men mostly will, when they heard

the _pas de charge_, and, after making a running fight, being well

mounted as well as armed, had carried off their “cripples” lashed to

their horses. I had no time to call upon Captain Sully, who remained in

command at Kearney with two troops (here called companies) of dragoons,

or heavy cavalry, and one of infantry; the mail-wagon would halt there

but a few minutes. I therefore hurriedly chose the alternative of

advancing, with the hope of seeing “independent service” on the road.

Intelligence of the fight had made even the conductor look grave; fifty

or sixty miles is a flea-bite to a mounted war-party, and disappointed

Indians upon the war-path are especially dangerous--even the most

friendly can not be trusted when they have lost, or have not succeeded

in taking, a few scalps. We subsequently heard that they had crossed

our path, but whether the tale was true or not is an essentially

doubtful matter. If this chance failed, remained the excitement of the

buffalo and the Mormon; both were likely to show better sport than

could be found in riding wildly about the country after runaway braves.

[29] The following is a list of the military departments into which

the United States are divided:

MILITARY COMMANDS.

_Department of the East._--The country east of the Mississippi River;

head-quarters at Troy, N. Y.

_Department of the West._--The country west of the Mississippi River,

and east of the Rocky Mountains, except that portion included within

the limits of the departments of Texas and New Mexico; head-quarters

at St. Louis, Mo.

_Department of Texas._--The State of Texas, and the territory north

of it to the boundaries of New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas, and

the Arkansas River, including Fort Smith. Fort Bliss, in Texas, is

temporarily attached to the department of New Mexico; head-quarters

at San Antonio, Texas.

_Department of New Mexico._--The Territory of New Mexico;

head-quarters at Santa Fé, New Mexico.

_Department of Utah._--The Territory of Utah, except that portion of

it lying west of the 117th degree of west longitude; head-quarters,

Camp Floyd, U. T.

_Department of the Pacific._--The country west of the Rocky

Mountains, except those portions of it included within the limits of

the departments of Utah and New Mexico, and the district of Oregon;

head-quarters at San Francisco, California.

_District of Oregon._--The Territory of Washington and the State of

Oregon, excepting the Rogue River and Umpqua districts in Oregon;

head-quarters at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory.

[OUTPOST SYSTEMS.]

We all prepared for the “gravity of the situation” by discharging

and reloading our weapons, and bade adieu, about 9 30 A.M., to Fort

Kearney. Before dismissing the subject of forts, I am disposed to make

some invidious remarks upon the army system of outposts in America.

The War Department of the United States has maintained the same

system which the British, much to their loss--I need scarcely trouble

the reader with a list of evils done to the soldier by outpost

duty--adopted and pertinaciously kept up for so long a time in India;

nay, even maintain to the present day, despite the imminent danger of

mutiny. With the Anglo-Scandinavian race, the hate of centralization

in civil policy extends to military organization, of which it should

be the vital principle. The French, gifted with instinct for war,

and being troubled with scant prejudice against concentration, civil

as well as military, soon abandoned, when they found its futility,

the idea of defending their Algerian frontier by extended lines,

block-houses, and feeble intrenched posts. They wisely established, at

the centres of action, depôts, magazines, and all the requisites for

supporting large bodies of men, making them pivots for expeditionary

columns, which by good military roads could be thrown in overwhelming

numbers, in the best health and in the highest discipline, wherever an

attack or an insurrectionary movement required crushing.

The necessity of so doing has long occurred to the American government,

in whose service at present “a regiment is stationed to-day on the

borders of tropical Mexico; to-morrow, the war-whoop, borne on a gale

from the northwest, compels its presence to the frozen latitudes

of Puget’s Sound.” The objections to altering their present highly

objectionable system are two: the first is a civil consideration, the

second a military one.

As I have remarked about the centralization of troops, so it is with

their relation to civilians; the Anglo-Scandinavian blood shows

similar manifestations in the Old and in the New Country. The French,

a purely military nation, pet their army, raise it to the highest

pitch, send it in for glory, and when it fails are to its faults a

little blind. The English and Anglo-Americans, essentially a commercial

and naval people, dislike the red coat; they look upon, and from the

first they looked upon, a standing army as a necessary nuisance; they

ever listen open-eared to projects for cutting and curtailing army

expenditure; and when they have weakened their forces by a manner of

atrophy, they expect them to do more than their duty, and if they can

not command success, abuse them. With a commissariat, transport, and

hospitals--delicate pieces of machinery, which can not run smoothly

when roughly and hurriedly put together--unaccustomed to and unprepared

for service, they land an army 3000 miles from home, and then make

the world ring with their disappointment, and their complainings

anent fearful losses in men and money. The fact is that, though no

soldiers in the world fight with more bravery and determination, the

Anglo-Scandinavian race, with their present institutions, are inferior

to their inferiors in other points, as regards the art of military

organization. Their fatal wants are order and economy, combined with

the will and the means of selecting the best men--these belong to the

emperor, not to the constitutional king or the president--and most of

all, the habit of implicit subjection to the commands of an absolute

dictator. The end of this long preamble is that the American government

apparently thinks less of the efficiency of its troops than of using

them as escorts to squatters, as police of the highway. Withal they

fail; emigrants will not be escorted; women and children will struggle

when they please, even, in an Indian country, and every season has its

dreadful tales of violence and starvation, massacre and cannibalism.

In France the emigrants would be ordered to collect in bodies at

certain seasons, to report their readiness for the road to the officers

commanding stations, to receive an escort, as he should deem proper,

and to disobey at their peril.

The other motive of the American outpost system is military, but also

of civilian origin. Concentration would necessarily be unpalatable

to a number of senior officers, who now draw what in England would

be called command allowances at the several stations.[30] One of

the principles of a republic is to pay a man only while he works;

pensions, like sinecures, are left to governments less disinterested.

The American army--it would hardly be believed--has no pensions, sale

of commissions, off-reckonings, nor retiring list. A man hopelessly

invalided, or in his second childhood, must hang on by means of

furloughs and medical certificates to the end. The colonels are

mostly upon the sick-list--one died lately aged ninety-three, and

dating from the days of Louis XVI.--and I heard of an officer who,

though practicing medicine for years, was still retained upon the

cadre of his regiment. Of course, the necessity of changing such an

anomaly has frequently been mooted by the Legislature; the scandalous

failure, however, of an attempt at introducing a pension-list into the

United States Navy so shocked the public that no one will hear of the

experiment being renewed, even _in corpore vili_, the army.

[30] The aggregate of the little regular army of the United States in

1860 amounted to 18,093. It was dispersed into eighty military posts,

viz., thirteen in the Department of the East, nine in the West,

twenty in Texas, twelve in the Department of New Mexico, two in Utah

(Fort Bridger and Camp Floyd), eleven in Oregon, and thirteen in the

Department of California. They each would have an average of about

225 men.

To conclude the subject of outpost system. If the change be advisable

in the United States, it is positively necessary to the British in

India. The peninsula presents three main points, not to mention the

detached heights that are found in every province, as the great

pivots of action, the Himalayas, the Deccan, and the Nilgherry Hills,

where, until wanted, the Sepoy and his officer, as well as the white

soldier--the latter worth £100 a head--can be kept in health, drilled,

disciplined, and taught the hundred arts which render an “old salt”

the most handy of men. A few years ago the English soldier was fond

of Indian service; hardly a regiment returned home without leaving

hundreds behind it. Now, long, fatiguing marches, scant fare, the worst

accommodation, and the various results of similar hardships, make him

look upon the land as a Golgotha; it is with difficulty that he can be

prevented from showing his disgust. Both in India and America, this

will be the great benefit of extensive railroads: they will do away

with single stations, and enable the authorities to carry out a system

of concentration most beneficial to the country and to the service,

which, after many years of sore drudgery, may at last discern the good

time coming.

In the United States, two other measures appear called for by

circumstances. The Indian race is becoming desperate, wild-beast like,

hemmed in by its enemies that have flanked it on the east and west, and

are gradually closing in upon it. The tribes can no longer shift ground

without inroads into territories already occupied by neighbors, who

are, of course, hostile; they are, therefore, being brought to final

bay.

[THE CAMEL CORPS.]

The first is a camel corps. At present, when disturbances on a

large scale occur in the Far West--the spring of 1862 will probably

see them--a force of cavalry must be sent from the East, perhaps

also infantry. “The horses, after a march of 500 or 600 miles, are

expected to act with success”--I quote the sensible remarks of a

“late captain of infantry” (Captain Patterson, U. S. Army)--“against

scattered bands of mounted hunters, with the speed of a horse and the

watchfulness of a wolf or antelope, whose faculties are sharpened by

their necessities; who, when they get short of provisions, separate and

look for something to eat, and find it in the water, in the ground,

or on the surface; whose bill of fare ranges from grass-seed, nuts,

roots, grasshoppers, lizards, and rattlesnakes, up to the antelope,

deer, elk, bear, and buffalo, and who, having a continent to roam over,

will neither be surprised, caught, conquered, overawed, or reduced

to famine by a rumbling, bugle-blowing, drum-beating town passing

through their country on wheels, at the speed of a loaded wagon.” But

the camel would in these latitudes easily march sixty miles per diem

for a week or ten days, amply sufficient to tire out the sturdiest

Indian pony; it requires water only after every fifty hours, and the

worst soil would supply it with ample forage in the shape of wild

sage, rabbit-bush, and thorns. Each animal would carry two men, with

their arms and ammunition, rations for the time required, bedding and

regimental necessaries, with material to make up a _tente d’abri_ if

judged necessary. The organization should be that of the Sindh Camel

Corps, which, under Sir Charles Napier, was found so efficient against

the frontier Beloch. The best men for this kind of fighting would

be the Mountaineers, or Western Men, of the caste called “Pikes;”

properly speaking, Missourians, but popularly any “rough” between

St. Louis and California. After a sound flogging, for the purpose of

preparing their minds to admit the fact that all men are _not_ equal,

they might be used by sea or land, whenever hard, downright fighting

is required. It is understood that hitherto the camel, despite the

careful selection by Mr. De Leon, the excellent Consul General of the

United States in Egypt, and the valuable instructions of Hekekyan Bey,

has proved a failure in the Western world. If so, want of patience has

been the sole cause; the animal must be acclimatized by slow degrees

before heavy loading to test its powers of strength and speed. Some

may deem this amount of delay impossible. I confess my belief that the

Anglo-Americans can, within any but the extremest limits, accomplish

any thing they please--except unity.

The other necessity will be the raising of native regiments. The French

in Africa have their Spahis, the Russians their Cossacks, and the

English their Sepoys. The American government has often been compelled,

as in the case of the Creek battalion, which did good service during

the Seminole campaign, indirectly to use their wild aborigines; but

the public sentiment, or rather prejudice, which fathers upon the

modern Pawnee the burning and torturing tastes of the ancient Mohawk,

is strongly opposed to pitting Indian against Indian in battle. Surely

this is a false as well as a mistaken philanthropy. If war must be,

it is better that Indian instead of white blood should be shed. And

invariably the effect of enlisting savages and barbarians, subjecting

them to discipline, and placing them directly under the eye of the

civilized man, has been found to diminish their ferocity. The Bashi

Buzuk, left to himself, roasted the unhappy Russian; in the British

service he brought his prisoner alive into camp with a view to a

present or promotion. When talking over the subject with the officers

of the United States regular army, they have invariably concurred with

me in the possibility of the scheme, provided that the public animus

could be turned pro instead of con; and I have no doubt but that they

will prove as leaders of Irregulars--it would be invidious to quote

names--equal to the best of the Anglo-Indians, Skinner, Beatson, and

Jacob. The men would receive about ten dollars per man, and each corps

number 300. They would be better mounted and better armed than their

wild brethren, and they might be kept, when not required for active

service, in a buffalo country, their favorite quarters, and their

finest field for soldierlike exercises. The main point to be avoided is

the mistake committed by the British in India, that of appointing too

many officers to their Sepoy corps.

We left Kearney at 9 30 A.M., following the road which runs forty

miles up the valley of the Platte. It is a broad prairie, plentifully

supplied with water in wells two to four feet deep; the fluid is cool

and clear, but it is said not to be wholesome. Where the soil is clayey

pools abound; the sandy portions are of course dry. Along the southern

bank near Kearney are few elevations; on the opposite or northern side

appear high and wooded bluffs. The road was rough with pitch-holes, and

for the first time I remarked a peculiar gap in the ground like an East

Indian sun-crack--in these latitudes you see none of the deep fissures

which scar the face of mother earth in tropical lands--the effect of

rain-streams and snow-water acting upon the clay. Each succeeding

winter lengthens the head and deepens the sole of this deeply-gashed

water-cut till it destroys the road. A curious mirage appeared,

doubling to four the strata of river and vegetation on the banks. The

sight and song of birds once more charmed us after a desert where

animal life is as rare as upon the plains of Brazil. After fifteen

miles of tossing and tumbling, we made “Seventeen-mile Station,” and

halted there to change mules. About twenty miles above the fort the

southern bank began to rise into mounds of tenacious clay, which, worn

away into perpendicular and precipitous sections, composes the columnar

formation called O’Fallon’s Bluffs. At 1 15 P.M. we reached Plum Creek,

after being obliged to leave behind one of the conductors, who had

become delirious with the “shakes.” The establishment, though new, was

already divided into three; the little landlady, though she worked so

manfully, was, as she expressed it, “enjoying bad health;” in other

words, suffering from a “dumb chill.” I may observe that the Prairie

Traveler’s opinions concerning the power of encamping with impunity

upon the banks of the streams in this country must not be applied

to the Platte. The whole line becomes with early autumn a hotbed of

febrile disease. And generally throughout this season the stranger

should not consider himself safe on any grounds save those defended

from the southern trade-wind, which, sweeping directly from the Gulf of

Mexico, bears with it noxious exhalations.

About Plum Ranch the soil is rich, clayey, and dotted with swamps and

“slews,” by which the English traveler will understand sloughs. The

dryer portions were a Gulistan of bright red, blue, and white flowers,

the purple aster, and the mallow, with its parsnip-like root, eaten by

the Indians, the gaudy yellow helianthus--we remarked at least three

varieties--the snowy mimulus, the graceful flax, sometimes four feet

high, and a delicate little euphorbia, while in the damper ground

appeared the polar plant, that prairie compass, the plane of whose leaf

ever turns toward the magnetic meridian. This is the “weed-prairie,”

one of the many divisions of the great natural meadows; grass prairie,

rolling prairie, motte prairie, salt prairie, and soda prairie. It

deserves a more poetical name, for

“These are the gardens of the desert, these

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,

For which the speech of England has no name.”

Buffalo herds were behind the hills, but we were too full of sleep to

follow them. The plain was dotted with blanched skulls and bones, which

would have made a splendid bonfire. Apparently the expert voyageur has

not learned that they form good fuel; at any rate, he has preferred

to them the “chips” of which it is said that a steak cooked with them

requires no pepper.[31]

[31] The chip corresponds with the bois de vache of Switzerland, the

tezek of Armenia, the arghol of Thibet, and the gobar of India. With

all its faults, it is at least superior to that used in Sindh.

[BUFFALO-BEEF.]

We dined at Plum Creek on buffalo, probably bull beef, the worst and

dryest meat, save elk, that I have ever tasted; indeed, without the

assistance of pork fat, we found it hard to swallow. As every one

knows, however, the two-year old cow is the best eating, and at this

season the herds are ever in the worst condition. The animals calve in

May and June, consequently they are in August completely out of flesh.

They are fattest about Christmas, when they find it difficult to run.

All agree in declaring that there is no better meat than that of the

young buffalo: the assertion, however, must be taken _cum grano salis_.

Wild flesh was never known to be equal to tame, and that monarch did at

least one wise thing who made the loin of beef Sir Loin. The voyageurs

and travelers who cry up the buffalo as so delicious, have been living

for weeks on rusty bacon and lean antelope; a rich hump with its proper

menstruum, a cup of _café noir_ as strong as possible, must truly be a

“tit-bit.” They boast that the fat does not disagree with the eater;

neither do three pounds of heavy pork with the English plow-boy, who

has probably taken less exercise than the Canadian hunter. Before long,

buffalo flesh will reach New York, where I predict it will be held as

inferior to butcher’s meat as is the antelope to park-fed venison.

While hunting, Indians cut off the tail to test the quality of the

game, and they have acquired by habit a power of judging on the run

between fat and lean.

Resuming our weary ride, we watered at “Willow Island Ranch,” and then

at “Cold Water Ranch”--drinking-shops all--five miles from Midway

Station, which we reached at 8 P.M. Here, while changing mules, we

attempted with sweet speech and smiles to persuade the landlady, who

showed symptoms of approaching maternity, into giving us supper. This

she sturdily refused to do, for the reason that she had not received

due warning. We had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the _employés_

of the line making themselves thoroughly comfortable with bread and

buttermilk. Into the horrid wagon again, and “a rollin:” lazily enough

the cold and hungry night passed on.[32]

[32] According to Colonel Frémont, the total amount of buffalo robes

purchased by the several companies, American, Hudson’s Bay, and

others, was an annual total of 90,000 from the eight or ten years

preceding 1843. This is repeated by the Abbé Domenech, who adds

that the number does not include those slaughtered in the southern

regions by the Comanches and other tribes of the Texan frontier, nor

those killed between March and November, when the skins are unfit

for tanning. In 1847, the town of St. Louis received 110,000 buffalo

robes, stags’, deer, and other skins, and twenty-five salted tongues.

_To the Forks of the Platte. 11th August._

Precisely at 1 35 in the morning we awoke, as we came to a halt at

Cotton-wood Station. Cramped with a four days’ and four nights’ ride

in the narrow van, we entered the foul tenement, threw ourselves upon

the mattresses, averaging three to each, and ten in a small room,

every door, window, and cranny being shut--after the fashion of these

Western folks, who make up for a day in the open air by perspiring

through the night in unventilated log huts--and, despite musquetoes,

slept.

The morning brought with it no joy. We had arrived at the westernmost

limit of the “gigantic Leicestershire” to which buffalo at this season

extend, and could hope to see no trace of them between Cotton-wood

Station and the Pacific. I can not, therefore, speak _ex cathedrâ_

concerning this, the noblest “venerie” of the West: almost every one

who has crossed the prairies, except myself, can. Captain Stansbury[33]

will enlighten the sportsman upon the approved method of bryttling the

beasts, and elucidate the mysteries of the “game-beef,” marrow-bone

and depuis, tongue and tender-loin, bass and hump, hump-rib and

liver, which latter, by-the-by, is not unfrequently eaten raw, with a

sprinkling of gall,[34] by the white hunter emulating his wild rival,

as does the European in Abyssinia. The Prairie Traveler has given,

from experience, the latest observations concerning the best modes of

hunting the animal. All that remains to me, therefore, is to offer to

the reader a few details collected from reliable sources, and which are

not to be found in the two works above alluded to.

[33] Exploration and Survey, etc., chap. ix.

[34] “Prairie bitters”--made of a pint of water and a quarter of

a gill of buffalo gall--are considered an _elixir vitæ_ by old

voyageurs.

The bison (_Bison Americanus_) is trivially known as the Prairie

Buffalo, to distinguish it from a different and a larger animal, the

Buffalo of the Woods, which haunts the Rocky Mountains. The “Monarch

of the Prairies,” the “most gigantic of the indigenous mammalia of

America,” has, it is calculated, receded westward ten miles annually

for the last 150 years. When America was discovered, the buffalo

extended down to the Atlantic shore. Thirty years ago, bands grazed

upon the banks of the Missouri River. The annual destruction is

variously computed at from 200,000 to 300,000 head: the American Fur

Company receive per annum about 70,000 robes, which are all cows;

and of these not more than 5000 fall by the hands of white men. At

present there are three well-known bands, which split up, at certain

seasons, into herds of 2000 and 3000 each. The first family is on

the head-waters of the Mississippi; the second haunts the vast

crescent-shaped valley of the Yellow Stone; while the third occupies

the prairie country between the Platte and the Arkansas. A fourth

band, westward of the Rocky Mountains, is quite extinct. Fourteen to

fifteen years ago, buffalo was found in Utah Valley, and later still

upon the Humboldt River: according to some, they emigrated northward,

through Oregon and the lands of the Blackfeet. It is more probable,

however, that they were killed off by the severe winter of 1845, their

skulls being still found scattered in heaps, as if a sudden and general

destruction had come upon the doomed tribe.

[THE BUFFALO.]

The buffalo is partially migratory in its habits: it appears to follow

the snow, which preserves its food from destruction. Like the antelope

of the Cape, when on the “trek,” the band may be reckoned by thousands.

The grass, which takes its name from the animal, is plentiful in the

valley of the Big Blue; it loves the streams of little creeks that have

no bottom-land, and shelters itself under the sage. It is a small,

moss-like gramen, with dark seed, and, when dry, it has been compared

by travelers to twisted gray horsehair. Smaller herds travel in Indian

file; their huge bodies, weighing 1500 lbs., appear, from afar, like

piles erected to bridge the plain. After calving, the cows, like the

African koodoo and other antelopes, herd separately from the males,

and for the same reason, timidity and the cares of maternity. As in

the case of the elephant and the hippopotamus, the oldsters are driven

by the young ones, _en charivari_, from the band, and a compulsory

bachelorhood souring their temper, causes them to become “rogues.” The

albino, or white buffalo, is exceedingly rare; even veteran hunters

will confess never to have seen one. The same may be said of the glossy

black accident called the “silk robe,” supposed by Western men to be a

cross between the parent and the offspring. The buffalo calf has been

tamed by the Flatheads and others: I have never, however, heard of its

being utilized.

The Dakotahs and other Prairie tribes will degenerate, if not

disappear, when the buffalo is “rubbed out.” There is a sympathy

between them, and the beast flies not from the barbarian and his

bow as it does before the face of the white man and his hot-mouthed

weapon. The aborigines are unwilling to allow travelers, sportsmen,

or explorers to pass through the country while they are hunting the

buffalo; that is to say, preserving the game till their furs are

ready for robes. At these times no one is permitted to kill any but

stragglers, for fear of stampeding the band; the animal not only

being timid, but also in the habit of hurrying away cattle and stock,

which often are thus irretrievably lost. In due season the savages

surround one section, and destroy it, the others remaining unalarmedly

grazing within a few miles of the scene of slaughter. If another tribe

interferes, it is a _casus belli_, death being the punishment for

poaching. The white man, whose careless style of _battue_ is notorious,

will be liable to the same penalty, or, that failing, to be plundered

by even “good Indians;” and I have heard of an English gentleman who,

for persisting in the obnoxious practice, was very properly threatened

with prosecution by the government agent.

What the cocoanut is to the East Indian, and the plantain and the

calabash to various tribes of Africans, such is the “bos” to the

carnivorous son of America. No part of it is allowed to waste. The

horns and hoofs make glue for various purposes, especially for

feathering arrows; the brains and part of the bowels are used for

curing skins; the hide clothes the tribes from head to foot; the

calf-skins form their apishamores, or saddle-blankets; the sinews

make their bow-strings, thread, and finer cord; every part of the

flesh, including the fœtus and placenta, is used for food. The surplus

hides are reserved for market. They are prepared by the squaws, who,

curious to say, will not touch a bear-skin till the age of maternity

has passed; and they prefer the spoils of the cow, as being softer

than those of the bull. The skin, after being trimmed with an iron

or bone scraper--this is not done in the case of the “parflèche,”

or thick sole-leather--and softened with brain or marrow, is worked

till thoroughly pliable with the hands. The fumigation, which gives

the finishing touch, is confined to buckskins intended for garments.

When the hair is removed, the hides supply the place of canvas, which

they resemble in whiteness and facility of folding. Dressed with the

hair, they are used, as their name denotes, for clothing; they serve

also for rugs and bedding. In the prairies, the price ranges from $1

to $1 50 in kind; in the Eastern States, from $5 to $10. The fancy

specimens, painted inside, decorated with eyes, and otherwise adorned

with split porcupine quills dyed a gamboge-yellow, fetch from $8

to $35. A “buffalo” (_subaudi_ robe) was shown to me, painted with

curious figures, which, according to my Canadian informant, were a

kind of hieroglyph or _aide-mémoire_, even ruder than the Mexican

picture-writing.

The Indians generally hunt the buffalo with arrows. They are so expert

in riding that they will, at full speed, draw the missile from the

victim’s flank before it falls. I have met but one officer, Captain

Heth, of the 10th Regiment, who ever acquired the art. The Indian

hog-spear has been used to advantage. Our predecessors in Eastern

conquest have killed with it the tiger and nylgau; there is, therefore,

no reason why it might not be efficiently applied to the buffalo. Like

the Bos Caffre, the bison is dull, surly, and stupid, as well as timid

and wary; it requires hard riding, with the chance of a collar-bone

broken by the horse falling into a prairie-dog’s home; and when headed

or tired an old male rarely fails to charge.

[THE MODEL VERANDA.]

The flies chasing away the musquetoes--even as Aurora routs the

lingering shades of night--having sounded our _reveillée_ at

Cotton-wood Station, we proceeded by means of an “eye-opener,” which

even the abstemious judge could not decline, and the use of the

“skillet,” to prepare for a breakfast composed of various abominations,

especially cakes of flour and grease, molasses and dirt, disposed in

pretty equal parts. After paying the usual 50 cents, we started in the

high wind and dust, with a heavy storm brewing in the north, along the

desert valley of the dark, silent Platte, which here spread out in

broad basins and lagoons, picturesquely garnished with broad-leafed

dock and beds of _prêle_, flags and water-rushes, in which, however, we

saw nothing but traces of Monsieur Maringouin. On our left was a line

of sub-conical buttes, red, sandy-clay pyramids, semi-detached from

the wall of the rock behind them, with smooth flat faces fronting the

river, toward which they slope at the natural angle of 45°. The land

around, dry and sandy, bore no traces of rain; a high wind blew, and

the thermometer stood at 78° (F.), which was by no means uncomfortably

warm. Passing Junction-House Ranch and Frémont Slough--whisky-shops

both--we halted for “dinner,” about 11 A.M., at Frémont Springs, so

called from an excellent little water behind the station. The building

is of a style peculiar to the South, especially Florida--two huts

connected by a roofwork of thatched timber, which acts as the best

and coolest of verandas. The station-keeper, who receives from the

proprietors of the line $30 per month, had been there only three weeks;

and his wife, a comely young person, uncommonly civil and smiling for

a “lady,” supplied us with the luxuries of pigeons, onions, and light

bread, and declared her intention of establishing a poultry-yard.

[HALF-WAY HOUSE.]

An excellent train of mules carried us along a smooth road at a

slapping pace, over another natural garden even more flowery than that

passed on the last day’s march. There were beds of lupins, a brilliant

pink and blue predominating, the green plant locally known as “Lamb’s

Quarters” (_Chenopodium album_); the streptanthis; the milk-weed, with

its small white blossoms; the anemone; the wild flax, with its pretty

blue flowers, and growths which appeared to be clematis, chamomile,

and digitalis. Distant black dots--dwarf cedars, which are yearly

diminishing--lined the bank of the Platte and the long line of River

Island; they elicited invidious comparisons from the Pennsylvanians of

the party. We halted at Half-way House, near O’Fallon’s Bluffs, at the

quarters of Mr. M----, a _compagnon de voyage_, who had now reached his

home of twenty years, and therefore insisted upon “standing drinks.”

The business is worth $16,000 per annum; the contents of the store

somewhat like a Parsee’s shop in Western India--every thing from a

needle to a bottle of Champagne. A sign-board informed us that we were

now distant 400 miles from St. Jo, 120 from Fort Kearney, 68 from the

upper, and 40 from the lower crossing of the Platte. As we advanced the

valley narrowed, the stream shrank, the vegetation dwindled, the river

islands were bared of timber, and the only fuel became buffalo chip

and last year’s artemisia. This hideous growth, which is to weary our

eyes as far as central valleys of the Sierra Nevada, will require a few

words of notice.

The artemisia, absinthe, or wild sage differs much from the panacea

concerning which the Salernitan school rhymed:

“Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto.”

Yet it fills the air with a smell that caricatures the odor of the

garden-plant, causing the traveler to look round in astonishment; and

when used for cooking it taints the food with a taste between camphor

and turpentine. It is of two kinds. The smaller or white species (_A.

filifolia_) rarely grows higher than a foot. Its fetor is less rank,

and at times of scarcity it forms tolerable fodder for animals. The

Western men have made of it, as of the “red root,” a tea, which must

be pronounced decidedly inferior to corn coffee. The Indians smoke it,

but they are not particular about what they inhale: like that perverse

p----n of Ludlow, who smoked the bell-ropes rather than not smoke at

all, or like school-boys who break themselves in upon ratan, they use

even the larger sage as well as a variety of other graveolent growths.

The second kind (_A. tridentata_) is to the family of shrubs what

the prairie cedar is to the trees--a gnarled, crooked, rough-barked

deformity. It has no pretensions to beauty except in earliest youth,

and in the dewy hours when the breeze turns up its leaves that glitter

like silver in the sun; and its constant presence in the worst and most

desert tracts teaches one to regard it, like the mangrove in Asia and

Africa, with aversion. In size it greatly varies; in some places it

is but little larger than the white species; near the Red Buttes its

woody stem often attains the height of a man and the thickness of his

waist. As many as fifty rings have been counted in one wood, which,

according to the normal calculation, would bring its age up to half a

century. After its first year, stock will eat it only when threatened

with starvation. It has, however, its use; the traveler, despite its

ugliness, hails the appearance of its stiff, wiry clumps at the evening

halt: it is easily uprooted, and by virtue of its essential oil it

makes a hot and lasting fire, and ashes over. According to Colonel

Frémont, “it has a small fly accompanying it through every change of

elevation and latitude.” The same eminent authority also suggests that

the respiration of air so highly impregnated with aromatic plants may

partly account for the favorable effect of the climate upon consumption.

At 5 P.M., as the heat began to mitigate, we arrived at Alkali Lake

Station, and discovered some “exiles from Erin,” who supplied us with

antelope meat and the unusual luxury of ice taken from the Platte. We

attempted to bathe in the river, but found it flowing liquid mire. The

Alkali Lake was out of sight; the driver, however, consoled me with the

reflection that I should “glimpse” alkali lakes till I was sick of them.

Yesterday and to-day we have been in a line of Indian “removes.” The

wild people were shifting their quarters for grass; when it becomes a

little colder they will seek some winter abode on the banks of a stream

which supplies fuel and where they can find meat, so that with warmth

and food, song and chat--they are fond of talking nonsense as African

negroes--and smoke and sleep, they can while away the dull and dreary

winter. Before describing the scene, which might almost serve for a

picture of Bedouin or gipsy life--so similar are the customs of all

savages--I have something to say about the Red Man.

[THE RED MEN.]

This is a country of misnomers. America should not, according to the

school-books, have been named America, consequently the Americans

should not be called Americans. A geographical error, pardonable in the

fifteenth century, dubbed the old tenants of these lands Indians,[35]

but why we should still call them the Red Men can not be conceived. I

have now seen them in the north, south, east, and west of the United

States, yet never, except under the influence of ochre or vermilion,

have I seen the Red Man red. The real color of the skin, as may be seen

under the leggins, varies from a dead pale olive to a dark dingy brown.

The parts exposed to the sun are slightly burnished, as in a Tartar

or an Affghan after a summer march. Between the two extremes above

indicated there are, however, a thousand shades of color, and often the

skin has been so long grimed in with pigment, grease, and dirt that it

suggests a brick-dust tinge which a little soap or soda would readily

remove. Indeed, the color and the complexion, combined with the lank

hair, scant beard, and similar peculiarities, renders it impossible to

see this people for the first time without the strongest impression

that they are of that Turanian breed which in prehistoric ages passed

down from above the Himalayas as far south as Cape Comorin.

[35] Columbus and Vespucius both died in the conviction that they

had only discovered portions of Asia. Indeed, as late as 1533, the

astronomer Schöner maintained that Mexico was the Quinsai of Marco

Polo. The early navigators called the aborigines of the New World

“Indians,” believing that they inhabited the eastern portion of

“India,” a term then applied to the extremity of Oriental Asia. Until

the present century the Spaniards applied the names India and Indies

to their possessions in America.

Another mistake touching the Indian is the present opinion concerning

him and his ancestors. He now suffers in public esteem from the

reaction following the high-flown descriptions of Cooper and the

herd of minor romancers who could not but make their heroes heroes.

Moreover, men acquainted only with the degenerate Pawnees or Diggers

extend their evil opinions to the noble tribes now extinct--the

Iroquois and Algonquins, for instance, whose remnants, the Delawares

and Ojibwas, justify the high opinion of the first settlers. The

exploits of King Philip, Pontiac, Gurister Sego, Tecumseh, Keokuk,

Iatan, Captain J. Brant, Black Hawk, Red Jacket, Osceola, and Billy

Bowlegs, are rapidly fading away from memory, while the failures of

such men as Little Thunder, and those like him, stand prominently forth

in modern days. Besides the injustice to the manes and memories of

the dead, this depreciation of the Indians tends to serious practical

evils. Those who see the savage lying drunk about stations, or eaten

up with disease, expect to beat him out of the field by merely showing

their faces; they fail, and pay the penalty with their lives--an event

which occurs every year in some parts of America.

[PRAIRIE-INDIAN DRESS.]

The remove of the village presented an interesting sight--an animated

shifting scene of bucks and braves, squaws and pappooses, ponies

dwarfed by bad breeding and hard living, dogs and puppies struggling

over the plains westward. In front, singly or in pairs, rode the men,

not gracefully, not according to the rules of Mexican _manège_, but

like the Abyssinian eunuch, as if born upon and bred to become part of

the animal. Some went barebacked; others rode, like the ancient chiefs

of the Western Islands, upon a saddle-tree, stirrupless, or provided

with hollow blocks of wood: in some cases the saddle was adorned with

bead hangings, and in all a piece of buffalo hide with the hair on was

attached beneath to prevent chafing. The cruel ring-bit of the Arabs

is not unknown. A few had iron curbs, probably stolen. For the most

part they managed their nags with a hide thong lashed round the lower

jaw and attached to the neck. A whip, of various sizes and shapes,

sometimes a round and tattooed ferule, more often a handle like a

butcher’s tally-stick, flat, notched, one foot long, and provided with

two or three thongs, hung at the wrist. Their nags were not shod with

parflèche, as among the horse-Indians of the South. Their long, lank,

thick, brownish-black hair, ruddy from the effects of weather, was

worn parted in the middle, and depended from the temples confined with

a long twist of otter or beaver’s skin in two queues, or pig-tails,

reaching to the breast: from the poll, and distinct from the remainder

of the hair, streamed the scalp-lock. This style of hair-dressing,

doubtless, aids in giving to the coronal region that appearance of

depression which characterizes the North American Indians as a race

of “Flatheads,” and which, probably being considered a beauty, led to

the artificial deformities of the Peruvian and the Aztec. The parting

in men, as well as in women, was generally colored with vermilion,

and plates of brass or tin, with beveled edges, varying in size from

a shilling to half a crown, were inserted into the front hair. The

scalp-lock--in fops the side-locks also--was decorated with tin or

silver plates, often twelve in number, beginning from the head and

gradually diminishing in size as they approached the heels; a few had

eagle’s, hawk’s, and crow’s feathers stuck in the hair, and sometimes,

grotesquely enough, crownless Kossuth hats, felt broadbrims, or old

military casquettes, surmounted all this finery. Their scanty beard

was removed; they compare the bushy-faced European to a dog running

away with a squirrel in its mouth. In their ears were rings of beads,

with pendants of tin plates or mother of pearl, or huge circles of

brass wire not unlike a Hindoo tailor’s; and their fore-arms, wrists,

and fingers were, after an African fashion, adorned with the same

metals, which the savage ever prefers to gold or silver. Their other

decorations were cravats of white or white and blue, oval beads, and

necklaces of plates like those worn in the hair. The body dress was

a tight-sleeved waistcoat of dark drugget, over an American cotton

shirt; others wore tattered flannels, and the middle was wrapped round

with a common blanket, presented by the government agent--scarlet

and blue being the colors preferred, white rare: a better stuff is

the coarse broadcloth manufactured for the Indian market in the

United States. The leggins were a pair of pantaloons without the body

part--in their palmy days the Indians laughed to scorn their future

conquerors for tightening the hips so as to impede activity--looped

up at both haunches with straps to a leathern girdle, and all wore

the breech-cloth, which is the common Hindoo languti or T-bandage.

The cut of the leggins is a parallelogram, a little too short and

much too broad for the limb; it is sewn so as to fit tight, and the

projecting edges, for which the light-colored list or bordering is

usually preserved, answers the effect of a military stripe. When

buckskin leggins are made the outside edges are fringed, producing

that feathered appearance which distinguishes in our pictures the

nether limbs of the Indian brave. The garb ends with moccasins,[36] the

American brogues, which are made in two ways. The simplest are of one

piece, a cylinder of skin cut from above and below the hock of some

large animal--moose, elk, or buffalo--and drawn on before shrinking,

the joint forming the heel, while the smaller end is sewn together for

a toe. This rough contrivance is little used but as a _pis aller_. The

other kind is made of tanned hide in two pieces--a sole and an upper

leather, sewn together at the junction; the last is a bit of board

rounded off at the end. They are open over the instep, where also

they can be laced or tied, and they fit as closely as the Egyptian

mizz or under-slipper, which they greatly resemble. They are worn by

officers in the Far West as the expatriated Anglo-Indian adopts the

“Juti.” The greatest inconvenience to the novice is the want of heel;

moreover, they render the feet uncomfortably tender, and, unless soled

with parflèche or thick leather, they are scant defense against stony

ground; during dry weather they will last fairly, but they become,

after a single wetting, even worse than Bombay-made Wellingtons. A

common pair will cost $2; when handsomely embroidered with bead-work by

the squaws they rise to $15.

[36] This Algonquin word is written _moccasson_ or _mocasin_, and is

pronounced _moksin_.

The braves were armed with small tomahawks or iron hatchets, which

they carried with the powder-horn, in the belt, on the right side,

while the long tobacco-pouch of antelope skin hung by the left. Over

their shoulders were leather targes, bows and arrows, and some few had

rifles; both weapons were defended from damp in deer-skin cases, and

quivers with the inevitable bead-work, and the fringes which every

savage seems to love. These articles reminded me of those in use

among the Bedouins of El Hejaz. Their nags were lean and ungroomed;

they treat them as cruelly as do the Somal; yet nothing--short of

whisky--can persuade the Indian warrior, like the man of Nejd, to part

with a favorite steed. It is his all in all, his means of livelihood,

his profession, his pride; he is an excellent judge of horse-flesh,

though ignoring the mule and ass; and if he offers an animal for

which he has once refused to trade, it is for the reason that an

Oriental takes to market an adult slave--it has become useless. Like

the Arab, he considers it dishonorable to sell a horse; he gives it

to you, expecting a large present, and if disappointed he goes away

grumbling that you have “swallowed” his property. He is fond of short

races--spurts they are called--as we had occasion to see; there is

nothing novel nor interesting in the American as there is in the

Arabian hippology; the former learned all its arts from Europeans, the

latter taught them.

Behind the warriors and braves followed the baggage of the village.

The lodge poles, in bundles of four and five, had been lashed to pads

or pack-saddles, girthed tight to the ponies’ backs, the other ends

being allowed to trail along the ground like the shafts of a truck;

the sign easily denotes the course of travel. The wolf-like dogs were

also harnessed in the same way; more lupine than canine, they are ready

when hungry to attack man or mule; and, sharp-nosed and prick-eared,

they not a little resemble the Indian pariah dog. Their equipments,

however, were of course on a diminutive scale; a little pad girthed

round the barrel, with a breastplate to keep it in place, enabled

them to drag two short light lodge poles tied together at the smaller

extremity. One carried only a hawk on its back--yet falconry has

never, I believe, been practiced by the Indian. Behind the ponies the

poles were connected by cross-sticks, upon which were lashed the lodge

covers, the buffalo robes, and other bulkier articles. Some had strong

frames of withes or willow basket-work, two branches being bent into

an oval, garnished below with a net-work of hide thongs for a seat,

covered with a light wicker canopy, and opening, like a cage, only on

one side; a blanket or a buffalo robe defends the inmate from sun and

rain. These are the litters for the squaws when weary, the children,

and the puppies, which are part of the family till used for feasts.

It might be supposed to be a rough conveyance; the elasticity of the

poles, however, alleviates much of that inconvenience. A very ancient

man, wrinkled as a last year’s walnut, and apparently crippled by old

wounds, was carried, probably by his great-grandsons, in a rude sedan.

The vehicle was composed of two pliable poles, about ten feet long,

separated by three cross-bars twenty inches or so apart; a blanket had

been secured to the foremost and hindermost, and under the centre-bit

lay Senex secured against falling out. In this way the Indians often

bear the wounded back to their villages; apparently they have never

thought of a horse-litter, which might be made with equal facility, and

would certainly save work.

[THE SQUAWS.]

While the rich squaws rode, the poorer followed their pack-horses on

foot, eying the more fortunate as the mercer’s wife regards what she

terms the “carriage lady.” The women’s dress not a little resembles

their lords’; the unaccustomed eye often hesitates between the sexes.

In the fair, however, the waistcoat is absent, the wide-sleeved shift

extends below the knees, and the leggins are of somewhat different cut.

All wore coarse shawls, or white, blue, and scarlet cloth-blankets

round their bodies. Upon the Upper Platte we afterward saw them dressed

in cotton gowns, after a semi-civilized fashion, and with bowie-knives

by their sides. The grandmothers were fearful to look upon--horrid

excrescences of nature, teaching proud man a lesson of humility, and

a memento of his neighbor in creation, the “humble ape”--it is only

civilization that can save the aged woman from resembling the gorilla.

The middle-aged matrons were homely bodies, broad and squat like the

African dame after she has become _mère de famille_; their hands and

feet were notably larger from work than those of the men, and the

burdens upon their backs caused them to stoop painfully. The young

squaws--pity it is that all our household Indian words, pappoose, for

instance, tomahawk, wigwam, and powwow, should have been naturalized

out of the Abenaki and other harsh dialects of New England--deserved

a more euphonious appellation. The belle savage of the party had

large and languishing eyes and dentists’ teeth that glittered, with

sleek, long black hair like the ears of a Blenheim spaniel, justifying

a natural instinct to stroke or pat it, drawn straight over a low,

broad, Quadroon-like brow. Her figure had none of the fragility which

distinguishes the higher race, who are apparently too delicate for

human nature’s daily food--porcelain, in fact, when pottery is wanted;

nor had she the square corpulency which appears in the negro woman

after marriage. Her ears and neck were laden with tinsel ornaments,

brass-wire rings adorned her wrists and fine arms, a bead-work sash

encircled her waist, and scarlet leggins, fringed and tasseled, ended

in equally costly moccasins. When addressed by the driver in some

terms to me unintelligible, she replied with a soft clear laugh--the

principal charm of the Indian, as of the smooth-throated African

woman--at the same time showing him the palm of her right hand as

though it had been a looking-glass. The gesture would have had a

peculiar significance in Sindh; here, however, I afterward learned,

it simply conveys a refusal. The maidens of the tribe, or those under

six, were charming little creatures, with the wildest and most piquant

expression, and the prettiest doll-like features imaginable; the young

coquettes already conferred their smiles as if they had been of any

earthly value. The boys once more reminded me of the East; they had

black beady eyes, like snakes, and the wide mouths of young caymans.

Their only dress, when they were not in “birth-day suit,” was the

Indian languti. None of the braves carried scalps, finger-bones, or

notches on the lance, which serve like certain marks on saw-handled

pistols farther east, nor had any man lost a limb. They followed us for

many a mile, peering into the hinder part of our traveling wigwam, and

ejaculating “How! How!” the normal salutation. It is supposed to mean

“good,” and the Western man, when he drinks to your health, says “Here,

how!” and expects a return in kind. The politeness of the savages

did not throw us off our guard; the Dakotah of these regions are

expert and daring kleptomaniacs; they only laughed, however, a little

knowingly as we raised the rear curtain, and they left us after begging

pertinaciously--bakhshish is an institution here as on the banks of the

Nile--for tobacco, gunpowder, ball, copper caps, lucifers, and what

not. The women, except the pretty party, looked, methought, somewhat

scowlingly, but one can hardly expect a smiling countenance from the

human biped trudging ten or twenty miles under a load fit for a mule.

A great contrast with these Indians was a train of “Pike’s Peakers,”

who, to judge from their grim looks, were returning disappointed from

the new gold diggings. I think that if obliged to meet one of the two

troops by moonlight alone, my choice would have fallen upon “messieurs

les sauvages.”

At 6 P.M. we resumed our route, with a good but fidgety train, up the

Dark Valley, where musquetoes and sultry heat combined to worry us.

Slowly traveling and dozing the while, we arrived about 9 15 P.M.

at Diamond Springs, a bright little water much frequented by the

“lightning-bug” and the big-eyed “Devil’s darning-needle,”[37] where we

found whisky and its usual accompaniment, soldiers. The host related

an event which he said had taken place but a few days before. An old

mountaineer, who had married two squaws, was drinking with certain

Cheyennes, a tribe famous for ferocity and hostility to the whites. The

discourse turning upon topics stoical, he was asked by his wild boon

companions if he feared death. The answer was characteristic: “You may

kill me if you like!” Equally characteristic was their acknowledgment;

they hacked him to pieces, and threw the corpse under a bank. In these

regions the opposite races regard each other as wild beasts; the white

will shoot an Indian as he would a coyote. He expects to go under

whenever the “all-fired, red-bellied varmints”--I speak, oh reader,

Occidentally--get the upper hand, and _vice versâ_.

[37] The first is the firefly, the second is the dragon-fly, called

in country parts of England “the Devil’s needle.”

[THE PLATTE RIVER.]

The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40° 05′ 05″, and W. long. (G.)

101° 21′ 24″. The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be

the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps

Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the Iatans, whom the Spaniards

term Comanches,[38] averages 600 yards, about 100 less than its

rival in breadth, and, according to the prairie people, affords the

best drinking. Hunters often ford the river by the Lower Crossing,

twenty-eight miles above the bifurcation. Those with heavily-loaded

wagons prefer this route, as by it they avoid the deep loose sands on

the way to the Upper Crossing. The mail-coach must endure the four

miles of difficulty, as the road to Denver City branches off from the

western ford.

[38] The Kaumainsh (Comanche), a warlike and independent race, who,

with the Apaches, have long been the bane of New Spain, were in the

beginning of this century entirely erratic, without any kind of

cultivation, subsisting, in fact, wholly by the chase and plunder.

They were then bounded westward by New Mexico, where they have laid

waste many a thriving settlement; eastward by the Pawnees and Osages;

northward by the Utahs, Kiowas, and Shoshonees; and southward by the

nations on the Lower Red River.

At 10 P.M., having “caught up” the mules, we left Diamond Springs, and

ran along the shallow river which lay like a thin sheet of shimmer

broken by clumps and islets that simulated, under the imperfect

light of the stars, houses and towns, hulks and ships, wharves and

esplanades. On the banks large bare spots, white with salt, glistened

through the glooms; the land became so heavy that our fagged beasts

groaned; and the descents, water-cuts, and angles were so abrupt that

holding on constituted a fair gymnastic exercise. The air was clear

and fine. My companions snored while I remained awake enjoying a

lovely aurora, and, Epicurean-like, reserving sleep for the Sybaritic

apparatus, which, according to report, awaited us at the grand

_établissement_ of the Upper Crossing of La Grande Platte.

This was our fifth night in the mail-wagon. I could not but meditate

upon the difference between travel in the pure prairie air, despite an

occasional “chill,” and the perspiring miseries of an East Indian dawk,

or of a trudge in the miasmatic and pestilential regions of Central

Africa. Much may be endured when, as was ever the case, the highest

temperature in the shade does not exceed 98° F.

_12th August. We cross the Platte._

[AURORA.]

Boreal aurora glared brighter than a sunset in Syria. The long

streamers were intercepted and mysteriously confused by a massive

stratum of dark cloud, through whose narrow rifts and jagged chinks the

splendors poured in floods of magic fire. Near the horizon the tint

was an opaline white--a broad band of calm, steady light, supporting

a tender rose-color, which flushed to crimson as it scaled the upper

firmament. The mobility of the spectacle was its chiefest charm. The

streamers either shot out or shrank from full to half length; now they

flared up, widening till they filled the space between Lucifer rising

in the east and Aries setting in the west; then they narrowed to the

size of a span; now they stood like a red arch with steadfast legs and

oscillating summit; then, broadening at the apex, they apparently

revolved with immense rapidity; at times the stars shone undimmed

through the veil of light, then they were immersed in its exceeding

brilliancy. After a full hour of changeful beauty, paling in one place

and blushing in another, the northern lights slowly faded away with a

blush which made the sunrise look colder than its wont. It is no wonder

that the imaginative Indian, looking with love upon these beauties,

connects them with the ghosts of his ancestors.