CHAPTER XIX.
KILLING DULL CARE IN CAMP—EXPLORING THE SNOW-CRESTED BIG HORN MOUNTAINS—FINERTY KILLS HIS FIRST BUFFALO—THE SWIMMING POOLS—A BIG TROUT—SIBLEY’S SCOUT—A NARROW ESCAPE—NEWS OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE—THE SIOUX TRY TO BURN US OUT—THE THREE MESSENGERS FROM TERRY—WASHAKIE DRILLS HIS SHOSHONES—KELLY THE COURIER STARTS TO FIND TERRY—CROW INDIANS BEARING DESPATCHES—THE SIGN-LANGUAGE—A PONY RACE—INDIAN SERENADES—HOW THE SHOSHONES FISHED—A FIRE IN CAMP—THE UTES JOIN US.
In the main, this absence of news from Terry was the reason why General Crook took a small detachment with him to the summit of the Big Horn Mountains and remained four days. We left camp on the 1st of July, 1876, the party consisting of General Crook, Colonel Royall, Lieutenant Lemly, Major Burt, Lieutenants Carpenter, Schuyler, and Bourke, Messrs. Wasson, Finerty, Strahorn, and Davenport, with a small train of picked mules under Mr. Young. The climb to the summit was effected without event worthy of note, beyond the to-be-expected ruggedness of the trail and the beauty and grandeur of the scenery. From the highest point gained during the day Crook eagerly scanned the broad vista of country spread out at our feet, reaching from the course of the Little Big Horn on the left to the country near Pumpkin Buttes on the right. Neither the natural vision nor the aid of powerful glasses showed the slightest trace of a marching or a camping column; there was no smoke, no dust, to indicate the proximity of either Terry or Gibbon.
Frank Gruard had made an inspection of the country to the northwest of camp several days before to determine the truth of reported smokes, but his trip failed to confirm the story. The presence of Indians near camp had also been asserted, but scouting parties had as yet done nothing beyond proving thesecamp rumors to be baseless. In only one instance had there been the slightest reason for believing that hostiles had approached our position. An old man, who had been following the command for some reason never very clearly understood, had come into camp on Tongue River and stated that while out on the plain, letting his pony have a nibble of grass, and while he himself had been sleeping under a box elder, he had been awakened by the report of a gun and had seen two Indian boys scampering off to the north: he showed a bullet hole through the saddle, but the general opinion in camp was that the story had been made up out of whole cloth, because parties of men had been much farther down Tongue River that morning, scouting and hunting, without perceiving the slightest sign or trace of hostiles. Thirty miners from Montana had also come into camp from the same place, and they too had been unable to discover traces of the assailants.
The perennial character of the springs and streams watering the pasturage of the Tongue River region was shown by the great masses of snow and ice, which were slowly yielding to the assaults of the summer sun on the flanks of “Cloud Peak” and its sister promontories. Every few hundred yards gurgling rivulets and crystal brooks leaped down from the protecting shadow of pine and juniper groves and sped away to join the Tongue, which warned us of its own near presence in a cañon on the left of the trail by the murmur of its current flowing swiftly from basin to basin over a succession of tiny falls. Exuberant Nature had carpeted the knolls and dells with vernal grasses and lovely flowers; along the brook-sides, wild rose-buds peeped; and there were harebells, wild flax, forget-me-nots, and astragulus to dispute with their more gaudy companions—the sunflowers—possession of the soil. The silicious limestones, red clays, and sandstones of the valley were replaced by granites more or less perfectly crystallized. Much pine and fir timber was encountered, at first in small copses, then in more considerable bodies, lastly in dense forests. A very curious variety of juniper made its appearance: it was very stunted, grew prone to the ground, and until approached closely might be mistaken for a bed of moss. In the protecting solitude of these frozen peaks, lakes of melted snow were frequent; upon their pellucid surface ducks swam gracefully, admiring their own reflection.
We did not get across the snowy range that night, but were compelled to bivouac two or three miles from it, in a sheltered nook offering fairly good grass for the mules, and any amount of fuel and water for our own use. There might be said to be an excess of timber, as for more than six miles we had crawled as best we could through a forest of tall pines and firs, uprooted by the blasts of winter. Game trails were plenty enough, but we did not see an animal of any kind; neither could we entice the trout which were jumping to the surface of the water, to take hold of the bait offered them. General Crook returned with a black-tailed deer and the report that the range as seen from the top of one of the lofty promontories to which he had climbed appeared to be studded with lakelets similar to the ones so near our bivouac. We slashed pine branches to make an odorous and elastic mattress, cut fire-wood for the cook, and aided in the duty of preparing the supper for which impatient appetites were clamoring. We had hot strong coffee, bacon and venison sliced thin and placed in alternate layers on twigs of willow and frizzled over the embers, and bread baked in a frying-pan.
Our appetites, ordinarily good enough, had been aggravated by the climb of twelve miles in the keen mountain air, and although epicures might not envy us our food, they certainly would have sighed in vain for the pleasure with which it was devoured. After supper, each officer staked his mule in a patch of grass which was good and wholesome, although not equal to that of the lower slopes, and then we gathered around the fire for the post-prandial chat prior to seeking blankets and repose, which fortunately was not disturbed by excessive cold or the bites of mosquitoes, the twin annoyances of these great elevations. We arose early next morning to begin a march of great severity, which taxed to the utmost the strength, nervous system, and patience of riders and mules; much fallen timber blocked the trail, the danger of passing this being increased a hundredfold by boulders of granite and pools of unknown depth; the leaves of the pines had decayed into a pasty mass of peat, affording no foothold to the pedestrian or horseman, and added the peril of drowning in a slimy ooze to the terrors accumulated for the intimidation of the explorer penetrating these wilds.
We floundered along in the trail made by our Shoshones ontheir way back to their own homes, and were the first white men, not connected with that band of Indians, who had ever ascended to this point. Immense blocks of granite, some of them hundreds of feet high, towered above us, with stunted pine clinging to the scanty soil at their bases; above all loomed the majestic rounded cone of the Cloud Peak, a thousand feet beyond timber line. The number of springs increased so much that it seemed as if the ground were oozing water from every pore; the soil had become a sponge, and travel was both difficult and dangerous; on all sides were lofty banks of snow, often pinkish in tint; the stream in the pass had diminished in breadth, but its volume was unimpaired as its velocity had trebled. At every twenty or thirty feet of horizontal distance there was a cascade of no great height, but so choked up with large fragments of granite that the current, lashed into fury, foamed like milk. The sun’s rays were much obscured by the interlacing branches of the majestic spruce and fir trees shading the trail, and the rocky escarpments looming above the timber line. We could still see the little rivulet dancing along, and hear it singing its song of the icy granite peaks, the frozen lakes, and piny solitudes that had watched its birth. The “divide,” we began to congratulate ourselves, could not be far off; already the pines had begun to thin out, and the stragglers still lining the path were dwarfed and stunted. Our pretty friend, the mountain brook, like a dying swan, sang most sweetly in its last moments; we saw it issue from icy springs above timber line, and bade it farewell to plunge and flounder across the snow-drifts lining the crest. In this last effort ourselves and animals were almost exhausted. On the “divide” was a lake, not over five hundred yards long, which supplied water to the Big Horn on the west and the Tongue on the east side of the range. Large cakes and floes of black ice, over a foot in thickness, floated on its waters. Each of these was covered deep with snow and regelated ice.
It was impossible to make camp in this place. There was no timber—nothing but rocks and ice-cold water, which chilled the hands dipped into it. Granite and granite alone could be seen in massy crags, timberless and barren of all trace of vegetation, towering into the clouds, in bold-faced ledges, the home of the mountain sheep; and in cyclopean blocks, covering acres upon acres ofsurface. Continuing due west we clambered over another ridge of about the same elevation, and as deep with snow and ice, and then saw in the distance the Wind River range, one hundred and thirty miles to the west. With some difficulty a way was made down the flank of the range, through the asperous declivities of the cañon of “No Wood” Creek, and, after being sated with the monotonous beauties of precipices, milky cascades, gloomy forests, and glassy springs, the welcome command was given to bivouac.
We had climbed and slipped fifteen miles at an altitude of 12,000 feet, getting far above the timber line and into the region of perpetual snow. Still, at that elevation, a few pleasant-faced little blue and white flowers, principally forget-me-nots, kept us company to the very edge of snow-banks. I sat upon a snowbank, and with one hand wrote my notes and with the other plucked forget-me-nots or fought off the mosquitoes. We followed down the cañon of the creek until we had reached the timber, and there, in a dense growth of spruce and fir, went into bivouac in a most charming retreat. Buffalo tracks were seen all day, the animal having crossed the range by the same trail we had used. Besides buffalo tracks we saw the trails of mountain sheep, of which General Crook and Lieutenant Schuyler killed two. The only other life was tit-larks, butterflies, grasshoppers, flies, and the mosquitoes already spoken of. The snow in one place was sixty to seventy feet deep and had not been disturbed for years, because there were five or six strata of grasshoppers frozen stiff, each representing one season. In all cases where the snow had drifted into sheltered ravines and was not exposed to direct solar action, it never melted from year’s end to year’s end. Our supper of mountain mutton and of sheep and elk heart boiled in salt water was eaten by the light of the fire, and was followed by a restful sleep upon couches of spruce boughs.
We returned to our main camp on the 4th of July, guided by General Crook over a new trail, which proved to be a great improvement upon the other. Mr. John F. Finerty killed his first buffalo, which appeared to be a very good specimen at the time, but after perusing the description given by Finerty in the columns of theTimes, several weeks later, we saw that it must have been at least eleven feet high and weighed not much less than nine thousand pounds. We made chase after a herd of sixteen elk drinking at one of the lakes, but on account of the noise in gettingthrough fallen timber were unable to approach near enough. An hour later, while I was jotting down the character of the country in my note-book, eight mountain sheep came up almost close enough to touch me, and gazed with wonder at the intruder. They were beautiful creatures in appearance: somewhat of a cross between the deer, the sheep, and the mule; the head resembles that of the domestic sheep, surmounted by a pair of ponderous convoluted horns; the body, in a slight degree, that of a mule, but much more graceful; and the legs those of a deer, but somewhat more “chunky;” the tail, short, slender, furnished with a brush at the extremity; the hair, short and chocolate-gray in color; the eyes rival the beauty of the topaz. Before I could grasp my carbine they had scampered around a rocky promontory, where three of them were killed: one by General Crook and two by others of the party.
Camp kept moving from creek to creek in the valley of the Tongue, always finding abundant pasturage, plenty of fuel, and an ample supply of the coldest and best water. The foot-hills of the Big Horn are the ideal camping-grounds for mounted troops; the grass grows to such a height that it can be cut with a mowing-machine; cattle thrive, and although the winters are severe, with proper shelter all kinds of stock should prosper. The opportunity of making a suitable cross between the acclimatized buffalo and the domestic stock has perhaps been lost, but it is not too late to discuss the advisability of introducing the Thibetan yak, a bovine accustomed to the polar rigors of the Himalayas, and which has been tamed and used either for the purposes of the dairy or for those of draught and saddle. The body of the yak is covered with a long coat of hair, which enables it to lie down in the snow-drifts without incurring any risk of catching cold. The milk of the yak is said to be remarkably rich, and the butter possesses the admirable quality of keeping fresh for a long time.
This constant moving of camp had another object: the troops were kept in practice in taking down and putting up tents; saddling and unsaddling horses; packing and unpacking wagons; laying out camps, with a due regard for hygiene by building sinks in proper places; forming promptly; and, above all, were kept occupied. The raw recruits of the spring were insensibly converted into veterans before the close of summer. The credulityof the reader will be taxed to the utmost limit if he follow my record of the catches of trout made in all these streams. What these catches would have amounted to had there been no herds of horses and mules—we had, it must be remembered, over two thousand when the wagon-trains, pack-trains, Indian scouts, and soldiers were all assembled together—I am unable to say; but the hundreds and thousands of fine fish taken from that set of creeks by officers and soldiers, who had nothing but the rudest appliances, speaks of the wonderful resources of the country in game at that time.
The ambition of the general run of officers and men was to take from fifteen to thirty trout, enough to furnish a good meal for themselves and their messmates; but others were carried away by the desire to make a record as against that of other fishers of repute. These catches were carefully distributed throughout camp, and the enlisted men fared as well as the officers in the matter of game and everything else which the country afforded. General Crook and the battalion commanders under him were determined that there should be no waste, and insisted upon the fish being eaten at once or dried for later use. Major Dewees is credited with sixty-eight large fish caught in one afternoon, Bubb with eighty, Crook with seventy, and so on. Some of the packers having brought in reports of beautiful deep pools farther up the mountain, in which lay hidden fish far greater in size and weight than those caught closer to camp, a party was formed at headquarters to investigate and report. Our principal object was to enjoy the cool swimming pools so eloquently described by our informants; but next to that we intended trying our luck in hauling in trout of exceptional size.
The rough little bridle-path led into most romantic scenery: the grim walls of the cañon began to crowd closely upon the banks of the stream; in places there was no bank at all, and the swirling, brawling current rushed along the rocky wall, while our ponies carefully picked their way over a trail, narrow, sharp, and dangerous as the knife-edge across which true believers were to enter into Mahomet’s Paradise. Before long we gained a mossy glade, hidden in the granite ramparts of the cañon, where we found a few blades of grass for the animals and shade from the too warm rays of the sun. The moss-covered banks terminated in a flat stone table, reaching well out into the current and shaded byoverhanging boulders and widely-branching trees. The dark-green water in front rushed swiftly and almost noiselessly by, but not more than five or six yards below our position several sharp-toothed fragments of granite barred the progress of the current, which grew white with rage as it hissed and roared on its downward course.
We disrobed and entered the bath, greatly to the astonishment of a school of trout of all sizes which circled about and darted in and out among the rocks, trying to determine who and what we were. We were almost persuaded that we were the first white men to penetrate to that seclusion. Our bath was delightful; everything combined to make it so—shade, cleanliness, convenience of access, purity and coolness of the water, and such perfect privacy that Diana herself might have chosen it for her ablutions! Splash! splash!—a sound below us! The illusion was very strong, and for a moment we were willing to admit that the classical huntress had been disturbed at her toilet, and that we were all to share the fate of Actæon. Our apprehensions didn’t last long; we peeped through the foliage and saw that it was not Diana, but an army teamster washing a pair of unquestionably muddy overalls. Our bath finished, we took our stand upon projecting rocks and cast bait into the stream.
We were not long in finding out the politics of the Big Horn trout; they were McKinleyites, every one; or, to speak more strictly, they were the forerunners of McKinleyism. We tried them with all sorts of imported and manufactured flies of gaudy tints or sombre hues—it made no difference. After suspiciously nosing them they would flap their tails, strike with the side-fins, and then, having gained a distance of ten feet, would most provokingly stay there and watch us from under the shelter of slippery rocks. Foreign luxuries evidently had no charm for them. Next we tried them with home-made grasshoppers, caught on the banks of their native stream. The change was wonderful: in less than a second, trout darted out from all sorts of unexpected places—from the edge of the rapids below us, from under gloomy blocks of granite, from amid the gnarly roots of almost amphibious trees. My comrades had come for an afternoon’s fishing, and began, without more ado, to haul in the struggling, quivering captives. My own purpose was to catch one or two of good size, and then return to camp. A teamster, namedO’Shaughnessy, formerly of the Fourteenth Infantry, who had been brought up in the salmon districts of Ireland, was standing near me with a large mess just caught; he handed me his willow branch, most temptingly baited with grasshoppers, at the same time telling me there was a fine big fish, “a regular buster, in the hole beyant.” He had been unable to coax him out from his retreat, but thought that, if anything could tempt him, my bait would. I cautiously let down the line, taking care to keep in the deepest shadow. I did not remain long in suspense; in an instant the big fellow came at full speed from his hiding-place, running for the bait. He was noble, heavy, and gorgeous in his dress of silver and gold and black and red. He glanced at the grasshoppers to satisfy himself they were the genuine article, and then one quick, nervous bound brought his nose to the hook and the bait into his mouth, and away he went. I gave him all the line he wanted, fearing I should lose him. His course took him close to the bank, and, as he neared the edge of the stream, I laid him, with a quick, firm jerk, sprawling on the moss. I was glad not to have had any fight with him, because he would surely have broken away amid the rocks and branches. He was pretty to look upon, weighed three pounds, and was the largest specimen reaching camp that week. He graced our dinner, served up, roasted and stuffed, in our cook Phillips’s best style.
General Crook, wishing to ascertain with some definiteness the whereabouts of the Sioux, sent out during the first week of July a reconnoitring party of twenty enlisted men, commanded by Lieutenant Sibley, Second Cavalry, to escort Frank Gruard, who wished to move along the base of the mountains as far as the cañon of the Big Horn and scrutinize the country to the north and west. A larger force would be likely to embarrass the rapidity of marching with which Gruard hoped to accomplish his intention, which was that of spying as far as he could into the region where he supposed the hostiles to be; all the party were to go as lightly equipped as possible, and to carry little else than arms and ammunition. With them went two volunteers, Mr. John F. Finerty and Mr. Jim Traynor, the latter one of the packers and an old frontiersman. Another member of the party was “Big Bat.”
This little detachment had a miraculous escape from destruction: at or near the head of the Little Big Horn River, they werediscovered, charged upon, and surrounded by a large body of hostile Cheyennes and Sioux, who fired a volley of not less than one hundred shots, but aimed too high and did not hit a man; three of the horses and one of the mules were severely crippled, and the command was forced to take to the rocks and timber at the edge of the mountains, whence they escaped, leaving animals and saddles behind. The savages seemed confident of their ability to take all of them alive, which may explain in part why they succeeded in slipping away under the guidance of Frank Gruard, to whom the whole country was as familiar as a book; they crept along under cover of high rocks until they had gained the higher slopes of the range, and then travelled without stopping for two days and nights, pursued by the baffled Indians, across steep precipices, swift torrents, and through almost impenetrable forests. When they reached camp the whole party looked more like dead men than soldiers of the army: their clothes were torn into rags, their strength completely gone, and they faint with hunger and worn out with anxiety and distress. Two of the men, who had not been long in service, went completely crazy and refused to believe that the tents which they saw were those of the command; they persisted in thinking that they were the “tepis” of the Sioux and Cheyennes, and would not accompany Sibley across the stream, but remained hiding in the rocks until a detachment had been sent out to capture and bring them back. It should be mentioned that one of the Cheyenne chiefs, “White Antelope,” was shot through the head by Frank Gruard and buried in all his fine toggery on the ground where he fell; his body was discovered some days after by “Washakie,” the head-chief of the Shoshones, who led a large force of his warriors to the spot. General Crook, in forwarding to General Sheridan Lieutenant Sibley’s report of the affair, indorsed it as follows: “I take occasion to express my grateful appreciation to the guides, Frank Gruard and Baptiste Pourrier, to Messrs. Bechtel, called Traynor in my telegram, and John F. Finerty, citizen volunteers, and to the small detachment of picked men from the Second Cavalry, for their cheerful endurance of the hardships and perils such peculiarly dangerous duty of necessity involves. The coolness and judgment displayed by Lieutenant Sibley and Frank Gruard, the guide, in the conduct of this reconnaissance, made in the face of the whole force of theenemy, are deserving of my warmest acknowledgments. Lieutenant Sibley, although one of the youngest officers in this department, has shown a gallantry that is an honor to himself and the service.” A very vivid and interesting description of this perilous affair has been given by Finerty in his fascinating volume, “War-Path and Bivouac.” During the absence of the Sibley party General Crook ascended the mountains to secure meat for the command; we had a sufficiency of bacon, and all the trout the men could possibly eat, but fresh meat was not to be had in quantity, and the amount of deer, elk, antelope, and bear brought in by our hunters, although considerable in itself, cut no figure when portioned out among so many hundreds of hungry mouths. The failure to hear from Terry or Gibbon distressed Crook a great deal more than he cared to admit; he feared for the worst, obliged to give ear to all the wild stories brought in by couriers and others reaching the command from the forts and agencies. By getting to the summit of the high peaks which overlooked our camps in the drainage of the Tongue, the surrounding territory for a distance of at least one hundred miles in every direction could be examined through glasses, and anything unusual going on detected. Every afternoon we were now subjected to storms of rain and lightning, preceded by gusts of wind. They came with such regularity that one could almost set his watch by them.
Major Noyes, one of our most earnest fishermen, did not return from one of his trips, and, on account of the very severe storm assailing us that afternoon, it was feared that some accident had befallen him: that he had been attacked by a bear or other wild animal, had fallen over some ledge of rocks, been carried away in the current of the stream, or in some other manner met with disaster. Lieutenant Kingsbury, Second Cavalry, went out to hunt him, accompanied by a mounted detachment and a hound. Noyes was found fast asleep under a tree, completely exhausted by his hard work: he was afoot and unable to reach camp with his great haul of fish, over one hundred and ten in number; he had played himself out, but had broken the record, and was snoring serenely. Mr. Stevens, chief clerk for Major Furey, the quartermaster, was another sportsman whose chief delight in life seemed to be in tearing the clothes off his back in efforts to get more and bigger fish than any one else.
Word came in from General Crook to send pack mules to a locality indicated, where the carcasses of fourteen elk and other game for the command had been tied to the branches of trees. It was not until the 10th of July, 1876, that Louis Richaud and Ben Arnold rode into camp, bearing despatches from Sheridan to Crook with the details of the terrible disaster which had overwhelmed the troops commanded by General Custer; the shock was so great that men and officers could hardly speak when the tale slowly circulated from lip to lip. The same day the Sioux made their appearance, and tried to burn us out: they set fire to the grass near the infantry battalions; and for the next two weeks paid us their respects every night in some manner, trying to stampede stock, burn grass, annoy pickets, and devil the command generally. They did not escape scot-free from these encounters, because we saw in the rocks the knife left by one wounded man, whose blood stained the soil near it; another night a pony was shot through the body and abandoned; and on still another occasion one of their warriors, killed by a bullet through the brain, was dragged to a ledge of rocks and there hidden, to be found a week or two after by our Shoshone scouts.
The Sioux destroyed an immense area of pasturage, not less than one hundred miles each way, leaving a charred expanse of territory where had so lately been the refreshing green of dainty grass, traversed by crystal brooks; over all that blackened surface it would have been difficult to find so much as a grasshopper; it could be likened to nothing except Burke’s description of the devastation wrought by Hyder Ali in the plains of the Carnatic. Copious rains came to our relief, and the enemy desisted; besides destroying the pasturage, the Sioux had subjected us to the great annoyance of breathing the tiny particles of soot which filled the air and darkened the sky.
Hearing from some of our hunters that the tracks of a party—a large party—of Sioux and Cheyennes, mounted, had been seen on the path taken by Crook and his little detachment of hunters, going up into the Big Horn, Colonel Royall ordered Mills to take three companies and proceed out to the relief, if necessary, of our General and comrades. They all returned safely in the course of the afternoon, and the next day, July 11th, we were joined by a force of two hundred and thirteen Shoshones, commanded by their head-chief, “Washakie,” whose resemblance inface and bearing to the eminent divine, Henry Ward Beecher, was noticeable. This party had been delayed, waiting for the Utes and Bannocks, who had sent word that they wanted to take part in the war against the Sioux; but “Washakie” at last grew tired, and started off with his own people and two of the Bannock messengers.
Of these two a story was related to the effect that, during the previous winter, they had crossed the mountains alone, and slipped into a village of Sioux, and begun to cut the fastenings of several fine ponies; the alarm was given, and the warriors began to tumble out of their beds; our Bannocks were crouching down in the shadow of one of the lodges, and in the confusion of tongues, barking of dogs, hurried questioning and answering of the Sioux, boldly entered the “tepi” just vacated by two warriors and covered themselves up with robes. The excitement quieted down after a while, and the camp was once more in slumber, the presence of the Bannocks undiscovered, and the Sioux warriors belonging to that particular lodge blissfully ignorant that they were harboring two of the most desperate villains in the whole western country. When the proper moment had come, the Bannocks quietly reached out with their keen knives, cut the throats of the squaws and babies closest to them, stalked out of the lodge, ran rapidly to where they had tied the two best ponies, mounted, and like the wind wereaway.away.
Besides the warriors with “Washakie,” there were two squaws, wives of two of the men wounded in the Rosebud fight, who had remained with us. As this was the last campaign in which great numbers of warriors appeared with bows, arrows, lances, and shields as well as rifles, I may say that the shields of the Shoshones, like those of the Sioux and Crows and Cheyennes, were made of the skin of the buffalo bull’s neck, which is an inch in thickness. This is cut to the desired, shape, and slightly larger than the required size to allow for shrinking; it is pegged down tight on the ground, and covered with a thin layer of clay upon which is heaped a bed of burning coals, which hardens the skin so that it will turn the point of a lance or a round bullet. A war-song and dance from the Shoshones ended the day.
On the 12th of July, 1876, three men, dirty, ragged, dressed in the tatters of army uniforms, rode into camp and gave their names as Evans, Stewart, and Bell, of Captain Clifford’s companyof the Seventh Infantry, bearers of despatches from General Terry to General Crook; in the dress of each was sewed a copy of the one message which revealed the terrible catastrophe happening to the companies under General Custer. These three modest heroes had ridden across country in the face of unknown dangers, and had performed the duty confided to them in a manner that challenged the admiration of every man in our camp. I have looked in vain through the leaves of the Army Register to see their names inscribed on the roll of commissioned officers; and I feel sure that ours is the only army in the world in which such conspicuous courage, skill, and efficiency would have gone absolutely unrecognized.
Colonel Chambers, with seven companies of infantry and a wagon-train loaded with supplies, reached camp on the 13th. With him came, as volunteers, Lieutenants Hayden Delaney, of the Ninth, and Calhoun and Crittenden, of the Fourteenth Infantry, and Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy. Personal letters received from General Sheridan informed General Crook that General Merritt, with ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry, had left Red Cloud Agency with orders to report to Crook, and that as soon after they arrived as possible, but not until then, Crook was to start out and resume the campaign. Courier Fairbanks brought in despatches from Adjutant-General Robert Williams at Omaha, Nebraska, to the effect that we should soon be joined by a detachment of Utes, who were desirous of taking part in the movements against the Sioux, but had been prevented by their agent. General Williams had made a representation of all the facts in the case to superior authority, and orders had been received from the Department of the Interior directing their enlistment. Nearly fifty of the Utes did start out under Lieutenant Spencer, of the Fourth Infantry, and made a very rapid march to overtake us, but failed to reach our wagon-train camp until after our command had departed; and, in the opinion of Major Furey, the risk for such a small party was too great to be undertaken.
Camp was the scene of the greatest activity: both infantry and cavalry kept up their exercises in the school of the soldier, company and battalion, and in skirmishing. Detachments of scouts were kept constantly in advanced positions, and although the enemy had made no attempt to do anything more than annoyus in our strong natural intrenchments, as the camps close to the Big Horn might fairly be designated, yet it was evident that something unusual was in the wind. “Washakie” ascended to the tops of the highest hills every morning and scanned the horizon through powerful field-glasses, and would then report the results of his observations. Colonel Mills did the same thing from the peaks of the Big Horn, to some of the more accessible of which he ascended. The Shoshones were kept in the highest state of efficiency, and were exercised every morning and evening like their white brothers. At first they had made the circuit of camp unattended, and advanced five or ten miles out into the plains in the performance of their evolutions; but after the arrival of fresh troops, under Chambers, “Washakie” was afraid that some of the new-comers might not know his people and would be likely to fire upon them when they charged back to camp; so he asked General Crook to detail some of his officers to ride at the head of the column, with a view to dispelling any apprehensions the new recruits might feel. It fell to my lot to be one of the officers selected. In all the glory of war-bonnets, bright blankets, scarlet cloth, head-dresses of feathers, and gleaming rifles and lances, the Shoshones, mounted bareback on spirited ponies, moved slowly around camp, led by “Washakie,” alongside of whom was borne the oriflamme of the tribe—a standard of eagle feathers attached to a lance-staff twelve feet in length. Each warrior wore in his head-dress a small piece of white drilling as a distinguishing mark to let our troops know who he was.
We moved out in column of twos; first at a fast walk, almost a trot, afterwards increasing the gait. The young warriors sat like so many statues, horse and rider moving as one. Not a word was spoken until the voices of the leaders broke out in their war-song, to which the whole column at once lent the potent aid of nearly two hundred pairs of sturdy lungs. Down the valley about three miles, and then, at a signal from “Washakie,” the column turned, and at another, formed front into line and proceeded slowly for about fifty yards. “Washakie” was endeavoring to explain something to me, but the noise of the ponies’ hoofs striking the burnt ground and my ignorance of his language were impediments to a full understanding of what the old gentleman was driving at. I learned afterwards that hewas assuring me that I was now to see some drill such as the Shoshones alone could execute. He waved his hands; the line spread out as skirmishers and took about two yards’ interval from knee to knee. Then somebody—“Washakie” or one of his lieutenants—yelled a command in a shrill treble; that’s all I remember. The ponies broke into one frantic rush for camp, riding over sage-brush, rocks, stumps, bunches of grass, buffalo heads—it mattered not the least what, they went over it—the warriors all the while squealing, yelling, chanting their war-songs, or howling like coyotes. The ponies entered into the whole business, and needed not the heels and “quirts” which were plied against their willing flanks. In the centre of the line rode old “Washakie;” abreast of him the eagle standard. It was an exciting and exhilarating race, and the force preserved an excellent alignment. Only one thought occupied my mind during this charge, and that thought was what fools we were not to incorporate these nomads—the finest light cavalry in the world—into our permanent military force. With five thousand such men, and our aboriginal population would readily furnish that number, we could harass and annoy any troops that might have the audacity to land on our coasts, and worry them to death.
General Crook attempted to open communication with General Terry by sending out a miner named Kelly, who was to strike for the head of the Little Big Horn, follow that down until it proved navigable, then make a raft or support for himself of cottonwood or willow saplings and float by night to the confluence of the Big Horn and the Yellowstone, and down the latter to wherever Terry’s camp might be. Kelly made two attempts to start, but was each time driven or frightened back; but the third time got off in safety and made the perilous journey, and very much in the lines laid down in his talk with Crook.
Violent storms of snow, hail, and cold rain, with tempests of wind, prevailed upon the summits of the range, which was frequently hidden from our gaze by lowering masses of inky vapor. Curious effects, not strictly meteorological, were noticed; our camp was visited by clouds of flies from the pine forests, which deposited their eggs upon everything; the heat of the sun was tempered by a gauze veil which inspection showed to be a myriad of grasshoppers seeking fresh fields of devastation. Possibly the burning over of hundreds of square miles of pasturagehad driven them to hunt new and unharmed districts; possibly they were driven down from the higher elevations by the rigorous cold of the storms; possibly both causes operated. The fact was all we cared for, and we found it disagreeable enough. With these insects there was larger game: mountain sheep appeared in the lower foot-hills, and two of them were killed along our camp lines. To balk any attempt of the enemy to deprive us altogether of grass, whenever camp was moved to a new site, a detail of men was put to work to surround us with a fire-line, which would prevent the fires set by mischievous Sioux from gaining headway. In making one of these moves we found the Tongue River extremely swollen from the storms in the higher peaks, and one of the drivers, a good man but rather inexperienced, had the misfortune to lose his self-possession, and his wagon was overturned by the deep current and three of the mules drowned, the man himself being rescued by the exertions of the Shoshone scouts, who were passing at the moment.
On the 19th of July four Crow Indians rode into camp bearing despatches, the duplicates of those already received by the hands of Evans, Stewart, and Bell. General Terry, realizing the risk the latter ran, had taken the precaution to repeat his correspondence with Crook in order that the latter might surely understand the exact situation of affairs in the north. After being refreshed with sleep and a couple of good warm meals, the Crows were interrogated concerning all they knew of the position of the hostiles, their numbers, ammunition, and other points of the same kind. Squatting upon the ground, with fingers and hands deftly moving, they communicated through the “sign language” a detailed account of the advance of Terry, Gibbon, and Custer; the march of Custer, the attack upon the village of “Crazy Horse” and “Sitting Bull,” the massacre, the retreat of Reno, the investment, the arrival of fresh troops on the field, the carrying away of the wounded to the steamboats, the sorrow in the command, and many other things which would astonish persons ignorant of the scope and power of this silent vehicle for the interchange of thought.
The troops having been paid off by Major Arthur, who had come with Colonel Chambers and the wagon-train, the Shoshones each evening had pony races for some of the soldiers’ money. This was the great amusement of our allies, besides gambling,fishing, drilling, and hunting. The greater the crowd assembled, the greater the pleasure they took in showing their rare skill in riding and managing their fleet little ponies. The course laid off was ordinarily one of four hundred yards. The signal given, with whip and heel each rider plied his maddened steed; it was evident that the ponies were quite as much worked up in the matter as their riders. With one simultaneous bound the half-dozen or more contestants dart like arrow from bow; a cloud of dust rises and screens them from vision; it is useless to try to pierce this veil; it is unnecessary, because within a very few seconds the quaking earth throbs responsive to many-footed blows, and, quick as lightning’s flash, the mass of steaming, panting, and frenzied steeds dash past, and the race is over. Over so far as the horses were concerned, but only begun so far as the various points of excellence of the riders and their mounts could be argued about and disputed.
This did not conclude the entertainment of each day: the Shoshones desired to add still more to the debt of gratitude we already owed them, so they held a serenade whenever the night was calm and fair. Once when the clouds had rolled by and the pale light of the moon was streaming down upon tents and pack-trains, wagons and sleeping animals, the Shoshones became especially vociferous, and I learned from the interpreter that they were singing to the moon. This was one of the most pronounced examples of moon worship coming under my observation.
The Shoshones were expert fishermen, and it was always a matter of interest to me to spend my spare moments among them, watching their way of doing things. Their war lodges were entirely unlike those of the Apaches, with which I had become familiar. The Shoshones would take half a dozen willow branches and insert them in the earth, so as to make a semi-cylindrical framework, over which would be spread a sufficiency of blankets to afford the requisite shelter. They differed also from the Apaches in being very fond of fish; the Apaches could not be persuaded to touch anything with scales upon it, or any bird which lived upon fish; but the Shoshones had more sense, and made the most of their opportunity to fill themselves with the delicious trout of the mountain streams. They did not bother much about hooks and lines, flies, casts, and appliancesand tricks of that kind, but set to work methodically to get the biggest mess the streams would yield. They made a dam of rocks and a wattle-work of willow, through which the water could pass without much impediment, but which would retain all solids. Two or three young men would stay by this dam or framework as guards to repair accidents. The others of the party, mounting their ponies, would start down-stream to a favorable location and there enter and begin the ascent of the current, keeping their ponies in touch, lashing the surface of the stream in their front with long poles, and all the while joining in a wild medicine song. The frightened trout, having no other mode of escape, would dart up-stream only to be held in the dam, from which the Indians would calmly proceed to take them out in gunny sacks. It was not very sportsmanlike, but it was business.
I find the statement in my note-books that there must have been at least fifteen thousand trout captured in the streams upon which we had been encamped during that period of three weeks, and I am convinced that my figures are far below the truth; the whole command was living upon trout or as much as it wanted; when it is remembered that we had hundreds of white and red soldiers, teamsters, and packers, and that when Crook finally left this region the camp was full of trout, salt or dried in the sun or smoked, and that every man had all he could possibly eat for days and days, the enormous quantity taken must be apparent. Added to this we continued to have a considerable amount of venison, elk, and bear meat, but no buffalo had been seen for some days, probably on account of the destruction of grass. Mountain sheep and bear took its place to a certain extent.
It was the opinion and advice of Sheridan that Crook should wait for the arrival of Merritt, and that the combined force should then hunt Terry and unite with him, and punish the Sioux, rather than attempt to do anything with a force which might prove inadequate. In this view old “Washakie” fully concurred. The old chief said to Crook: “The Sioux and Cheyennes have three to your one, even now that you have been reinforced; why not let them alone for a few days? they cannot subsist the great numbers of warriors and men in their camp, and will have to scatter for pasturage and meat; they’ll begin to fight amongthemselves about the plunder taken on the battle-field, and many will want to slip into the agencies and rejoin their families.”
But, while waiting for Merritt to come up with his ten companies of cavalry, Crook sent out two large scouting parties to definitely determine the location and strength of the enemy. One of these consisted entirely of Shoshones, under “Washakie;” it penetrated to the head of the Little Big Horn and around the corner of the mountain to the cañon of the Big. Horn; the site of a great camp was found of hundreds of lodges and thousands of ponies, but the indications were that the enemy were getting hard pressed for food, as they had been eating their dogs and ponies whose bones were picked up around the camp-fires. From that point the trails showed that the enemy had gone to the northeast towards the Powder River. The other scouting party was led by Louis Richaud, and passed over the Big Horn Mountains and down into the cañon of the Big Horn River; they found where the Sioux of the big village had sent parties up into the range to cut and trim lodge-poles in great numbers. Richaud and his party suffered extremely from cold; the lakes on the summit of the mountains were frozen, and on the 1st of August they were exposed to a severe snow-storm.
Later advices from Sheridan told that the control of the Sioux agencies had been transferred to the War Department; that Mackenzie and six companies of his regiment had been ordered to take charge at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, assisted by Gordon with two companies of the Fifth Cavalry. Although showers of rain were of almost daily occurrence, and storms of greater importance very frequent, the weather was so far advanced, and the grass so dry and so far in seed, that there was always danger of a conflagration from carelessness with fire.
One of the Shoshones dropped a lighted match in the dry grass near his lodge, and in a second a rattle and crackle warned the camp of its danger. All hands, Indian and white, near by rushed up with blankets, blouses, switches, and branches of trees to beat back the flames. This was a dangerous task; as, one after another, the Shoshone frame shelters were enveloped in the fiery embrace of the surging flames, the explosion of cartridges and the whistling of bullets drove our men back to places of safety. In the tall and dry grass the flames held high revel; the whole infantry command was turned out, and bravely set towork, and, aided by a change in the wind, secured camp from destruction. While thus engaged, they discovered a body of Indians moving down the declivity of the mountain; they immediately sprang to arms and prepared to resist attack; a couple of white men advanced from the Indian column and called out to the soldiers that they were a band of Utes and Shoshones from Camp Brown, coming to join General Crook.
Our men welcomed and led them into camp, where friends gave them a warm reception, which included the invariable war-dance and the evening serenade. Some of the new-comers strolled over to chat with the Shoshones who had been wounded in the Rosebud fight, and who, although horribly cut up with bullet wounds in the thigh or in the flanks, as the case was, had recovered completely under the care of their own doctors, who applied, nothing but cool water as a dressing; but I noticed that they were not all the time washing out the wounds as Americans would have done, which treatment as they think would only irritate the tender surfaces. The new-comers proved to be a band of thirty-five, and were all good men.
On the 2d of August camp was greatly excited over what was termed a game of base-ball between the officers of the infantry and cavalry; quite a number managed to hit the ball, and one or two catches were made; the playing was in much the same style, and of about the same comparative excellence, as the amateur theatrical exhibitions, where those who come to scoff remain to pray that they may never have to come again.