THE BATTLE OF THE MUSSELSHELL
Early next morning the boat stopped at Fort Buford, above the mouth
of the Yellowstone River.
The wait was to be only a short one, and no one left the boat. Jack
was interested in looking from the upper deck at the post, where
there were a number of soldiers, and it looked like a busy place.
Away to the left was seen the broad current of the Yellowstone
coming down between timbered banks. As the two friends sat on the
upper deck and looked off toward the shore, Hugh, in response to
some question by Jack, said:
"Yes, in old fur-trading days this used to be a mighty interesting
place. Just above here was one of the great trading posts of old
times, and pretty much all the tribes of the northern prairie used
to come here to get their ammunition, and whatever other stuff they
could buy. Old man Culbertson was here for a long time, and lots
of people from back east and from foreign parts used to come up
the river as far as this. Sometimes they used to have great fights
out here on this flat, when two hostile tribes would come in to
trade and would get here at the same time. I've heard great stories
about the way the Indians used to fight here among themselves
almost under the walls of the post; and, then, again, sometimes
the Indians used to crawl up as near to the fort as they could,
and try to run off the horse herd, which would be feeding right
out in front of the post. Sometimes they'd get 'em; sometimes they
wouldn't, but would get one of the herders. On the whole, however,
the place wasn't often attacked, because the Indians couldn't
afford to quarrel with the people who furnished them with their
goods. When 'twas Fort Union, 'twas a mighty lively place."
"Why Hugh," said Jack, "do you mean to tell me that this is old
Fort Union?"
"Sure," said Hugh.
"Why," said Jack, "I've read lots about Fort Union. Don't you know
that in 1843 Audubon, the naturalist, and a party of his friends,
came up here to find out a lot about the Western birds and animals?
I've read a lot of Audubon, and he speaks constantly of Fort Union,
and about the things he used to see here, and the buffalo hunting,
and about Mr. Culbertson. Dear me! dear me! when I was reading
about it I never thought that I would see Fort Union."
"Well," said Hugh, "this is the place; and if this man Audubon was
out here in 1843, that, I think, was just the year before they
had the big smallpox here. Men that were here at the time tell me
that there were two or three big camps of Indians here, and that
they got the smallpox in the fall, just before the ground froze,
and the Indians died off like wolves about a poisoned carcass; and
the ground was hard, and they could not dig graves for them, and
they just stacked up the bodies outside of the fort, in rows, like
so much cord-wood, and had to wait till the ground melted in the
spring before they could bury 'em. There must have been a pile of
Indians died."
"Well, what did they do for smallpox, Hugh? How did they cure
themselves?"
"Why, they didn't know anything about curing themselves, son. When
a man got smallpox, or got sick, he just went into a sweat-lodge,
and took a sweat, and came out and plunged into the river to cool
off, and the ice was running, and some of 'em never came up again,
and some of those that did come up were so weak from the shock that
they could not get to the shore, and just drowned. If we get to the
Blackfoot camp this summer, you ask old man Chouquette about it. He
was here then; he'll tell you about it, just the same as he told
me."
While Hugh had been talking, the boat had cast off and had once
more started up the river.
It was afternoon, and Hugh was dozing in his chair, tilted up
against the cabin, while Jack as usual was watching the river
banks, when suddenly from behind a little hill that formed the end
of a hog back, which extended well out into the bottom, he saw a
herd of seventy or eighty buffalo, come running as hard as they
could across the bottom, and plunge into the river just above the
boat. The great animals ran as if frightened, and seemed to regard
nothing but the danger behind them. As the boat went along, and
the buffalo swam to cross the stream, they came nearer and nearer
together, and at last it was evident that the buffalo would pass
very close to the boat. They swam rapidly, and with them were
many little calves, swimming on the down stream side of their
mothers, and going swiftly and easily. Jack shouted to Hugh, who,
with him, watched the buffalo, and in a very few minutes the boat
was actually in the midst of the herd. The animals did not attempt
to turn about, but swam steadily after their leaders, and some of
them actually swam against the boat, and, only then seeming to
understand their danger, turned about and, grunting, snorting, and
bellowing, climbed up on each other in tremendous fright. As they
came to the boat Jack at first had started to get his rifle, but
Hugh called him back, and they both descended to the lower deck,
where, with the other passengers, and the deck hands, they were
actually within arms length of the buffalos. The mate, forming a
noose with a rope, threw it over the head of a two-year-old, and
half a dozen of the roustabouts, pulling on the rope, lifted the
animal's head up on the deck, when the mate killed it, and it was
presently hauled aboard and butchered. As they returned to the
upper deck, having watched the buffalo, after the boat had passed,
swim to the other bank and climb out of the water, and then stop
and look at the boat, Jack said to Hugh, "Well, I saw a lot of
buffalo last year, but it sort of excites one to see them again as
close as those were."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's so; but there was no use in your getting
your gun, as you started to. I don't want you to act like all the
rest of these pilgrims that come up the river, and to be shooting
at everything you see that's alive. There'd have been no more fun
in shooting one of those buffalo in the water there, than there'd
be in shooting a cow on the range. Of course, if a man's hungry,
it's well enough for him to butcher; but if he just wants meat,
and there's somebody else to do the butchering, he might just as
well let him do it. I always used to like to hunt, and I do still,
but it's no fun for me to kill a calf in a pen, or to chop off a
chicken's head.
"That's so, Hugh," said Jack; "it would have been no more to shoot
one of those buffalos in the water than it was for the mate to kill
that two-year-old."
"That's so," said Hugh; "it would have been just the same thing,
and you don't envy him the work he did, I expect."
"No indeed," said Jack, "not much."
"Now, if you want to fire a few shots," said Hugh, "if you want
a little practice with your gun, get it out the next time we get
close to the bank, and shoot at a knot in some cottonwood tree. I
can watch with the glasses and see where you hit, and you can get
some practice with your rifle, but won't show up a tenderfoot."
The sun was low that evening when they reached Wolf Point, the
agency for the Assinaboine Indians, and it seemed as if all
the Indians there must have clustered about the landing-place
to welcome the boat; men, clad in fringed buckskin shirts and
leggings, and with eagle feathers in their hair; bright-shawled
women, carrying babies on their backs; small boys, naked, save
for a pair of leggings and a breech-clout; and little girls, some
wearing handsome buckskin dresses, trimmed with elk-teeth, and
clinging to their mothers' skirts, made up the assemblage. Most
interesting to Jack were the many travois, each one drawn by a
dog. Some of these were very wolf-like in appearance; others might
have been big watch dogs taken from the front door yard of some
eastern farm house. All seemed well-trained and patient; and when,
a little later, some of them started off for the agency buildings,
dragging loads that had been piled on the travois, they bent
sturdily to their work, and dug their feet into the ground.
"There's something, son," said Hugh, "that we are not going to see
much longer. The dog travois has seen its best days, and before
long dogs won't be used any more for that work. Why, I hear that
even up in the North, dogs are not used in winter for hauling half
as much as they used to be; and down here, the first thing you
know, all these Indians will be having wagons, and driving them
'round over the prairie. Why, do you know, it ain't so very long
ago since these Assinaboines had hardly any horses. They didn't
want 'em; they said horses were only a nuisance and a bother to
'em, and their dogs were better. Horses had to be looked after;
driven in and caught up whenever they were to be used, and then
they had to be watched to keep people from stealing them; but dogs,
instead of running away when you wanted to catch them, would come
running toward you; they never ran off nor were stolen. Nowadays,
though, the Assinaboines have got quite a good many horses, and I
expect to live long enough to see the time when dog travois will be
a regular curiosity."
"Who are the Assinaboines, Hugh," said Jack. "What tribe are they
related to?"
"They're Sioux," said Hugh, "and talk the Sioux language. Of course
it's a little different from that talked by the Ogallalas and the
down river Sioux; but still they can all understand each other, and
they call themselves Lacotah, which of course you know is the name
that all the Sioux have for themselves."
"And yet," he continued, "they have been at war with the Sioux and
with the Sioux' friends for a good many years. I reckon there ain't
any one that rightly knows when the Assinaboines split off from
the main stock; it must have been a long time ago. But you talk
with the Assinaboines, and they'll tell you--just as most of the
other Sioux'll tell you--about a time long ago, in the lives of
their fore-fathers, when their people lived at the edge of the salt
water. I expect maybe that means that they migrated a long way,
either from the East or from the West, very far back."
"My!" said Jack, "if we could only know about all these things that
happened, and what the history of each tribe was, wouldn't it be
interesting?"
"It sure would," said Hugh.
"Well, Hugh," continued Jack, "what does Assinaboine mean? Has it
any real meaning, like some of these other names of Indian tribes
that you tell me about?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "it has a meaning, and I reckon it's a Cree word.
_Ass[)i]ne_ means stone in Cree, _poit_ means cooked, or cooking,
and the Assinaboines are called stone-cookers, or stone-roasters,
I suppose because they used to do their cooking with hot stones.
But of course that don't mean much, because pretty nearly all the
Indians that I know of used to boil their meat with hot rocks,
except those that made pots and kettles for themselves out of clay.
Nobody knows, I reckon, when the Pawnees and Mandans first learned
how to make pots. I expect that was a long time ago, too. But most
of these Indians used to boil meat in a kettle made of hide, or the
paunch of a buffalo, filled with water. Then they'd heat stones in
the fire, and put them in the water, taking them out as they got
cool and putting in others, until the water boiled and the food was
cooked."
"But," said Jack, "I should think when they cooked the hide or
paunch it would break, and let the water spill out."
"No," said Hugh. "It would of course, if you kept cooking long
enough; but one of these kettles would only last to cook a single
meal; you couldn't use it a second time, but it was all right for
one cooking. I have seen a hide kettle used, and eaten from it."
Jack sat thinking, for awhile, and then he turned to Hugh and said:
"I tell you, Hugh, if all you know about Indians, and about this
Western country were put in a book, it would make an awful big one,
wouldn't it?"
"Well, I don't know, son," said Hugh, "maybe it might; but a man
has got to learn the life he's lived; if he doesn't, he won't
amount to nothing. I expect if all that you know about the East was
put in a book it would make quite a sizable one."
"Oh," said Jack, "that's nothing. The things I know don't amount to
anything, and everybody else knows them a good deal better than I
do."
"Well, I tell you," said Hugh, "the things that are new and strange
to you seem kind o' wonderful, but they don't seem wonderful to
me; but I remember one time you were telling me something about
catching fish down at the place called Great South Bay, and talking
about seeing the vessels sailing on the ocean, and to me that
seemed mighty wonderful."
By this time the boat had left the landing-place, and the light was
growing dim. They turned and looked back, and there across the wide
bottom was moving toward the Post, a long string of people, men and
women and children and dog travois, so that it looked almost like
a moving camp. Hugh and Jack sat for a while longer on the deck
talking, and then, as the mosquitoes got bad, they turned in.
The next afternoon the boat reached Fort Peck, then one of the
most important Indian agencies on the Missouri River. It stood
on a narrow bench, a few log buildings surrounded by a stockade,
and back of it the bluffs rose sharply, and were dotted with
the scaffolds of the dead. It seemed to Jack that there must be
hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of these graves in sight.
From the poles of some of them long streamers were blown out in the
wind, which Hugh told him were offerings tied to the poles of the
scaffolds by mourning relatives. But few living Indians were seen
here, and there were only three or four white men seen about the
trading post. They did not leave the boat, which soon pushed on
again.
"The Indians about here have been awful mean," said Hugh; "Lots of
things were brought in here that the Sioux took from the Custer
battlefield. Somebody told me that Custer's gold watch was brought
in here by an Indian, who wanted to know how much it was worth:
but so many questions were asked him about it that he just put the
watch in his sack and lit out, and has not been seen here since."
As the boat passed the mouth of the Musselshell early next morning
Hugh pointed shoreward, and said:
"Do you see that place over there where that creek comes in, son?"
"Why, of course I see it, Hugh," said Jack, "and the timber that
runs along it. What creek is it?"
"You ought to know," said Hugh, with a laugh; "you got scared in it
a whole lot last summer."
"Why, Hugh, is that the Musselshell?" said Jack.
"That's what it is," said Hugh; "and seeing the mouth of the river,
and them sticks there on the flat, reminds me of the big fight
that took place there some years back. I wonder if you ever heard
about it. I meant to tell you last summer, but somehow it slipped
my mind. It was there that Liver-Eating Johnson got his name. They
used to say that he cut out the liver of an Indian that got killed
in that fight and ate it. Of course he never did, but they tell the
story about him, and I rather think he was kind o' proud about it
after a little while, and liked the name.
"I think it was in 1869 that the fight took place, along in the
spring.
"You know the steamboats always have trouble in coming up to
Benton in the low water; and along about 1866, after the mines got
paying, and when the fur trade was good, some men at Helena formed
a company to make a road and start a freight line down to some
point on the river that the boats could always get to. These men
didn't know much about the river, and they chose the mouth of the
Musselshell for the point where their road, which began at Helena,
should end.
"Now, I suppose if they'd raked the whole river with a fine-tooth
comb they couldn't have found a poorer place for a town, nor a
poorer country to travel through, than this one they pitched on.
The place chosen for the town was that little neck of land between
the Musselshell and the Missouri. The soil is a bad-land clay,
which in summer is an alkali desert, and in spring is a regular
bog, in which a saddle-blanket would mire down. Then, all along
the Musselshell was a favorite camping and hunting ground for the
Indians, and in those days Indians were bad. Well, they made up
their company, and started their town. There weren't many settlers,
but a few people, mostly hunters and wood-choppers, stopped there;
and of course, wherever there were a few people gathered together,
there was sure to be a store and a few saloons.
"I think it was along in 1868 that a man came down there with a
fine train of mules. Likely he expected to get some freighting to
do when the boats came up the river. The stock was turned out, and
some men were on guard, when a party of Sioux charged in among
them, killed two of the men, and ran off every hoof of stock. The
thing was done in a minute; and before the men could get out of
their houses and tents the stock was gone, and the Indians along
with it: all except one young fellow, who, just to show what he
could do, charged back and rode through the crowd, making fun of
them as he went along. So far as anybody knew, not one Indian got
hit.
"It was not very long after that that the Sioux came down and
charged into the Crow camp, and ran off eight hundred head of
horses. Of course that made a big excitement. The Crows jumped on
their horses an pursued and they had quite a fight, and some of the
Indians got killed.
"During the Spring of 1869, the Indians used to attack the town
every few days; a Crow squaw that was living there got shot through
the body, and a white woman was wounded, knocked down, and scalped,
but I reckon she's living yet. Anybody that went out any distance
from the town was sure to be shot at and chased. It was a time for
a man to travel 'round with his gun loaded, and in his hand all the
time. The Indians didn't do much of anything, but they kept the
people scared up everlastingly. It got to be so, finally, that the
Indians would charge down near the town, and then swing off and run
away, and pretty much all the men would run out and run after them,
shooting as long as the Indians were in sight.
"One morning there were a couple of Crow women out a little way
from town, gathering sage brush for wood, and the Indians opened
fire on them. The white men all rushed out and after the Indians,
who numbered sixteen. They ran on foot over toward the Musselshell,
and then up the bottom, not going very fast, and the white men
were gaining on them, and thinking that now they would force
them to a regular fight; when suddenly, from a ravine on the
Musselshell, a shot was fired, which killed a man named Leader.
"That stopped the whites right off, and they turned to run; and if
the Indians had charged 'em then, I expect they'd have got every
last one of 'em. But Henry McDonald saw what would happen if they
ran, and, bringing down his rifle, swore he'd shoot the first man
who went faster than a walk.
"They could see now that there was quite a body of Indians in the
ravine on the bank of the Musselshell, but they couldn't tell how
many. There was some little shooting between the two parties. Most
of the whites moved back to the settlement; but there were half
a dozen men who did not retreat; but getting under cover, within
thirty or forty yards of the Indians, held them there. They kept
shooting, back and forth, and presently a man named Greenwood got
shot through the lungs, and had to be carried back. The other men
stood their ground, and the Indians, knowing that they had to do
with good shots, did not dare to show their heads.
"After two or three hours of this sort of thing, it began to rain,
a mighty lucky thing for the white men. They were all armed with
Henry rifles, or needle-guns, while the Indians, for the most part,
had bows and arrows, with some flintlock guns. They had stripped
themselves for war, and had no clothing with which they could
cover their gun-locks and bow-strings to keep them from getting
wet. After a little of this, the white men began to see that
the Indians were practically disarmed, and began to think about
charging them; but when they raised up to look, they saw that there
was a big party of men there, and that the only way to get them,
except in a hand to hand fight, was for some of the party to cross
the Musselshell, and get to a point where they could shoot into the
ravine, thus driving the Indians out and placing them between two
fires. Three men started to do this.
"When the Indians saw what the white men were trying to do, they
ran down to the mouth of the ravine and tried to shoot at them;
but their strings were wet, and the arrows had no force and hardly
reached the men, and very few of their guns would go off. The
three men got across the river, and went down to a point opposite
the ravine, and began to shoot at the Indians; but by this time
all the men in the settlement had collected together, about eight
hundred yards behind the Indians, and seeing these three men on
the other side of the stream took them for Indians and began to
shoot at them; so that the three white men who had crossed had to
get away and re-cross the Musselshell. By this time half a dozen
other men got around on the lower side of the Indians, and then
again three men crossed the river and commenced to shoot up the
ravine. This was too much for the Indians: they jumped out of
their hole and started to get away, and everybody was shooting at
them as hard as they could. The fire from the body of men near the
town still continued, and obliged the men who were doing the real
fighting to keep more or less under cover. The Indians broke for
the Musselshell, crossing it where they could, and most of them got
away; but thirteen were killed, and it was said that a good many
more died on the way to camp, and only one of the ninety and more
who were in the fight escaped without a wound. The next day after
that, the white men found the place where the Indians had stripped
for the fight and left their things, and there over a hundred robes
and two war bonnets and a whole lot of other stuff were found. Most
of it was sold, and the money given to Greenwood, who was wounded.
Jim Wells and Henry McDonald, I heard, each got a war bonnet.
"The freight road was given up, and pretty much everybody left the
place,--except some traders who stopped there a little longer. Then
Carroll was started, up near the Little Rockies, and in a very much
better place, and that was the end of Musselshell City. It was at
this same place that Johnson claimed to have made for himself a
razor strap from a strip of skin that he cut from an Indian's back:
but Johnson was always a good man to tell stories, and you never
could be quite sure when he was telling the truth and when he was
joking.
"A few years ago there used to be lots of talk about that fight,
and the people called it one of the biggest lickings that the
Indians ever got in this part of the country."
Pushing along up the river, the boat passed beyond the Musselshell,
and then up by Carroll, and the Little Rocky Mountain, and the
Bearspaw,--and at last one day, about noon, Fort Benton came in
sight.
For the last two hundred miles they had seen a good deal of
game. Buffalo were almost always in sight on the bluffs, or in
the bottom; elk, frightened by the approach of the steamer, tore
through the willow points; deer, both black-tail and white-tail,
were often seen, and on several occasions mountain sheep were
viewed--once in the bottom and at other times on the high bad-land
bluffs. One of the herds was a large one, which Hugh said must
contain seventy-five or a hundred animals.
As Benton was approached, Jack began to feel more and more excited.
Here he hoped to meet Joe, who had been warned some months before
by Mr. Sturgis that Hugh and Jack would be at Benton early in July:
and Joe would have with him the horses, a lodge, and all their
camp equipage; so that, if nothing interfered to prevent, the next
morning they could start out on their trip.