CHAPTER II
THE BATTLE OF THE MUSSELSHELL
Early next morning the boat stopped at Fort Buford, above the mouthof the Yellowstone River.
The wait was to be only a short one, and no one left the boat. Jackwas interested in looking from the upper deck at the post, wherethere were a number of soldiers, and it looked like a busy place.Away to the left was seen the broad current of the Yellowstonecoming down between timbered banks. As the two friends sat on theupper deck and looked off toward the shore, Hugh, in response tosome question by Jack, said:
"Yes, in old fur-trading days this used to be a mighty interestingplace. Just above here was one of the great trading posts of oldtimes, and pretty much all the tribes of the northern prairie usedto come here to get their ammunition, and whatever other stuff theycould buy. Old man Culbertson was here for a long time, and lotsof people from back east and from foreign parts used to come upthe river as far as this. Sometimes they used to have great fightsout here on this flat, when two hostile tribes would come in totrade and would get here at the same time. I've heard great storiesabout the way the Indians used to fight here among themselvesalmost under the walls of the post; and, then, again, sometimesthe Indians used to crawl up as near to the fort as they could,and try to run off the horse herd, which would be feeding rightout in front of the post. Sometimes they'd get 'em; sometimes theywouldn't, but would get one of the herders. On the whole, however,the place wasn't often attacked, because the Indians couldn'tafford to quarrel with the people who furnished them with theirgoods. When 'twas Fort Union, 'twas a mighty lively place."
"Why Hugh," said Jack, "do you mean to tell me that this is oldFort Union?"
"Sure," said Hugh.
"Why," said Jack, "I've read lots about Fort Union. Don't you knowthat in 1843 Audubon, the naturalist, and a party of his friends,came up here to find out a lot about the Western birds and animals?I've read a lot of Audubon, and he speaks constantly of Fort Union,and about the things he used to see here, and the buffalo hunting,and about Mr. Culbertson. Dear me! dear me! when I was readingabout it I never thought that I would see Fort Union."
"Well," said Hugh, "this is the place; and if this man Audubon wasout here in 1843, that, I think, was just the year before theyhad the big smallpox here. Men that were here at the time tell methat there were two or three big camps of Indians here, and thatthey got the smallpox in the fall, just before the ground froze,and the Indians died off like wolves about a poisoned carcass; andthe ground was hard, and they could not dig graves for them, andthey just stacked up the bodies outside of the fort, in rows, likeso much cord-wood, and had to wait till the ground melted in thespring before they could bury 'em. There must have been a pile ofIndians died."
"Well, what did they do for smallpox, Hugh? How did they curethemselves?"
"Why, they didn't know anything about curing themselves, son. Whena man got smallpox, or got sick, he just went into a sweat-lodge,and took a sweat, and came out and plunged into the river to cooloff, and the ice was running, and some of 'em never came up again,and some of those that did come up were so weak from the shock thatthey could not get to the shore, and just drowned. If we get to theBlackfoot camp this summer, you ask old man Chouquette about it. Hewas here then; he'll tell you about it, just the same as he toldme."
While Hugh had been talking, the boat had cast off and had oncemore started up the river.
It was afternoon, and Hugh was dozing in his chair, tilted upagainst the cabin, while Jack as usual was watching the riverbanks, when suddenly from behind a little hill that formed the endof a hog back, which extended well out into the bottom, he saw aherd of seventy or eighty buffalo, come running as hard as theycould across the bottom, and plunge into the river just above theboat. The great animals ran as if frightened, and seemed to regardnothing but the danger behind them. As the boat went along, andthe buffalo swam to cross the stream, they came nearer and nearertogether, and at last it was evident that the buffalo would passvery close to the boat. They swam rapidly, and with them weremany little calves, swimming on the down stream side of theirmothers, and going swiftly and easily. Jack shouted to Hugh, who,with him, watched the buffalo, and in a very few minutes the boatwas actually in the midst of the herd. The animals did not attemptto turn about, but swam steadily after their leaders, and some ofthem actually swam against the boat, and, only then seeming tounderstand their danger, turned about and, grunting, snorting, andbellowing, climbed up on each other in tremendous fright. As theycame to the boat Jack at first had started to get his rifle, butHugh called him back, and they both descended to the lower deck,where, with the other passengers, and the deck hands, they wereactually within arms length of the buffalos. The mate, forming anoose with a rope, threw it over the head of a two-year-old, andhalf a dozen of the roustabouts, pulling on the rope, lifted theanimal's head up on the deck, when the mate killed it, and it waspresently hauled aboard and butchered. As they returned to theupper deck, having watched the buffalo, after the boat had passed,swim to the other bank and climb out of the water, and then stopand look at the boat, Jack said to Hugh, "Well, I saw a lot ofbuffalo last year, but it sort of excites one to see them again asclose as those were."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's so; but there was no use in your gettingyour gun, as you started to. I don't want you to act like all therest of these pilgrims that come up the river, and to be shootingat everything you see that's alive. There'd have been no more funin shooting one of those buffalo in the water there, than there'dbe in shooting a cow on the range. Of course, if a man's hungry,it's well enough for him to butcher; but if he just wants meat,and there's somebody else to do the butchering, he might just aswell let him do it. I always used to like to hunt, and I do still,but it's no fun for me to kill a calf in a pen, or to chop off achicken's head.
"That's so, Hugh," said Jack; "it would have been no more to shootone of those buffalos in the water than it was for the mate to killthat two-year-old."
"That's so," said Hugh; "it would have been just the same thing,and you don't envy him the work he did, I expect."
"No indeed," said Jack, "not much."
"Now, if you want to fire a few shots," said Hugh, "if you wanta little practice with your gun, get it out the next time we getclose to the bank, and shoot at a knot in some cottonwood tree. Ican watch with the glasses and see where you hit, and you can getsome practice with your rifle, but won't show up a tenderfoot."
The sun was low that evening when they reached Wolf Point, theagency for the Assinaboine Indians, and it seemed as if allthe Indians there must have clustered about the landing-placeto welcome the boat; men, clad in fringed buckskin shirts andleggings, and with eagle feathers in their hair; bright-shawledwomen, carrying babies on their backs; small boys, naked, savefor a pair of leggings and a breech-clout; and little girls, somewearing handsome buckskin dresses, trimmed with elk-teeth, andclinging to their mothers' skirts, made up the assemblage. Mostinteresting to Jack were the many travois, each one drawn by adog. Some of these were very wolf-like in appearance; others mighthave been big watch dogs taken from the front door yard of someeastern farm house. All seemed well-trained and patient; and when,a little later, some of them started off for the agency buildings,dragging loads that had been piled on the travois, they bentsturdily to their work, and dug their feet into the ground.
"There's something, son," said Hugh, "that we are not going to seemuch longer. The dog travois has seen its best days, and beforelong dogs won't be used any more for that work. Why, I hear thateven up in the North, dogs are not used in winter for hauling halfas much as they used to be; and down here, the first thing youknow, all these Indians will be having wagons, and driving them'round over the prairie. Why, do you know, it ain't so very longago since these Assinaboines had hardly any horses. They didn'twant 'em; they said horses were only a nuisance and a bother to'em, and their dogs were better. Horses had to be looked after;driven in and caught up whenever they were to be used, and thenthey had to be watched t
o keep people from stealing them; but dogs,instead of running away when you wanted to catch them, would comerunning toward you; they never ran off nor were stolen. Nowadays,though, the Assinaboines have got quite a good many horses, and Iexpect to live long enough to see the time when dog travois will bea regular curiosity."
"Who are the Assinaboines, Hugh," said Jack. "What tribe are theyrelated to?"
"They're Sioux," said Hugh, "and talk the Sioux language. Of courseit's a little different from that talked by the Ogallalas and thedown river Sioux; but still they can all understand each other, andthey call themselves Lacotah, which of course you know is the namethat all the Sioux have for themselves."
"And yet," he continued, "they have been at war with the Sioux andwith the Sioux' friends for a good many years. I reckon there ain'tany one that rightly knows when the Assinaboines split off fromthe main stock; it must have been a long time ago. But you talkwith the Assinaboines, and they'll tell you--just as most of theother Sioux'll tell you--about a time long ago, in the lives oftheir fore-fathers, when their people lived at the edge of the saltwater. I expect maybe that means that they migrated a long way,either from the East or from the West, very far back."
"My!" said Jack, "if we could only know about all these things thathappened, and what the history of each tribe was, wouldn't it beinteresting?"
"It sure would," said Hugh.
"Well, Hugh," continued Jack, "what does Assinaboine mean? Has itany real meaning, like some of these other names of Indian tribesthat you tell me about?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "it has a meaning, and I reckon it's a Cree word._Ass[)i]ne_ means stone in Cree, _poit_ means cooked, or cooking,and the Assinaboines are called stone-cookers, or stone-roasters,I suppose because they used to do their cooking with hot stones.But of course that don't mean much, because pretty nearly all theIndians that I know of used to boil their meat with hot rocks,except those that made pots and kettles for themselves out of clay.Nobody knows, I reckon, when the Pawnees and Mandans first learnedhow to make pots. I expect that was a long time ago, too. But mostof these Indians used to boil meat in a kettle made of hide, or thepaunch of a buffalo, filled with water. Then they'd heat stones inthe fire, and put them in the water, taking them out as they gotcool and putting in others, until the water boiled and the food wascooked."
"But," said Jack, "I should think when they cooked the hide orpaunch it would break, and let the water spill out."
"No," said Hugh. "It would of course, if you kept cooking longenough; but one of these kettles would only last to cook a singlemeal; you couldn't use it a second time, but it was all right forone cooking. I have seen a hide kettle used, and eaten from it."
Jack sat thinking, for awhile, and then he turned to Hugh and said:
"I tell you, Hugh, if all you know about Indians, and about thisWestern country were put in a book, it would make an awful big one,wouldn't it?"
"Well, I don't know, son," said Hugh, "maybe it might; but a manhas got to learn the life he's lived; if he doesn't, he won'tamount to nothing. I expect if all that you know about the East wasput in a book it would make quite a sizable one."
"Oh," said Jack, "that's nothing. The things I know don't amount toanything, and everybody else knows them a good deal better than Ido."
"Well, I tell you," said Hugh, "the things that are new and strangeto you seem kind o' wonderful, but they don't seem wonderful tome; but I remember one time you were telling me something aboutcatching fish down at the place called Great South Bay, and talkingabout seeing the vessels sailing on the ocean, and to me thatseemed mighty wonderful."
By this time the boat had left the landing-place, and the light wasgrowing dim. They turned and looked back, and there across the widebottom was moving toward the Post, a long string of people, men andwomen and children and dog travois, so that it looked almost likea moving camp. Hugh and Jack sat for a while longer on the decktalking, and then, as the mosquitoes got bad, they turned in.
The next afternoon the boat reached Fort Peck, then one of themost important Indian agencies on the Missouri River. It stoodon a narrow bench, a few log buildings surrounded by a stockade,and back of it the bluffs rose sharply, and were dotted withthe scaffolds of the dead. It seemed to Jack that there must behundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of these graves in sight.From the poles of some of them long streamers were blown out in thewind, which Hugh told him were offerings tied to the poles of thescaffolds by mourning relatives. But few living Indians were seenhere, and there were only three or four white men seen about thetrading post. They did not leave the boat, which soon pushed onagain.
"The Indians about here have been awful mean," said Hugh; "Lots ofthings were brought in here that the Sioux took from the Custerbattlefield. Somebody told me that Custer's gold watch was broughtin here by an Indian, who wanted to know how much it was worth:but so many questions were asked him about it that he just put thewatch in his sack and lit out, and has not been seen here since."
As the boat passed the mouth of the Musselshell early next morningHugh pointed shoreward, and said:
"Do you see that place over there where that creek comes in, son?"
"Why, of course I see it, Hugh," said Jack, "and the timber thatruns along it. What creek is it?"
"You ought to know," said Hugh, with a laugh; "you got scared in ita whole lot last summer."
"Why, Hugh, is that the Musselshell?" said Jack.
"That's what it is," said Hugh; "and seeing the mouth of the river,and them sticks there on the flat, reminds me of the big fightthat took place there some years back. I wonder if you ever heardabout it. I meant to tell you last summer, but somehow it slippedmy mind. It was there that Liver-Eating Johnson got his name. Theyused to say that he cut out the liver of an Indian that got killedin that fight and ate it. Of course he never did, but they tell thestory about him, and I rather think he was kind o' proud about itafter a little while, and liked the name.
"I think it was in 1869 that the fight took place, along in thespring.
"You know the steamboats always have trouble in coming up toBenton in the low water; and along about 1866, after the mines gotpaying, and when the fur trade was good, some men at Helena formeda company to make a road and start a freight line down to somepoint on the river that the boats could always get to. These mendidn't know much about the river, and they chose the mouth of theMusselshell for the point where their road, which began at Helena,should end.
"Now, I suppose if they'd raked the whole river with a fine-toothcomb they couldn't have found a poorer place for a town, nor apoorer country to travel through, than this one they pitched on.The place chosen for the town was that little neck of land betweenthe Musselshell and the Missouri. The soil is a bad-land clay,which in summer is an alkali desert, and in spring is a regularbog, in which a saddle-blanket would mire down. Then, all alongthe Musselshell was a favorite camping and hunting ground for theIndians, and in those days Indians were bad. Well, they made uptheir company, and started their town. There weren't many settlers,but a few people, mostly hunters and wood-choppers, stopped there;and of course, wherever there were a few people gathered together,there was sure to be a store and a few saloons.
"I think it was along in 1868 that a man came down there with afine train of mules. Likely he expected to get some freighting todo when the boats came up the river. The stock was turned out, andsome men were on guard, when a party of Sioux charged in amongthem, killed two of the men, and ran off every hoof of stock. Thething was done in a minute; and before the men could get out oftheir houses and tents the stock was gone, and the Indians alongwith it: all except one young fellow, who, just to show what hecould do, charged back and rode through the crowd, making fun ofthem as he went along. So far as anybody knew, not one Indian gothit.
"It was not very long after that that the Sioux came down andcharged into the Crow camp, and ran off eight hundred head ofhorses. Of course that made a big excitement. The Crows jumped ontheir horses an pursued and they had quite
a fight, and some of theIndians got killed.
"During the Spring of 1869, the Indians used to attack the townevery few days; a Crow squaw that was living there got shot throughthe body, and a white woman was wounded, knocked down, and scalped,but I reckon she's living yet. Anybody that went out any distancefrom the town was sure to be shot at and chased. It was a time fora man to travel 'round with his gun loaded, and in his hand all thetime. The Indians didn't do much of anything, but they kept thepeople scared up everlastingly. It got to be so, finally, that theIndians would charge down near the town, and then swing off and runaway, and pretty much all the men would run out and run after them,shooting as long as the Indians were in sight.
"One morning there were a couple of Crow women out a little wayfrom town, gathering sage brush for wood, and the Indians openedfire on them. The white men all rushed out and after the Indians,who numbered sixteen. They ran on foot over toward the Musselshell,and then up the bottom, not going very fast, and the white menwere gaining on them, and thinking that now they would forcethem to a regular fight; when suddenly, from a ravine on theMusselshell, a shot was fired, which killed a man named Leader.
"That stopped the whites right off, and they turned to run; and ifthe Indians had charged 'em then, I expect they'd have got everylast one of 'em. But Henry McDonald saw what would happen if theyran, and, bringing down his rifle, swore he'd shoot the first manwho went faster than a walk.
"They could see now that there was quite a body of Indians in theravine on the bank of the Musselshell, but they couldn't tell howmany. There was some little shooting between the two parties. Mostof the whites moved back to the settlement; but there were halfa dozen men who did not retreat; but getting under cover, withinthirty or forty yards of the Indians, held them there. They keptshooting, back and forth, and presently a man named Greenwood gotshot through the lungs, and had to be carried back. The other menstood their ground, and the Indians, knowing that they had to dowith good shots, did not dare to show their heads.
"After two or three hours of this sort of thing, it began to rain,a mighty lucky thing for the white men. They were all armed withHenry rifles, or needle-guns, while the Indians, for the most part,had bows and arrows, with some flintlock guns. They had strippedthemselves for war, and had no clothing with which they couldcover their gun-locks and bow-strings to keep them from gettingwet. After a little of this, the white men began to see thatthe Indians were practically disarmed, and began to think aboutcharging them; but when they raised up to look, they saw that therewas a big party of men there, and that the only way to get them,except in a hand to hand fight, was for some of the party to crossthe Musselshell, and get to a point where they could shoot into theravine, thus driving the Indians out and placing them between twofires. Three men started to do this.
"When the Indians saw what the white men were trying to do, theyran down to the mouth of the ravine and tried to shoot at them;but their strings were wet, and the arrows had no force and hardlyreached the men, and very few of their guns would go off. Thethree men got across the river, and went down to a point oppositethe ravine, and began to shoot at the Indians; but by this timeall the men in the settlement had collected together, about eighthundred yards behind the Indians, and seeing these three men onthe other side of the stream took them for Indians and began toshoot at them; so that the three white men who had crossed had toget away and re-cross the Musselshell. By this time half a dozenother men got around on the lower side of the Indians, and thenagain three men crossed the river and commenced to shoot up theravine. This was too much for the Indians: they jumped out oftheir hole and started to get away, and everybody was shooting atthem as hard as they could. The fire from the body of men near thetown still continued, and obliged the men who were doing the realfighting to keep more or less under cover. The Indians broke forthe Musselshell, crossing it where they could, and most of them gotaway; but thirteen were killed, and it was said that a good manymore died on the way to camp, and only one of the ninety and morewho were in the fight escaped without a wound. The next day afterthat, the white men found the place where the Indians had strippedfor the fight and left their things, and there over a hundred robesand two war bonnets and a whole lot of other stuff were found. Mostof it was sold, and the money given to Greenwood, who was wounded.Jim Wells and Henry McDonald, I heard, each got a war bonnet.
"The freight road was given up, and pretty much everybody left theplace,--except some traders who stopped there a little longer. ThenCarroll was started, up near the Little Rockies, and in a very muchbetter place, and that was the end of Musselshell City. It was atthis same place that Johnson claimed to have made for himself arazor strap from a strip of skin that he cut from an Indian's back:but Johnson was always a good man to tell stories, and you nevercould be quite sure when he was telling the truth and when he wasjoking.
"A few years ago there used to be lots of talk about that fight,and the people called it one of the biggest lickings that theIndians ever got in this part of the country."
Pushing along up the river, the boat passed beyond the Musselshell,and then up by Carroll, and the Little Rocky Mountain, and theBearspaw,--and at last one day, about noon, Fort Benton came insight.
For the last two hundred miles they had seen a good deal ofgame. Buffalo were almost always in sight on the bluffs, or inthe bottom; elk, frightened by the approach of the steamer, torethrough the willow points; deer, both black-tail and white-tail,were often seen, and on several occasions mountain sheep wereviewed--once in the bottom and at other times on the high bad-landbluffs. One of the herds was a large one, which Hugh said mustcontain seventy-five or a hundred animals.
As Benton was approached, Jack began to feel more and more excited.Here he hoped to meet Joe, who had been warned some months beforeby Mr. Sturgis that Hugh and Jack would be at Benton early in July:and Joe would have with him the horses, a lodge, and all theircamp equipage; so that, if nothing interfered to prevent, the nextmorning they could start out on their trip.