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Mountain Chief's Boyhood Sports

“I remember when I was a boy how we used to trap foxes. We all got together and took our sisters along, took the axe, went into the woods and cut willows, tied them up in bundles, and put them on our backs, our sisters doing the same thing. We would go to the east of the camp, where the smoke and all of the scent would go, find a snowdrift in the coulee and unload our packs. The first thing we did was to stamp on the snow – to see if it was solid. We would drive four sticks into the snow, and while driving in the sticks we would sing: ‘I want to catch the leader.’ The song is a fox song to bring good luck. As far as I can remember I got this story from my grandfather. There was an old man in the camp who went to the mountains, and stayed there for four days without anything to eat in order that he might get his dream. A fox came to him and told him: ‘This is one way you can kill us,’ and this is why we put in this song while we were making the deadfall. After we got through fixing up our deadfall we returned home, a boy in the lead, then a girl, then a boy, then a girl, and while we were returning to the camp we sang the fox song, putting in these words: ‘I want to kill the leader.’ Then we fell down, imitating the fox in the trap. When we got back to camp we took buffalo meat, covering it with fat and roasted it a while so that the fox would get the scent. Then we took the bait and put it on a stick and put it over our left arm, and then the boys and girls all went back again, singing as we went; ‘We hope to have good luck.’ This song was a good-luck song. After we put the bait in the trap we all went home silently, not saying a word. But before we went to bed my mother said to me: ‘I am going to get a piece of dried beef without any fat, and you take it over to the old man who always has good luck in trapping foxes, and he will pray for you that you may have good luck.’ When the dried meat was done, I took it over to the old man, gave it to him, and asked him to pray for me that I might have good luck. The old fellow would then start to say his prayers for me. The old man to whom he prayed was the old man that dreamed how to kill the fox. The old man told me to pick up four stones about five inches long, and tie them with a string. He tied a stone on each wrist, one behind my neck, and one at the back of my belt. Then he took charcoal and blackened my nose on each side to represent the fox, then he made me take off my clothes; he took a stick about five feet long and held it in an inclined position. The old man then took two sticks and hit them together, and stood right by the door singing. He told me to whistle; then he walked toward the point where he had held the sticks. He then lay down by the stick and began to scratch on the ground as though he were caught in a trap. Then he said: ‘You are going to catch one now.’ By this time it was pretty late in the night. We gave a signal to the other boys and girls to come out and we all went to see our traps. I had a robe made out of a yearling calfskin that I threw over me, and I also had a rope my mother gave me with which to drag the foxes home if I caught any. Then we went to our traps, following the same path as we did when we went to set the trap with bait. As we went along we filled the night with song, singing: ‘The fox is in a trap, and his tail is sticking out.’ When we got near the traps we stopped singing, and one of us went on ahead. The leader who went ahead walked straight to our trap, when he returned he whistled; then we knew that some of us had caught something. When he came back he pointed out certain ones who had caught foxes. Then we lifted our deadfalls, slipped the ropes over them, and dragged them home. As we approached the camp we formed in line abreast, and began to sing. When we reached the camp every one was in bed. We sang the song which indicated that we had caught something; then we imitated the cry of the crow and the magpie, which indicated that we had had extra good luck. If we imitated the hooting of an owl, it showed that we had had bad luck, and none of us had caught anything. We were always anxious to catch some wild game, because we sold the skins to the traders, and with the money we bought knives and brass earrings and beads and paint.”

Chief Red Cloud

Chief Red Cloud, head chief of the Ogallallas, was without doubt the most noted and famous chief at the time of his death, December, 1909, in the United States. He became famous through his untiring efforts in opposition to everything the Government attempted to do in the matter of the pacification of the Sioux. One of the most lurid pages in the history of Indian warfare records the massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, in December, 1866. Chief Red Cloud planned and executed this terrific onslaught. He always remained a chief. He was always the head of the restless element, always the fearless and undaunted leader. He was the Marshal Ney of the Indian nations, until sickness and old age sapped his vitality and ambition.

The holding of the last Great Indian Council occurred a little less than two months before his death. Blind and bedridden he could not attend the council. During the last few shattered years of his warrior life, he relegated all the powers of chieftainship to his son, now fifty-four years of age. The younger Chief Red Cloud attended the council. He is tall and straight and lithe, and possesses a splendid military bearing. He is a winsome speaker, and his words are weighted with the gold of Nature's eloquence. Every attitude of his body carries the charm of consummate grace, and when he talks to you there is a byplay of changing lights in his face that becomes fascinating. Like his father he was a born leader and warrior. His story of the Custer fight and his participation in it may be found in the chapter on that subject. Regarding his own life he tells us:

“It has been a part of my life to go out on the warpath, ever since I was fourteen years old. As you know it is a part of our history that the man who goes on the warpath and kills the most enemies gets a coup stick, and the coup stick is the stepping-stone to become a chief. I remember my first war party was forty-one years ago. This battle was at Pryor Creek against the Crows. I was in four great battles, with my father, Chief Red Cloud. At the battle of Pryor Creek I captured many horses, and took three scalps. Thirty-four years ago I killed four Crows and earned my coup stick. I kept these scalps until my visit to Washington when some white man wanted them.”

“I want to speak about the buffalo. There were plenty of buffalo and deer when I was a young man, but the white man came and frightened all the game away, and I blame the white man for it. By order of our Great Father in Washington the buffalo were all killed. By this means they sought to get the Sioux Indians back to their reservation.”

“The greatest event in my life I may explain in this way: Years ago I had been trained to go on the warpath. I loved to fight; I was fighting the Indians and fighting the soldiers. Then there came a time when the Great Father said we must stop fighting and go to school, we must live in peace, that we were Indian brothers, and must live in peace with the white man. I believe that the greatest event in my life was when I stopped the old Indian custom of fighting and adopted what the white man told me to do – live in peace.”

The hoar frosts of autumn had touched into opal and orange the leaves of the forest until great banners of colour lined the banks of the swiftly flowing Little Big Horn; the camp of the last Great Indian Council lifted cones of white on the edge of these radiant trees. Sombre winds uttered a melancholy note through the dying reeds on the river bank, and all of it seemed a prelude to an opening grave, and significant of the closing words uttered to me by Chief Red Cloud:

“My father, old Chief Red Cloud, has been a great fighter against the Indians, and against the white man, but he learned years ago to give up his fighting. He is now an old man, ready to die, and I am sorry that he could not come here. It is now over five years since he gave me his power and I became chief, and he and I both are glad that we are friends to the white man and want to live in peace.”

Chief Two Moons

Chief Two Moons wears about his neck an immense cluster of bear claws. His arms are also encircled with this same insignia of distinction. Although he has reached the age of nearly threescore years and ten, his frame is massive and his posture, when standing, typifies the forest oak. It takes no conjuring of the imagination to picture this stalwart leader of the Cheyennes against Custer on that fateful June day, as suffering no loss in comparison with the great generals who led the Roman eagles to victory. Two Moons is now nearly blind; he carries his coup stick, covered with a wolfskin, both as a guide for his footsteps and a badge of honour. There is not a tinge of gray in the ample folds of his hair, and his voice is resonant and strong. His story of the Custer fight, told for me at the cross marking the spot where Custer fell, to be found in the Indians' story of that battle, is both thrilling and informing.

Seated around the campfire in my tepee while a cold rain sifted through the canvas, Two Moons became reminiscent. His mother and brother were called Two Moons, meaning two months – in the Indian tongue, Ish-hay-nishus. His mind seemed to travel back to his boyhood days, for he started right in by saying: “When a Cheyenne boy wants to marry a young woman it takes a long time for them to get acquainted with each other. When he wants to marry a girl or have her for a sweetheart he tells another fellow with whom he is acquainted, and who is also acquainted with the girl, and this young man goes and tells her, the same as a white man writes to the young lady on paper. And this Indian friend brings them together; this Indian goes and tells the girl that the boy wants to be a sweetheart to her, and the girl will say, ‘Well, I will think it over.’ And then she thinks it over, and finally says if he comes to see her some time in the day or night then she will believe that he is a sweetheart of hers. So then the young man goes to the young girl, and talks to her, and they make up their minds to get married. They get married after this fashion: the young man may go to the tent of the girl at night and the girl may come out, then the boy will take the girl away to his home. So then the next morning the young man's folks and family bring their presents. They take two or three horses, good horses, and load these horses up with good stuff, clothes, shawls, necklaces, bracelets, and moccasins. Then they take the girl back to her home. The girl's family divides up the presents after they get home.”

“There is another way: When an old man and woman decide they want a grandchild, they tell their son they are going to buy a certain girl and he must marry her. Then another Indian goes and tells the girl's family that they would like to trade for the girl, and if it is all right he goes back and the boy's people load up some horses with goods, and take them over to the girl's folks. And then they take her back and give her to the boy's family. The bride was bedecked with brass rings which were taken from the tepee, but they used other rings for engagement rings after the white man came.”

In speaking of death, Two Moons said: “If the person who dies has a mother or father or friend, they all cry, and all the things that belonged to the boy they give away to other people. They dig a grave in between the rocks and put the body in the ground and cover it up with dirt and rocks. They always dig a grave for a person who dies whether they have friends or folks. The old people believed there was a man came on earth here and some of his children had done a lot of crime and fooling with him, and they talked of his going up to heaven, and living there and looking down, and that is where we will all go when we die. Also the old people believed that that man said: ‘There will be a kind of cross light up in the sky, which will mark the path for souls on the road.’ ‘High White Man’ is our name for God. And it was the son of High White Man who told this, and who created us and made everything.”

“The first time the Indian saw a locomotive, he called it the Iron Horse, and the railroad was called the Iron Road. The old people first saw what they called white men, and they called the white man a Ground Man. I was so young then that I did not know anything at that time. I saw some men driving an ox team, or carrying packs on their backs and walking. When I got older most of the people knew that these white men were good. The first time they saw a white man they called him Drive-a-Wagon. They did not know what they were hauling, but found out afterward that it was sugar and coffee. I remember how pleased I was when I first saw sugar and coffee. When I was a boy the Indians used to get the grains of coffee and put it in a bucket and boil it, and it would never cook at all. Finally a white man came along and took the coffee and put it in a bucket and put it on the coals without any water, and stirred it until it turned brown, and then he took it off and mashed it up between two stones, and that was how we learned to make coffee. I like it, and have always liked it.”

“The white man is to blame for the driving away of the buffalo.” (It will here be observed that the Indian cannot talk very long at a time without this ever recurring subject being forced to the front.) “After the white man had driven the buffalo away, a great council among the Indians was held; all the tribes possible were called to this big council on the Platte River. All the different tribes were there. A white man came there and brought a lot of stuff, such as clothes, plates, guns, coffee grinders, knives, blankets, and food, and gave them to the Indians. They also brought shoes. This man said that he wanted some Indians to go to Washington. They went down the Missouri River. They went by ox team from the Platte River to the Missouri, and then by ship down the Missouri River. These men were gone to Washington for a year; they came back about the middle of the summer. The President told the Indians they were his grandchildren, and thus the Indians called the President their grandfather. Grandfather told them that a white man would come and live with them, and that for fifty-five years they would get clothes and food. I was nine years old when they held the council and ten years old when they came back. From the time of the council the old people settled down in the Black Hills and in the south and quit running around. From that time all the Indians became friends of the white man, and the white man bought the buffalo hides and other skins. After they settled down everything went along all right until I was fifteen years old, and then the whites came in and there was a fight between the whites and Cheyennes and some other tribes of Indians. I do not know what happened, but some Cheyennes went over to the white man's camp on Shell River, and the white men started to fire at the Indians. That was the cause of the trouble that year. Later the Comanches and Apaches and Kiowas fought among themselves, and came north to fight the Cheyennes. We called them the Texas Indians. Then the wars between the tribes and the hostilities between the Red and White grew less and less. There was a man named Honey; – the Indians called him Bee – he told the Cheyennes they must not fight. In the numerous battles in which I was engaged I received many wounds. I was wounded by the Pawnee Indians in a fight with them, by an arrow; wounded again at Elk River in the Yellowstone, when I was shot through the arm by a Crow of the Big Horn. I was wounded again on the Crow River in Utah in a fight with the United States soldiers, when I was shot through the thigh. I had my horse shot through the jaw in a fight with the Crows, but to-day I am a friend of all the tribes; once I was their enemy. I was told by General Miles at Fort Kearny that we must not fight any more, that it was the orders from Washington. I remember General Miles well. I know him and I am a friend of his. When General Miles told me what I ought to do, it was just as though he put me in his hand and showed me the white man and the Indian, and told us we were all to be good friends, so that is the reason General Miles' name is a great name among the Cheyennes as well as the whites. And your coming among us is just like General Miles; you are helping the Indians and can help them. They need help for they are all poor. After the Indians settled down and General Miles had told us what the Great Father at Washington wanted, and after I had succeeded in settling the Indians, the order came from Washington that we should take up land and call it a claim. So I looked all around for land on which to settle; then I went over to Tongue River on the Rosebud so that my family and children could be reared and have a home. All that I have told you is true. General Miles told me that when I settled down and took this land, there might be some people who would come along and try to cheat us out of our land, but not to pay any attention to them, that it was our land. There are a great many people settled in Montana in the land that belonged to the Indians. These people are raising lots of cattle and ought to be good to the Indian. I have been on this land for over twenty years, but we are not yet accustomed to the white man's food: we love the meat yet, and we long for the buffalo. There is a great deal of land leased by cattle men in Montana, and the money ought to go to buy more cattle for the Indian, and clothes for our children. I like to tell the truth just as I have seen it with my own eyes, and I will have another good story for you to-morrow night. I am getting old, but when I begin to talk about the old times I think I am young again, and that I am the biggest of them all.”

THE STORY OF THE SURVIVING CUSTER SCOUTS

Too little stress has been laid upon the values accruing to the safety and success of the United States troops, in their warfare on the western frontier, from the services of Indian scouts.

A wild and often inaccessible country to traverse, with none of the aids of electricity or modern travel; with difficult mountain ranges to climb, blinding blizzards and insufferable cold, blistering heat, and the hazards of unknown rivers to cross through banks of perilous quicksands; stupendous distances to travel, and all the time an alert, wily, and masterful foe lurking in any one of ten thousand impregnable coverts – this is a hint of the scout's life. These brave and tireless scouts led not to ambush but to the advantage of our men at arms. Estimate the bravery, the sagacity, the perseverance, the power of endurance displayed by these Indian scouts, and their superlative service will call for our patriotic gratitude. No trial of strength and endurance, no test of bravery, no audacity of peril, hindered or made them afraid. They were more important than guns and munitions of war. The Crows made the best scouts, for two reasons: They had never taken up arms against the whites; all the neighbouring tribes battled against the Crows for the conquest of their land. The Crow scouts, therefore, aided the United States soldiers to conquer and drive out their hereditary foes that they might preserve their land and their homes. It was therefore not only a fight of fidelity and fealty but of preservation – Nature's strongest law.

Our story is now concerned with the four surviving scouts who led the United States soldiers in many campaigns under Crook, Terry, Miles, Howard, and finally Custer. The Indians who piloted Long Hair to the great Sioux camp in the valley of the Little Big Horn – the last day of life for Custer, the last contest at arms for the Indians – are now old men, and their own life record is full of thrilling interest.