CHAPTER I
THE INDIANS OF FORT BERTHOLD
With noisy puffings the steamboat was slowly pushing her wayup the river. On either side the flat bottom, in some placesovergrown with high willow brush, in others, bearing a growth oftall and sturdy cottonwoods, ran back a long way to the yellowbluffs beyond. The bluffs were rounded and several hundred feet inheight, rising imperceptibly until they seemed to meet the blueof the sky, so that the boat appeared to be moving at the bottomof a wide trough. Hour after hour she pushed on, meeting nothing,seeing nothing alive, except now and then a pair of great graygeese, followed by their yellow goslings; or sometimes on the shorea half-concealed red object, which moved quickly out of sight, andwhich observers knew to be a deer.
On the boat were two of our old friends. From the far East hadcome Jack Danvers, traveling day after day until he had reachedBismarck, Dakota, where he found awaiting him Hugh Johnson, asgrave, as white-haired, and as cheery as ever. At Bismarck theyhad taken the up-river steamer, "Josephine," and the boat hadsailed early on the morning of July 5th.
Hugh and Jack were on their way back up to the Piegan country. Theyhad separated at Bismarck the previous autumn, and while Hugh kepton down the river, to take a west-bound train, which should carryhim back to Mr. Sturgis' ranch in Wyoming, Jack had gone East, tospend the winter in New York. He had had a year of hard work atschool, for his experience of the previous winter had taught himthat it paid well to work in school, and to make the most of hisopportunities there. This made his parents more willing to have himgo away to this healthful life, and he found that if he did hisbest he enjoyed all the better the wild, free life of the prairieand the mountains, which he now hoped would be his during a part,at least, of every year.
His summer with the Piegans had taught him many things known tofew boys in the East, and given him many pleasures to which theyare strangers; and the more he saw of this prairie life the morehe enjoyed it, and the more he hoped to have more and more of it.Sometimes, when he awoke early in the morning, or at night, afterhe had gone to bed, as he lay between sleeping and waking, he usedto go over in his mind the scenes that he had visited, and thestirring adventures in which he had taken part, and these memories,with the hope of others like them, gave him a pleasure that hewould not have parted with for anything.
Often when he was in New York, walking through narrow citystreets, looking up at high buildings, hearing the roar and rattleof the passing traffic, and watching the people hurry to and fro,each one absorbed in his own business, it was hard to realize thataway off somewhere, only a few days' journey distant, there was aland where there was no limit to the view, where each human beingseemed absolutely free, and where it was possible to travel fordays and days without seeing a single person. Always interwovenwith his dreams and his imaginings about this distant country wasthe memory of the friend Hugh, to whom he was so deeply attached.It hardly seemed to him possible to go anywhere in the West, exceptin company with Hugh, and until he had joined him, it never seemedas if his journey had begun, or was really going to be made.
All through the day the boat went on, turning and twisting, andat different times facing all points of the compass. Sometimesthe sun would be shining on the port side of the boat, a littlelater on the starboard side, then it would be ahead, and againbehind. Hugh and Jack spent their time chatting on the upper deckof the boat, Hugh smoking vigorously, to keep off the mosquitoes,while Jack, the edges of his handkerchief under his hat and tuckedinside his coat collar, to leeward of Hugh, took advantage of theconstant stream of smoke that poured from his pipe. They had muchto tell each other of the winter that had passed, and much to sayof the trip on which they were now starting. Fort Benton was theirdestination, and until they reached there, and saw their friendJoe, the Blackfoot Indian who was to meet them with the horses,they were uncertain what they should do.
There were not a few passengers on the boat. Some of them werecarefully dressed persons, wearing long frock coats, white shirts,and a modest amount of jewelry, residents of the thriving townsof Helena or Virginia City, Montana; others were army officers,on their way to posts in the Northwest, or now starting out onsome exploring expedition; while others still were persons ofwhose occupation and destination it was hard to judge from theirappearance.
Among them was a middle-aged man who Jack thought, from hisconversation, had long been a resident of the plains, and who toldJack something about a trade that he had long practised--that ofwolfing.
"Why, young fellow," he said, "it is only a few years ago sincethere was good money in wolfin', but I had to quit it down in thesouthern country for wolves got too scarce when the buffalo gotkilled off. Wherever there was buffalo there was plenty of wolves,for the wolves made their livin' off the herds, just like theIndians; and when I say wolves I mean big wolves, coyotes, foxes,and swifts.
"In the autumn, as soon as the fur began to get good, I used tostart out and find a herd of buffalo, and after shootin' two orthree of them, I'd skin them down, and rip them up, and put fromone to three bottles of strychnine in each carcass. After the bloodthat lay in the ribs had been poisoned good, I'd smear that overthe meat on the outside. Generally I'd try to kill my buffaloclose to where I was goin' to camp, and after I had put out mybaits I went to camp and slept until near day. Then, before I couldsee, I'd get up, cook my breakfast, hitch up, if I had a team,and go round to all my baits. Likely, around each one I'd find myhalf dozen to fifteen wolves, and sometimes it would take me twoor three days to skin them. Likely enough, if the weather turnedright cold, I got a good many more wolves than I could skin, andhad to stack them up, and wait till I got time. It was mighty hardwork now, and don't you forget it. Then, too, there was always achance that Indians might come along and make trouble for me. Youtake a man out on the prairie, ten years ago, and even the friendlyIndians were likely to scare him a whole lot, or take his hides,even if they didn't take away his gun and his horses. As for thehostiles, if they got too close to a man it was all up with him.But I never had no trouble with them, except once, and then I wascamped in the dug-out, with plenty of provisions, and there wasonly three of the Indians. I saw them comin', and suspected whothey were, and managed to get my horses into the dug-out with meand stood 'em off. They scared me bad though.
"I should think so," said Jack.
The man stopped talking to fill his pipe and after he had lightedit puffed thoughtfully. Then he continued: "There's another wayI've wolfed it, and that is by draggin' a bait over quite a scopeof country, and droppin' pieces of poisoned meat along the trail.I used to do that when I couldn't find animals to kill for bait.This worked pretty well for awhile but it's no good any more downin that country."
"I've seen coyotes killed by putting poisoned tallow in augerholes, bored in chunks of wood," said Jack.
"Yes," said the man, "that's good sometimes, and they stay therelickin' and lickin' up the bait until they die right there. Youdon't have to look over much country to find your wolves."
"What kind of meat did you use when you were dragging the bait?"asked Jack.
"Most any kind would do," replied the wolfer; "sometimes it wouldbe a piece of buffalo meat, sometimes a shoulder of a deer, butthe best bait of all is a beaver carcass; there's lots of greaseand lots of smell to that, and the wolves and coyotes are sure tofollow it. This draggin' a trail is good too, because the wolves,when they go along and snap up the poisoned bait, don't go off, butkeep right on followin' the trail, and you find them there, maybequite a long way from where they pick the bait.
"Where are you goin', young fellow; you and that old man I see youtalking with?"
"We're going up to Benton," said Jack, "and I don't know wherewe're going from there. I expect we'll meet a friend there, withour horses, and then we're going to make a trip, off maybe on theprairies, and maybe into the mountains; we can't tell yet."
"Sho," said the man, "you're sure goin' to have a good time. I'vegot to get a job when I get to Benton; somethin' that'll keep meuntil it c
omes time for fur to get good."
The next morning when Jack and Hugh left their stateroom a heavyfog hung low over the river and the boat was not moving, but wastied up to the bank, for it was so thick that there was danger ofrunning aground on the frequent sand-bars, and as the river wasnow falling, the captain was unwilling to take the chance of suchdelay. On the lower deck was a dug-out canoe, the property of atemporary passenger, who was going only to Fort Berthold, and,after breakfast, Jack suggested to Hugh that they should borrowthis canoe and go off a little way up the river, taking their guns,and seeing whether they could kill anything. Hugh said this couldnot be done, explaining that it would be easy enough to get lost,which would be bad for them, and very irritating to the captain,who might feel it necessary to wait for them; and besides this,the fog might lift at any moment, when the boat would move onwardmuch faster than they could paddle. As it happened, the fog liftedalmost immediately, and the boat set forward; and a little beforenoon the village of the Rees, Gros Ventres and Mandans, high up onthe bluff above the river, was seen; and soon after the boat tiedup, and all hands went ashore.
The bluff rose steeply from the river, and up and down its facewere steep trails, worn by the feet of women passing up and downas they carried water and the driftwood which they gathered, up tothe village. On the top of the bluff stood the bee-hive shaped grayhouses, which Hugh told Jack were much like those occupied by thePawnees.
They began to climb the bluff toward the village, and Jack askedHugh about the Indians who lived here.
"In old times," said Hugh, "these Indians were scattered out up anddown the river. The Gros Ventres lived furthest up, between hereand Buford, and the Rees and Mandans lived further down the stream.A long time ago,--back maybe more than a hundred years,--the Reesand the Mandans all lived together, away down below here; but thenthey had some sort of a quarrel among themselves, and the Mandansmoved on up the stream, and for a long time camped near the mouthof the Knife River. For a while after that there was some fightingbetween the Rees and Mandans, but after a time they made peace,and gradually the tribes came together again; and now for a longtime they've all lived together in this village of Berthold. In oldtimes each of these villages was a big one, but since the whitemen came among them, and brought smallpox, and liquor, and all theother things that the white men bring, they are dying off fast, andI don't believe that now there is more than eight or nine hundredof these Indians all together. You know these Rees here are kindof kin to the Pawnees; they speak near the same language, so thatI can talk with 'em, and they call the Pawnees their relations. Ithink they used to be a part of the Skidi band. Nobody knows justwhen they separated from the Pawnees, but it must have been a goodwhile ago."
Hugh paused, and Jack asked: "Does any one know how they came toseparate, Hugh? Is there any tradition about it?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "there is. The old story is that all the Pawneeswere out hunting, and the Sioux got around some of 'em, and cut'em off from the rest and kept fighting 'em, and driving 'em, andfighting and driving, until they got 'em away up on the MissouriRiver, so far from their friends that they had to winter there.Then, along back, maybe about 1830, soon after the beginning of thefur trade on the upper river, the Rees fought the white folks, andwere generally hostile. After that they went back and joined thePawnees, but they couldn't get along well with the Pawnees, andquarreled with them, and finally the Pawnees drove 'em off. So theycame on back up the river. It was after that that they joined theMandans, and they've lived together ever since."
By this time they had reached the top of the bluff, and were nowclose to the houses, on whose curious domed roofs many people weresitting,--women busy with their work, young men wrapped in theirrobes, and looking off into the distance, and little girls playingwith their dolls or their puppies. The ground in the village allabout the houses was worn bare by the passage of many feet; Indianswere going to and fro, women carrying water and wood, men naked, orwrapped in their summer sheets, little boys chasing each other, or,with their ropes trying to snare the dogs, which were usually toocunning for them.
Jack was greatly interested in the houses, and wished to lookinto one, and to this Hugh said there would be no objection. Theentrance of each house was by a long passage-way, closed above,and at the sides, and passing through this, they found themselvesat the door. Jack expected to go into a room that was dark; butthis was not so. Above the center of the large room was a wideopen space, which answered both for chimney and for window. Aboutthe fireplace, which was under the smoke hole, at the corners of asquare, stood four stout posts, reaching up to and supporting therafters of the roof. The floor of the house was swept clean, andall around the walls were raised platforms, serving for beds, andseparated by screens of straight willow sticks strung on sinew,from the adjacent bed on either side. In front of some of the bedssimilar screens hung down like curtains so that the bed couldbe cut off from the observation of those in the house. Over thefireplace hung a pot, and two pleasant-faced women were sittingnear it, sewing moccasins. They looked up pleasantly, as thestrangers stood in the doorway, and Hugh spoke a few words to them,to which they made some answer. Then the strangers withdrew.
Keeping on through the village, they walked out on the higherprairie, toward the tribal burying-ground, but not such aburying-ground as Jack was accustomed to see. Here were placed thedead, wrapped up in bundles, on platforms raised on four poles,eight or ten feet above the ground. Evidently no attention was paidto them after burial, for many of the poles which supported theplatforms had rotted and fallen down, and, in the older part ofthe graveyard the ground was strewn with pieces of old robes andclothing, and with white bones.
Hugh told Jack that farther away, and down on lower ground, wherethe soil was moist, the Rees, Mandans, and Gros Ventres had farms,where they raised corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes, and that inold times they used to raise tobacco.
It was now time to return to the boat, for the wait was to be onlya short one, and on their way back he told of something that hadhappened not many years before in the Mandan village.
"The people were hungry," said Hugh, "and there was no food incamp. They sent young men off in all directions to look forbuffalo, but none could be found. As the people grew hungrier andhungrier the White Cow Society made up their minds that they wouldgive a dance, and try to bring the buffalo. They did this, anddanced for a long time; but no buffalo were found, and there wereno signs that any were coming. Still the people of the White CowSociety danced, and still the other people watched them, and prayedthat they might bring the buffalo. One day, after they'd dancedfor ten days, suddenly a big noise was heard in the village, andwhen the people rushed out of the lodges to see what was happening,there, among the lodges, was a big buffalo bull, charging aboutright close to the lodge in which the White Cow Society weredancing. All the dogs in the village seemed to be about him,barking at his head, and biting at his heels, and he was tryingonly to get away, and paying no attention to the Indians that wereall about him.
"Then everybody was glad, for all could see that the Master of Lifehad sent this bull, to answer their prayers; and all believed thathe had come ahead of the main herd, which would soon follow him.Before he had got out of the village, the bull was shot. The WhiteCow Society came out of their lodge, and danced around the village,and while they were doin' this, one of the scouts came in, andreported that a big band of cows was not far off. Then everybodywas glad, and all wondered at the strong medicine of the White CowSociety. The next day the men went out and made a surround, andkilled plenty of cows, and brought in the meat, and there came aterrible storm, and when the storm cleared off the whole prairie,beyond the ridge near Knife River, was black with buffalo. Nowthere was plenty in the camp, and every one was happy. The men wentout and brought in fat meat, and it was dried, and no more thatwinter was there any suffering for food."
"That's a good story, Hugh," said Jack, "but do you suppose thedancing of the White Cow Society really brought the buffalo?"
r /> "I couldn't tell you, son. The Indians believed it did, but I don'tsuppose any white folks would. But I've seen so many queer thingsfollow these medicine performances that I don't know what to thinkabout them, myself."
By this time they had reached the shore, and looking around, asthey passed over the gang-plank to the deck, they saw the captainand purser coming down the trail just behind them. The deck handswere already beginning to cast off the fasts, and a moment laterthe whistle sounded, the boat's nose turned out into the river, andthe steady thump, thump of the paddle-wheel began again. On thebank stood the three or four white men belonging to the agency,and up and down the bottom, and clustered in little groups on thebluffs, were Indians, dressed in buckskin, or in bright-coloredcloth, who stood motionless, watching the steamer as she slowlymoved away.
"That's a mighty interesting place, Hugh; and I want to get you totell me all about it. Who are the Gros Ventres, and who are theMandans? You've told me about the Rees, but I want to know aboutthe others."
"Well, son," said Hugh, "I don't know as I can tell you very muchabout them, but I'll try. The Gros Ventres are close relationsto the Crows; in fact, many people call them the River Crows, todistinguish them from the real Crows, that live up close to themountains, on the head of the Yellowstone. Those fellows are calledthe Mountain Crows, and there's a good many more of them thanthere are of these. These people, I suppose, got their name, GrosVentres, from the French, and I never heard why it was given to'em. I never could see that they were any fatter, or had any biggerbellies, than other Indians, and I never found out any reason forthe name. They don't call themselves by any such name as that;their name for themselves is _Hi d[)a]t sa_, and that's said tomean, willows. Anyhow, they used to be called Willow Indians; so Ihave been told.
"In old times, they say that there were three tribes of them, butthe other tribes have been lost, or forgotten, and now they're alltogether--all one bunch of Indians. There's one thing you wantto remember, that there are two different outfits of Indians,both called Gros Ventres; one of them, these people here, whom weknow as the Gros Ventres of the Village, or Gros Ventres of theMissouri; the others are the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, whosecountry is east of the Blackfoot country, and who used to befriendly with the Blackfeet, and then fought them for a long time,and now are friendly again. Those Gros Ventres of the Prairie areno kin at all to these people, but are a part of the Arapahoes,from whom, according to the old story, they split off a long, longtime ago. They talk the Arapahoe language, and call the Arapahoestheir own people, and still visit them back and forth. Nowadaysthey have an agency along with the Assinaboines, further west, atFort Belknap, over on Milk River. Ninety-nine men out of everyhundred get these Arapahoes and these River Crows mixed up, justfor the reason that the French called them both Gros Ventres. Don'tyou ever do that, because when a man makes that mistake it showsthat he don't know nothing about Indians. Try to remember that,will you?"
"Of course I will, Hugh. I don't want to make any mistakes,especially now since I have been out and seen something of realIndians. People back East, and especially all the fellows atschool, think that I know everything about Indians now. They're allthe time asking me questions about them, who they are, and wherethey live, and I should hate to make any mistakes in my answers.Now tell me, who are the Mandans?"
"I don't know as much about the Mandans as I do about the GrosVentres of the Village," said Hugh, "and yet I've heard a lot aboutthem. They're a kind of queer people; lots of 'em used to haveyellow hair and gray eyes, and lots of 'em now have gray-hairedchildren, same as you have seen among the Blackfeet. I got hold ofa book once with lots of pictures of Indians in it; mighty goodpictures, too, they were. 'T was written by a man named Catlin, whocame up the river, painting pictures of Indians, a long time ago;maybe fifty years. He said he thought the Mandans were Welshmen,and told some story about some foreign prince that brought acolony of Welshmen over here, and Catlin thought that maybe theMandans were descended from that colony. Anyhow they've lived bythemselves, so the story goes, for a great many years; but I'veheard the old men say that long, long ago the tribe came fromaway back East somewhere. They followed down a big river that ranfrom east to west, likely it may have been the Ohio River, untilthey came to the Mississippi, and then they struck off northwest,and camped on the Missouri, and they have been traveling up theMissouri, a little way at a time, for an almighty sight o' years.
"This book of Catlin's that I tell you about has got a whole loto' stuff about the Mandans, and it is mighty good readin'. Youhad better get hold of it sometime when you get back East; it'lltell you more about 'em than I can. The Mandans have always beenfarmers, and raised good crops of corn, and that and their buffalogive them a pretty good living. But now the buffalo are gettingscarce, and when they give out the Mandans will have to live onstraight corn, I am afraid. There's one thing about the Mandansthat's worth rememberin', they make the best pots of any peoplethat I know of on the plains. I expect that in old times maybe thePawnees made just as good pots, but since the white folks began tobring brass and copper kettles into the country the Pawnees haveforgotten how to make pots; but the Mandans still keep it up, andmake some pots, big and little----"
"Oh, Hugh!" called Jack at this moment, "Look at the buffalo!" andhe pointed toward the high bluffs on the south side of the river,and there were three dark spots, running as hard as they could upthe hill.
"Sure enough," said Hugh, "there's the first buffalo we've seen.Don't they look like three rats scuttling off over the hills, asfast as they can go. Before long, now, we ought to see plenty of'em along the river; though we ain't likely to see many buffalobefore we get above Buford."
The boat pushed slowly up the river's muddy current, and Hugh andJack continued to talk about the Indian village on the hill.
"A mighty queer thing happened once at that village, son," saidHugh. "You've heard, maybe, that in some tribes of Indians theyhave sort of prophets, or men that foretell things that are goingto happen. I have seen a little of that sort of thing myself,that I never could explain. Besides that, they've got some way oflearning news that we don't understand anything about. Of course itmay not be as quick as railroads and telegraphs, but its quick.Let me tell you something that happened there at Berthold, someyears ago, and the man that it happened to lives in the uppercountry now, and you may likely run across him some time when youare up there. He is a Dutchman, and his name is Joe Butch.
"Along in 1868, Joe was working at Berthold, for a trader there,and the trader got into some sort of a quarrel about a horse withold White Cow, chief of the Mandans, and I guess old White Cow waspretty sassy, and maybe he threatened to do something, and Joekilled him. Well, as soon as he had killed the old man, Joe heknew that that wasn't no place for him, because the Mandans wouldbe pretty sure to kill him; so he hops onto his horse, and ridesas hard as he could for Buford, that's eighty miles up the river,next place we stop at. When he got to Buford he found there a bigcamp of Assinaboines, and they were having a big dance, becausethe chief of the Mandans, their enemies, had just been killed.Now, how do you suppose those Assinaboines knew that White Cow hadbeen killed? Joe didn't waste no time getting onto his horse, andhe rode as hard as he could to Buford; and its a sure thing thatnobody got there before him with the news. I never understood howthey found that out, and I never expect to."
"That seems a wonderful thing, Hugh," said Jack. "I don't see howthey could have found it out if nobody told them, and if there wereno telegraphs."
"Well, it's sure there were no telegraphs," said Hugh, "and I don'tsee how anybody could have told them. Joe killed the man, andstarted on his ride right off, and had a good horse. That's one ofthe things that always beat me."
The hours passed swiftly by for Jack and Hugh, as they watchedthe river banks on either side. The boat had met a flood of waterjust above Berthold, which, if it made progress against the strongcurrent more slow, nevertheless saved time by deepening the water,so that they did not run aground on sand
-bars. Several times duringthe morning, antelope were seen feeding in the bottom, liftingtheir heads to gaze at the boat, as it puffed and snorted along,but not being enough alarmed to take to flight. After supper thatnight, as they sat on the deck about sundown, Hugh, watching thebanks, pointed out no less than three distant spots on the widebottom, which he told Jack were bears digging roots. They were along way off, yet with his glasses Jack was able to make out theirforms, and to recognize them as bears.