1894
The Times Philadelphia
June 10, 1894
Eating Dog With Indians
AN UNCONSCIOUS PARTICIPANT IN A REDSKINS’ FEAST
SOME SAVAGE DELICACIES
The Indian and the Pig Are About on a Par in Their Appetites for Food
Some Palin Truths About the Noble and Nasty Aborigine.
“How Koohla? Ho-ho-ha-he-e-e-!”
“How Koohla?”
These were thus salutations that passed between Red Jacket, the famous Ute chief and myself one noontime, as I rode down the valley toward Rico, on my way from Silverton. The old fellow was seated by a campfire while his two squaws were preparing the noonday meal. Red Jacket and I had met often before, and he indicated his feelings toward me in the salutation which begins this article. ‘How, Koohla?” simply means, “How are you, friend?” When it is prolonged by the exclamations, it indicates that the person speaking is very glad to meet you. Red Jacket was so glad to meet me that he insisted that I should get down and take dinner with him. As I was both tired and hungry I required no urging, but dismounted and set by the old chief and discoursed the latest reservation news until the squaws grunted out the information that dinner was ready. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a table was spread with the usual appliances found in a civilized home. The table was the earth and the only utensils visible for the pot in which the savory smelly mass was cooked and the ten fingers on our hands.
The dinner was excellently cooked, barring the fact that one of the squaws spilled a little too much Chili Colorado in the pot, and I had my usual vigorous appetite with me, so I fell to with the others and made a very hearty meal, eating the delicate flesh that I finished from the pot with a gusto that would have graced any uncivilized feast. The flavor of the dish was new to me and I vainly tried to call to mind the animal, but was not certain. I finally decided that it must be beaver, and to make assurance doubly sure I pointed to the pot and said; “Beaver?” The answer was laconic, but satisfying. Without turning his head Red Jacket ejaculated: “Dog!”
I was a little startled, but as the taste was good I made no objection. In fact, objections at that stage of the proceedings would have unveiled little, for the dog was eaten. It must be remembered that in giving me a feast of dog Red Jacket paid me a high compliment, for the meat of a fat dog is considered one of the delicacies of the red men. In this feast, or dinner, if you please, were to be found three of the characteristics of Indian living: First, the squaws did everything in the way of preparation, from killing to the serving; second, the pot in which the food was cooked was also the dish in which it was served; third, fingers took the place of knives, forks and spoons.
This was my first experience in eating dog, but I must confess that I have eaten it since and relished it. There is much worse food than dog meat, and when a man is very hungry he soon gets over the squeamishness that comes to the educated stomach at the mentioned of such a diet. To the Indian, dog is a delicacy beside which nothing can be compared. It is when an Indian is on the verge of starvation, however, that we get the full benefit of his capacity of obtaining nourishment from things that an ordinary white man would not touch, even were he aware that death would be his portion if he did not. In fact, it would hardly do to print what an Indian will eat when he is hungry. Were I to do so I would find that the readers would not believe it, and if they believed it they would not get hungry for some time afterword.
Snakes, toads, lizards, bugs, grasshoppers and such articles are considered as regular diet among the many tribes and form a part of the supplies that are collected by squaws and children. Readers of books on Indians, especially those of the Cooper type, have been impressed with the Indian princess idea, but were they to see the Indian princess wrapped in an old greasy army blanket, eating from the carcass of a dead meal, they would probably have all the poetry knocked out of them for some time to come. This is a common sight around Army post in the West, and when the day comes at the agency the sights and scenes around the place where the animals were slaughtered is simply sickening to those who have been brought up with an idea of cleanliness.
A vegetarian would stand little show of living in an Indian village. For nine months out of twelve the entire diet of the whole tribe in its natural state is meat, preferably cooked, but not refused if raw. During the other three months berries and wild fruits, with some corn, from a change to the regular diet. While agencies have changed this rule to an extent it still is more the rule to live off of meat alone than to have anything to vary the menu. There are two ways of cooking meat– boiling and roasting, or toasting it. In the villages where the squaws do the cooking it is all boiled. That is the easiest way, and a squaw never takes any but the easiest way when it comes to doing anything. The buck may reign supreme so far as bossing the family is concerned, but when it comes to caring for the wigwam he has nothing to say, and if he prefers his meat roasted he must eat what he can get or go hungry.
The degrees of cooking depend on several disturbing causes. If an Indian is very hungry he will not wait for any cooking, but will satisfy the cravings with raw flesh. If he is moderately hungry he will wait until the contents of the pot get a trifle warm and will begin eating. If he is eating a regular meal he is satisfied to wait until the squaw tells him that it is cooked. When the chief needs at home all others must compel their hunger to wait the pleasure of their lord and master. When he says he is ready to eat the others can get their share, but until he is ready they must wait.
As an Indian has never been known to quarrel about the cooking. Quantity is all he cares for. Of course he prefers his meat fresh, but never quibbles over a little thing like tainted meat, provided there is plenty of it. On the trail, whether it be a hot or a war, the Indian cooks his own meat and does it a most artistic style. He sharpens a stick and thrust it through the piece of meat. Thus spitted he sticks the bit in the fire and as fast as the outside is done he eats it off, so that the interior can get a better chance at the blaze. It must be confessed that this way of cooking beats even that of some of our civilized chefs. The meat has a flavor that can be obtained in no other way.
In ordinary life, when the pot is taken from the fire, the whole family crowded around it and dip in their fingers, knives or sticks, and pick out the choicest pieces as they are to be found. When the youngsters get too troublesome they are simply thrust aside until their elders have satisfied themselves, and are then allowed to take what is left. Usually this is a very small portion of what was there in the beginning. In some Indian families of the present day tin plates are to be found, and on especially grand occasions the old squaw gives each person a plate, and then serves the boiled meat to them as they sit around the wigwam. She dips her fingers, which have never been washed, into the pot and dishes the food out to each as she passes around the wigwam. This is considered a very stylish way of serving food, and is especially in vogue where the family wishes to impress the guests with its importance. When there is no guest, however, it is done away with, for the reason that it is believed to be too easy for the squaw to show her favoritism by giving the best pieces to those whom she thinks the most of.
The Indian is a perfect epicure when it comes to knowing the delicate parts of an animal. He knows the relative merits of every bit from head to tail, and when he desires to show his appreciation of those who may be dining with him he will frequently fish out of the pot with his fingers, regardless of their state of cleanliness, some especially choice bit and insist on placing it in the mouth of him to whom he is showing the favor. It would surprise some of our civilized epicures to learn just what are considered delicacies by the Indians. There are especial portions of the moose and deer that are ever sought for by the eater. Some of our Southern readers are well aware of the nature of chitlings. This same portion of the deer is one of the greatest delicacies and eagerly eaten, sometimes almost raw, and always without washing. Sometimes an Indian unintentionally places his white guest in a very embarrassing position by forcing upon him this part and then waiting to see him eat it with all the relish that an Indian would show. The white man appreciates the act, but unusually resorts to some trick to keep from doing violence to his feelings.
It is during the great fall hunt that the Indian is in his glory so far as eating is concerned. The women are occupied with the skinning and caring for the dead animals, and then it is not beneath the dignity of the warrior to do his own cooking. He is, as was said before, fully aware of each tidbit and knows exactly how he likes them cooked. Now is the time for marrow bones, buffalo hump and the small intestines which are covered with fat. The Indian wraps yards of this around a stick and then sticks it into the fire, where it broils until the fat runs down.
Then he begins eating, and as he pokes the almost red-hot mass into his mouth there comes over his features a seraphic glow that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. He works hard all day at the hunt and sits up half of the night cooking ribs and bones and eating to his heart’s content. I have known Indians to get up eight and ten times in the night to go to the fire to cook another rib and eat it. Sometimes they go to sleep close enough to the fire to reach over and stick their improvised spit into the coals with its piece of meat. When they wake up they simply have to turn over and help themselves and do not have to go to the necessity of getting up every time they wish to eat.
And cutting up the game, the squaws are supposed to get off all of the meat, but there is many a mouthful of the sweetest meat left between the ribs and around the joints, and these become especial delight of the bucks when congregated around the camp-fire at night. When the Indians get through with a buffalo there is little left for his half-brother, the coyote. The bones are picked so clean that they are almost polished. Broad slabs of ribs are placed upright before a hot fire and turned and toasted to a turn. The large bones of the hind legs are thrown on the coals, and, when sufficiently cooked, they are split and the hot marrow eaten with a relish that is equaled only when eating the portions mentioned above. The marrow bones are always reserved for those who kill the animal as they are looked upon as being the food for the hunter which gives him the most strength and the most cunning.
The Indian is an enormous feeder. Not this alone, but he will eat food that would ruin a white man’s stomach. I have seen them take the big hind legs of a buffalo, throw the bones in the coals and when they had become sufficiently cooked, crack them and suck the marrow down with the greatest gusto. The quantity was sufficient to give dyspepsia to a dozen white men. As to the amount that an Indian can and will eat when opportunity offers, where I to make the bold statement of fact as I am sure it exists, I’m afraid my reputation for truth and veracity would be entirely gone. I have known of a band of Indians after a successful hunt to feast and dance all night and during that time consume from ten to fifteen pounds of meat each. When there is an abundance of food and the Indian can select those parts which he considers the best, he can, without effort, eat twenty pounds at a sitting. Nor will this be followed by indigestion or other inconvenience.
One of the delicacies among Indian hunters is the liver of a fat buffalo or deer that has become granulated from being overheated during a long chase. This is taken from the animal and sprinkled with the gall and devoured greedily raw. Dogs, especially puppies, are two Indians what turkey is to ordinary American families. When very fat, a Wolf is considered as being almost as good as a dog. Comanches are fond of horse flash, some saying that it is superior to buffalo or beef. Scott is highly esteemed as an article of diet, even when other game is plentiful. The Indian does not mind the foetid odor, and I have seen them grasp the little animal by the tail and beat its brains out regardless of the fact that it was emitting a discharge that would have sickened a white man.
The whole question of food supply has undergone a change since the early 70s. Then the question was one of the least concern, for the red man had but to go out and get game. Sometimes it took longer than others, but he always got it eventually. Now food supply is the greatest concern of his life, for the white man has taken his food from him along with his lands, and has placed him on very short rations indeed. Every military post, every agency and every camp is an Indian country is now besieged by these people. Slop barrels, don’t piles and refuse heaps are carefully scrutinized by the red men, and staff that a hungry dog would disdain is eaten.
Offal of butchers is quarreled over and eaten raw on the spot. Every horse that dies of disease or accident becomes a part of the Indian food supply, and he to-day is virtually a twin scavenger with the wolf and coyote. Some tribes now raise corn and a few of the hardier vegetables, but as a rule these are totally inadequate to the wants of the family. That modern invention of the government, the Indian trader, is usually looked upon as one who robs the red man of his belongings, but were it not for the provisions traded to the Indians for their curios the red men, even on reservations, would have starved out of existence long ago.
CLARENCE E. EDWARDS. (This would have been the Southern Ute Tribe of Colorado. leaders were Ignacio, Buckskin Charlie, Tapuche, Severo, Aquila, Talian, Quarto, Red Jacket, aka Mariano, meaning ” obstinate” (Not the same Red Jacket of NY))
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en.wikipedia.org
Dogs and boiled puppies were more commonly eaten amongst people who lived on the great plains, but not all great plains cultures partook in it. Some of the cultures that ate dogs were:
Cheyenne
Dakota
Kickapoo
Lakota
Mexica
Lewis and the members of the expedition ate dog meat, except William Clark, who reportedly could not bring himself to eat dogs.
1894
The Galveston Daily News Aug 6 1894
EXTERMINATION OF THE BISON
A THRILLING STORY OF AN ENCOUNTER A DOZEN YEARS AGO
……An Indian Guide’s Remarkable Coolness in the Face of the Oncoming Herd-How Hundreds of Thousands of Buffaloes Were Killed Within a Few Months-Sportsmen, Pot Hunters, and Indians Began the Work and the Railroad Finished It.
……Lieut. J.M.Partelle, in The St. Louis Globe Democrat.
Before the Northern Pacific Railroad had crossed the continent west of the Missouri River, the section of country founded by that River, the section of country bounded by that river on the east and the Rockies on the west, and stretching from the Platte in Nebraska northward to the British line, was the greatest stamping ground for buffaloes in the whole Northwest. The country was more or less hostile in those days, and the Indians, who had been the best guardians of the bison until white pot hunters came among them, soon gained the civilized idea of slaughter, and from that time the doom of this representative American game animal was positively assured.
But the greatest blow dealt the bison herds of the Northwest was the completion of the northern Pacific track west from Bismark to the Rocky Mountains. The road practically divided the herds (for a bison will never, unless forced, crossed the iron of the railroad track,) and those to the south were soon swallowed up in the general slaughter waged by Indians, pot, hide, and tongue hunters, foreign sportsmen, and others who were out to kill anything they saw on-site.
……This was during the winter of 1882-3. The buffaloes to the north were in many scattered bands, but there was one great herd of not less than 75,000 head which had, found a temporary refuge in the triangle formed by the Musselshell, Missouri, and Yellowstone rivers in Montana, and as yet they had not been “smelled out” by either red or white hunters.
But they were as surely doomed as though already killed, for the railroad iron cut them off from their southern range, and the Indians of the Canadian Northwest, as well as those of our own country, barred their retreat into the far north, and so they were hemmed in between the two with no possibility of scape in either direction.
……To illustrate, in a few words, the remarkable destruction of that section alone, it will be only necessary to say that this last great herd was completely wiped out of existence in less than four months, and before the close of the year there were but a few singles and pairs left as fugitives in the vast country where but a year or two before they could have been counted almost by the hundreds of thousands. The shipping figures from two points on the Yellowstone at the end of the session, Glendive and Miles City, show 800,000 buffalo hides sent from the former and 185,250 skins of elk, antelope, and deer from the latter place.
……It chanced, at the time mentioned, that the writer, with a small detachment of soldiers, was crossing from the Missouri River country to the Yellowstone, and we came across, almost daily, numerous bands of Gros-Ventra, Piegan, Blackfeet, and other Indians, all hurrying to the slaughter of the noble animals on the Musselshell.
……Our scout, or guide, was a Crow Indian named Two Moons, and, one day, while threading our way through bad lands painted buttes and broken coolees, a small herd of about 600 bison came rushing into view around of bluff not more than 200 yards distant, and with head down and paint-brush tails erect, they came plowing on directly toward us in the wildest sort of confusion. A genuine stampede was probably in full operation, and the soldiers, not waiting for orders, lost no time in placing a safe and reasonable distance between themselves and the threatened danger. They quickly shied off to the right, and I felt it my duty, at this “impending crisis” to keep as close to the heels of my fleeing comrades as the speed of my horse would permit.
……Two Moons, the guide, either in a spirit of bravado, or possibly under pressure of the exciting moment, set perfectly rigid on his pony, and neither animal nor writer stirred a muscle until the plunging herd was almost upon them. Then like a flash, the Indian whipped his Winchester forward, and the ping of the bullet could be heard as they rattled about the heads and shoulders of the leading bison. The ruse was now apparent. The steam of the lead caused the leaders to separate, for without halting or pausing in their mad rush, the herd divided as if cut with a knife, and went sweeping by like the wind, a molety on each side of the scout.
……The most remarkable thing about the whole performance was the quiet and trackable manner in which the guide’s pony conducted himself while all this fuss and uproar was going on about him. He neither grew excited nor rebelled, but remained as steady as a rock in his place until his master gave him leave to move.
In a few minutes the last of the fleeing bison were well to the rear, and they soon disappeared beyond a neighboring knoll, with the speed of an express train.
……While watching them and debating whether a chase would be worth the trouble, from behind the bluff where the buffaloes had first appeared now came a second band of bison, (about 60 in all, ) with a dozen well mounted Cheyenne bucks in hot pursuit. As before, the animals came directly toward us, but our shoutings and hallooings turned them aside, and they shied off to the left, entering the jaws of a rough, broken ravine, which was precisely what their red pursuers wanted. The redeemed was a sort of rift in the bad lands which practically led nowhere, but which we afterword discovered narrowed and closed in untill it ended in a steep, impassable pocket, with no outlet except by the original way of entry.
……The Indians shouted to us as they rushed by, and, rather interested in the outcome-as I suspected the nature of the ravine-I left the Sergeant with the detachment, and, taking the guide with me, followed swiftly on the heels of the flying Cheyennes.
……Game and hunters soon disappeared in the twinings and intertwinings of the gorge, and, as it was an exceedingly rocky and difficult trail, we took our time and practically ‘made haste slowly.” Here again came into play the wonderful instinct and genuine “horse sense” of the cayuse plains pony. My mount was of the same breed as the one ridden by the guide, and I was really astonished to see with what ease the hardy little brutes made their way through the most inaccessible places. Either on the plains or among bad lands they are equally at home, and whether in the broad glare of day or in the depths of night, they have never been known to lose a trail after once having found it. An American-bred horse will plunge ahead fearlessly, and not infrequently snap a leg in some half concealed prairie dog hole: but the cayuse pony instinctively dodges such pitfalls and keeps his rider dodging them too, unless the latter is content to lose the saddle or perhaps put up with a broken neck.
……We left our ponies to take their own course, and every once in a while could see the Cheyennes far ahead darting in and out of the cafions windings, with the retreating bison still in the lead. How the red men ahead of us ever got over the ground so quickly was an unsolved mystery. When we had approached to within half a mile of them we saw the hunters pause, consult a few minutes, gesticulate wildly, and then they went on again very slowly. Reaching the point where the consultation had been held, nothing was in sight. Neither Indians nor bison were in view, and all was as still as the grave.
……But here the course began narrowing, and, besides the many huge boulders and rough cuts on every hand, the walls were steep and ragged, and covered with scrub cottonwoods and stunted growths, which completely concealed everything ahead of us.
……Narrower and narrower became the gorge, and at last we pause to listen. There was scarcely a sound in the air, but this intense stillness became suddenly broken by a series of rapid shots and wild yells, accompanied by a thundering, rumbling noise which was almost deafening. The tumult rapidly grew louder, and then, just in front of us, from out of the depths of the cafion came the buffalo herd like the wind, directly toward us. Some were bleeding, many were wounded, and others were limping badly.
……Scrambling as well as we could behind boulders and corners, we had just reached refuge in time, for the now thoroughly maddened and stampeded buffaloes, never pausing for rocks, brush, or impossible trails, came helter-skelter onward, with heads down and tails up as usual, passing us in one solid black mass toward the outlet of the gorge.
…….It never seemed possible that living brutes could travel over such rough ground with such speed, but the difficulties of the trail never seem to concern them in the least, for, as a matter of fact, the rear ones crowded the forward ones with such persistency and so rapidly that they had to move quickly or else be trampled under foot.
……After this thundercloud had passed, with feelings of great relief we went on up the cafion to see how the Indians had fared. It proved to have been of disastrous encounter for the Cheyennes, as many of them were limping and bleeding as badly as the stampeded buffaloes. A survey of their free frontier circus grounds discovered seven dead buffaloes, three wounded Indians (one of them quite seriously) and six ponies killed or maimed.
……It appears that after cornering the bison in the further most depth of the cafion the red hunters had attempted to block their passage out, and then commenced firing on them. The imprisoned brutes stood this punishment for a while, but at last, in sheer desperation and maddened by wounds, they turned on their assailants and charged their way out in true calvary style, with the loss of seven of their number. One of the seven slain bisons prove to be in ancient old bull that showed the marks and scars of eighteen wounds he had received in his long battle with humanity. This fact was discovered when he was skinned and cut up. Hump, the Cheyenne buck who led the assault, and who had dodged the sharp horns of at least a dozen of the animals, declared it was the pluckiest thing he had ever seen buffalo do.
……We assisted the wounded and dismounted Indians back to their camp, which happened to be about three miles distant from the bluff where they first came dashing into view, and after our Royal feast of toasted steaks and pleasant nights rest, next morning, bright and early, we resumed our journey toward the Yellowstone, which we reached in good season and without further incident.
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The Galveston Daily News, Sept., 24 1894
LAST OF THE BISONS
The Slaughter Twelve Years Ago
The Last Great Herd and It’s Destruction
Hundreds of Thousands Killed Within a Few Months- An Exciting Chase on the Prairie
Billings (Mont.) Cor.St. Louie Global Democrat.
Before the Northern Pacific railroad had crossed the continent west of the Missouri river the section of country bounded by that river on that east and the Rockies on the west, and stretching from the Platte in Nebraska northward to the British line, was the greatest stamping ground for buffaloes in the whole northwest. The country was more or less hostile in those days, and the Indians, who had been the best guardians of the bison until white pot-hunters came among them, soon gained the civilized idea of slaughter, and from that time the doom of this representative American game animal was positively assured.
But the greatest blow dealt the bison herds of the northwest was the completion of the Northern Pacific track west from Bismarck to the Rocky mountains. The road practically divided the herds (for the bison will never, unless forced, cross the iron of a railroad track) and those to the south were soon swallowed up in the general slaughter waged by Indians, pot, hide and tongue hunters, foreign sportsmen and others who were out to kill anything they saw on sight.
This was during the winter of 1832-33. The buffaloes to the north were in many scattered bands, but there was one great herd of not less than 75,000 head, which had found a temporary refuge in the triangle formed by the Musselshell, Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in Montana, and as yet they had not been ‘smelled out” by either red or white hunters.
But they were as surely doomed as though already killed, for the railroad iron cut them off from the southern range, and the Indians of the Canadian northwest, as well as those of our own country, barred their retreat into the far north, and so they were hemmed in between the two, with no possibility of escape in either direction.
To illustrate in a few words the remarkable destruction of that section alone it will only be necessary to say that this last great herd war completely wiped out of existence in less than four months, and before the close of the year there were but a few singles and pairs left as fugitives in that vast country where but year or two before they could have been counted almost by the hundreds of thousands. The shipping figures from two points on the Yellowstone at the end of the season, Glendive and Miles City, show 200,000 buffalo hides sent from the former and 185,350 skins of elk, antelope and deer from the latter place.
It chanced at the time mentioned that the writer, with a small detachment of soldiers, was passing from the Missouri river country to the Yellowstone, and we came across, almost daily, numerous bands of Gros-Ventro Piegans, Blackfeet and other Indians, all hurrying to the slaughter of the noble animals on the Musselshell.
Our scout or guide was a Crow Indian named Two Moons, and one day while threading our way through the bad lands, painted buttes and broken coulees, a small herd of about 600 bison came rushing into view around a bluff not more than 200 yards distant, and with head down and paintbrush tales erect they came plunging on directly toward us in the wildest sort of confusion. A genuine stampede was probably in full operation, and the soldiers, not waiting for orders, lost no time and place in a safe and reasonable distance between themselves and that threatened danger. They quickly signed off to the right, and I felt it my duty at this “impending crisis” to keep as close to the heels of my fleeing comrades as the speed of my horse would permit.
Two Moons, the guide, either in a spirit of bravado, or possibly under pressure of the exciting moment, set perfectly rigid on his pony, and neither animal nor writer stirred a muscle until the plunging herd was almost upon them. Then like a flash, the Indian with his Winchester forward, and the ping of the bullet could be heard as they rattled about the heads and shoulders of the leading bison. The ruse was now apparent. The steam of the lead cause the leaders to separate, for without halting or pausing in their mad rush, the herd divided as if cut with a knife, and went sweeping by like the wind, of moiety on each side of the scout.
The most remarkable thing about the whole performance was the quiet and trackable manner in which the guides pony conducted himself while all this fuss an uproar was going on about him. He neither grew excited nor rebelled, but remained as steady as a rock in his place in till his master gave him leave to move.
In a few minutes the last of the fleeing bison were well to the rear, and they soon disappeared beyond a neighboring knoll, with the speed of an express train.
While watching them and debating whether a chase would be worth the trouble, from behind the bluff where the buffaloes had first appeared now came a second band of bison, (about 60 and all, ) with a dozen well mounted Cheyenne bucks in hot pursuit. As before, the animals came directly toward us, but our shouting and halloos turned them aside, and they shied off to the left, entering the jaws of a rough, broken ravine, which was precisely what their red pursuers wanted. The ravine was a sort of rift in the bad lands which practically led nowhere, but which we after word discovered narrowed and closed in until it ended in a steep, impassable pocket, with no outlet except by the original way of entry.
The Indians shouted to us as they rushed by, and, rather interested in the outcome-as I suspected the nature of the ravine-I left the Sergeant with the detachment, and, taking the guide with me, followed swiftly on the heels of the flying Cheyennes.
Game and hunters soon disappeared in the twinings and intertwinings of the gorge, and, as it was an exceedingly rocky and difficult trail, we took our time and practically ‘made haste slowly.” Here again came into play the wonderful instinct and genuine “horse sense” of the cayuse plains pony. My mount was of the same breed as the one ridden by the guide, and I was really astonished to see with what ease the hardy little brutes made their way through the most inaccessible places. Either on the plains or among bad lands they are equally at home, and whether in the broad glare of day or in the depths of night, they have never been known to lose a trail after once having found it. An American-bred horse will plunge ahead fearlessly, and not unfrequently snapped a leg in some half concealed prairie dog hole: but the cayuse pony instinctively dodges such pitfalls and keeps his rider dodging them too, unless the latter is content to lose the saddle or perhaps put up with a broken neck.
We left our ponies to take their own course, and every once in a while could see the Cheyennes far ahead darting in and out of the cafions windings, with the retreating bison still in the lead. How the red men ahead of us ever got over the ground so quickly was an unsolved mystery. When we had approached to within half a mile of them we saw the hunters pause, consult a few minutes, gesticulate wildly, and then they went on again very slowly. Reaching the point where the consultation had been held, nothing was in sight. Neither Indians nor bison were in view, and all was as still as the grave.
But here the course began narrowing, and, besides that many huge boulders and rough cuts on every hand, the walls were steep and ragged, and covered with scrub cottonwoods and stunted growths, which completely concealed everything ahead of us.
Narrower and narrower became the gorge, and at last we pause to listen. There was scarcely a sound in the air, but this intense stillness became suddenly broken by a series of rapid shots and wild yells, accompanied by a thundering, rumbling noise which was almost deafening. The
Tumult rapidly grew louder, and then, just in front of us, from out of the depths of the cafion came the buffalo herd like the wind, directly toward us. Some were bleeding, many were wounded, and others were limping badly.
Scrambling as well as we could behind boulders and corners, we had just reached refuge in time, for the now thoroughly maddened and stampeded buffaloes, never pausing for rocks, brush, or impossible trails, came helter-skelter onward, with heads down and tails up as usual, passing us and one solid black mass toward the outlet of the gorge.
It never seemed possible that living brutes could travel over such rough ground with such speed, but the difficulties of the trail never seem to concern them in the least, for, as a matter of fact, the rear ones crowded the forward ones with such persistency and so rapidly that they had to move quickly or else be trampled under foot.
After this thundercloud had passed, with feelings of great relief we went on up the cafion to see how the Indians had fared. It proved to have been of disastrous encounter for the Cheyennes, as many of them were limping and bleeding as badly as the stampeded buffaloes. A survey of their free frontier circus grounds discovered seven dead buffaloes, three wounded Indians (one of them quite seriously) and six ponies killed or maimed.
It appears that after cornering the bison in the further most depth of the cafion the red hunters had attempted to block their passage out, and then commenced firing on them. They imprisoned brutes stood this punishment for a while, but at last, in sheer desperation and maddened by wounds, they turned on their assailants and charged their way out in true calvary style, with the loss of seven of their number. One of the seven slain bisons prove to be in ancient old bull that showed the marks and scars of eighteen wounds he had received in his long battle with humanity. This fact was discovered when he was skinned and cut up. Hump, the Cheyenne buck who led the assault, and who had dodged the sharp horns of at least a dozen of the animals, declared it was the pluckiest thing he had ever seen buffalo do.
We assisted the wounded and dismounted Indians back to their camp, which happened to be about three miles distant from the bluff where they first came dashing into view, and after our Royal feast of toasted steaks and pleasant nights rest, next morning, bright and early, we resumed our journey toward the Yellowstone, which we reached in good season and without further incident.
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