To the Forks of the Platte. 11th August.
Precisely at 1 35 in the morning we awoke, as we came to a halt at Cotton-wood Station. Cramped with a four days’ and four nights’ ride in the narrow van, we entered the foul tenement, threw ourselves upon the mattresses, averaging three to each, and ten in a small room, every door, window, and cranny being shut—after the fashion of these Western folks, who make up for a day in the open air by perspiring through the night in unventilated log huts—and, despite musquetoes, slept.
The morning brought with it no joy. We had arrived at the westernmost limit of the “gigantic Leicestershire” to which buffalo at this season extend, and could hope to see no trace of them between Cotton-wood Station and the Pacific. I can not, therefore, speak ex cathedrâ concerning this, the noblest “venerie” of the West: almost every one who has crossed the prairies, except myself, can. Captain Stansbury [1] will enlighten the sportsman upon the approved method of bryttling the beasts, and elucidate the mysteries of the “game-beef,”marrow-bone and depuis, tongue and tender-loin, bass and hump, hump-rib and liver, which latter, by-the-by, is not unfrequently eaten raw, with a sprinkling of gall,[2] by the white hunter emulating his wild rival, as does the European in Abyssinia. The Prairie Traveler has given, from experience, the latest observations concerning the best modes of hunting the animal.. All that remains to me, therefore, is to offer to the reader a few details collected from reliable sources, and which are not to be found in the two works above alluded to.
The bison (Bison Americanus) is trivially known as the Prairie Buffalo, to distinguish it from a different and a larger animal, the Buffalo of the Woods, which haunts the Rocky Mountains. The “Monarch of the Prairies,” the “most gigantic of the indigenous mammalia of America,” has, it is calculated, receded westward ten miles annually for the last 150 years. When America was discovered, the buffalo extended down to the Atlantic shore. Thirty years ago, bands grazed upon the banks of the Missouri River. The annual destruction is variously computed at from 200,000 to 800,000 head: the American Fur Company receive per annum about 70,000 robes, which are all cows; and of these not more than 5000 fall by the hands of white men. At present there are three well-known bands, which split up, at certain seasons, into herds of 2000 and 8000 each. The first family is on the headwaters of the Mississippi; the second haunts the vast crescent-shaped valley of the Yellow Stone; while the third occupies the prairie country between the Platte and the Arkansas. A fourth band, westward of the Rocky Mountains, is quite extinct. Fourteen to fifteen years ago, buffalo. was found in Utah Valley, and later still upon the Humboldt River: according to some, they emigrated northward, through Oregon and the lands of the Blackfeet. It is more probable, however, that they were killed off by the severe winter of 1845, their skulls being still found scattered in heaps, as if a sudden and general destruction had come upon the doomed tribe.
The buffalo is partially migratory in its habits: it appears to follow the snow, which preserves its food from destruction. Like the antelope of the Cape, when on the “trek,” the band may be reckoned by thousands. The grass, which takes its name from the animal, is plentiful in the valley of the Big Blue; it loves the streams of little creeks that have no bottom-land, and shelters itself under the sage. It is a small, moss-like gramen, with dark seed, and, when dry, it has been compared by travelers to twisted gray horsehair. Smaller herds travel in Indian file; their huge bodies, weighing 1500 lbs., appear, from afar, like piles erected to bridge the plain. After calving, the cows, like the African koodoo and other antelopes, herd separately from the males, and for the same reason, timidity and the cares of maternity. As in the case of the elephant and the hippopotamus, the oldsters are driven by the young ones, en charivarî, from the band, and a compulsory bachelorhood souring their temper, causes them to become “rogues.” The albino, or white buffalo, is exceedingly rare; even veteran hunters will confess never to have seen one. The same may be said of the glossy black accident called the “silk robe,” supposed by Western men to be a cross between the parent and the offspring. The buffalo calf has been tamed by the Flatheads and others: I have never, however, heard of its being utilized.
The Dakotahs and other Prairie tribes will degenerate, if not disappear, when the buffalo is “rubbed out.” There is a sympathy between them, and the beast flies not from the barbarian and his bow as it does before the face of the white man and his hot-mouthed weapon. The aborigines are unwilling to allow travelers, sportsmen, or explorers to pass through the country while they are hunting the buffalo; that is to say, preserving the game till their furs are ready for robes. At these times no one is permitted to kill any but stragglers, for fear of stampeding the band; the animal not only being timid, but also in the habit of hurrying away cattle and stock, which often are thus irretrievably lost. In due season the savages surround one section, and destroy it, the others remaining unalarmedly grazing within a few miles of the scene of slaughter. If another tribe interferes, it is a casus belli, death being the punishment for poaching. The white man, whose careless style of battue is notorious, will be liable to the same penalty, or, that failing, to be plundered by even “good Indians;” and I have heard of an English gentleman who, for persisting in the obnoxious practice, was very properly threatened with prosecution by the government agent.
What the cocoanut is to the East Indian, and the plantain and the calabash to various tribes of Africans, such is the “bos” to the carnivorous son of America. No part of it is allowed to waste. The horns and hoofs make glue for various purposes, especially for feathering arrows; the brains and part of the bowels are used for curing skins; the hide clothes the tribes from head to foot; the calfskins form their apishamores, or saddle-blankets; the sinews make their bow-strings, thread, and finer cord; every part of the flesh, including the foetus and placenta, is used for food. The surplus hides are reserved for market. They are prepared by the squaws, who, curious to say, will not touch a bear-skin till the age of maternity has passed; and they prefer the spoils of the cow, as being softer than those of the bull. The skin, after being trimmed with an iron or bone scraper — this is not done in the case of the “parfléche,” or thick sole-leather—and softened with brain or marrow, is worked till thoroughly pliable with the hands. The fumigation, which gives the finishing touch, is confined to buckskins intended for garments. When the hair is removed, the hides supply the place of canvas, which they resemble in whiteness and facility of folding. Dressed. With the hair, they are used, as their name denotes, for clothing; they serve also for rugs and bedding. In the prairies, the price ranges from $1 to $1 50 in kind; in the Eastern States, from $5 to S10. The fancy specimens, painted inside, decorated with eyes, and otherwise adorned with split porcupine quills dyed a gamboge-yellow, fetch from $8 to $35. A “buffalo” (subaudi robe) was shown to me, painted with curious figures, which, according to my Canadian informant, were a kind of hieroglyph or aide-mé-moire, even ruder than the Mexican picture-writing.
The Indians generally hunt the buffalo with arrows. They are so expert in riding that they will, at full speed, draw the missile from the victim’s flank before it falls. I have met but one officer, Captain Heth, of the 10th Regiment, who ever acquired the art. The Indian hog-spear has been used to advantage. Our predecessors in Eastern conquest have killed with it the tiger and nylgau; there is, therefore, no reason why it might not be efficiently applied to the buffalo. Like the Bos Caffre, the bison is dull, surly, and stupid, as well as timid and wary ; it requires hard riding, with the chance of a collar-bone broken by the horse falling into a, prairie-dog’s home; and when headed or tired an old male rarely fails to charge.
The flies chasing away the musquetoes—even as Aurora routs the lingering shades of night—having sounded our reveillée at Cotton-wood Station, we proceeded by means of an “eye-opener,” which even the abstemious judge could not decline, and the use of the “skillet,” to prepare for a breakfast composed of various abominations, especially cakes of flour and grease, molasses and dirt, disposed in pretty equal parts. After paying the usual 50 cents, we started in the high wind and dust, with a heavy storm brewing in the north, along the desert valley of the dark, silent Platte, which here spread out in broad basins and lagoons, picturesquely garnished with broad-leafed dock and beds of préle, flags and water-rushes, in which, however, we saw nothing but traces of Monsieur Maringouin. On our left was a line of subconical buttes, red, sandy-clay pyramids, semi-detached from the wall of the rock behind them, with smooth flat faces fronting the river, toward which they slope at the natural angle of 45°. The land around, dry and sandy, bore no traces of rain; a high wind blew, and the thermometer stood at 78° (F.), which was by no means uncomfortably warm. Passing Junction-House Ranch and Frémont Slough—whisky-shops both—we halted for “ dinner,” about 11 A.M., at Frémont Springs, so called from an excellent little water behind the station. The building is of a style pecullar to the South, especially Florida—two huts connected by a roofwork of thatched timber, which acts as the best and coolest of verandas. The station-keeper, who receives from the proprietors of the line $80 per month, had been there only three weeks; and his wife, a comely young person, uncommonly civil and smiling for a “lady,” supplied us with the luxuries of pigeons, onions, and light bread, and declared her intention of establishing a poultry-yard.
An excellent train of mules carried us along a smooth road at a slapping pace, over another natural garden even more flowery than that passed on the last day’s march. There were beds of lupins, a brillant pink and blue predominating, the green plant locally known as “Lamb’s Quarters” (Chenopodium album); the streptanthis; the milk-weed, with its small white blossoms; the anemone; the wild flax, with its pretty blue flowers, and growths which appeared to be clematis, chamomile, and digitalis. Distant black dots—dwarf cedars, which are yearly diminishing—lined the bank of the Platte and the long line of River Island; they elicited invidious comparisons from the Pennsylvanians of the party. We halted at Half-way House, near O’Fallon’s Bluffs, at the quarters of Mr. M--- , a compagnon de voyage, who had now reached his home of twenty years, and therefore insisted upon “standing drinks.” The business is worth $16,000 per annum; the contents of the store somewhat like a Parsee’s shop in Western India—every thing from a needle to a bottle of Champagne. A sign-board informed us that we were now distant 400 miles from St. Jo, 120 from Fort Kearney, 68 from the upper, and 40 from the lower crossing of the Platte. As we advanced the valley narrowed, the stream shrank, the vegetation dwindled, the river islands, were bared of timber, and the only fuel became buffalo chip and last year’s artemisia. This hideous growth, which is to weary our eyes as far as central valleys of the Sierra Nevada, will require a few words of notice. .
The artemisia, absinthe, or wild sage differs much from the panacea concerning which the Salernitan school rhymed:
“Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto.”
Yet it fills the air with a smell that caricatures the odor of the garden-plant, causing the traveler to look round in astonishment; and when used for cooking it taints the food with a taste between camphor and turpentine. It is of two kinds. The smaller or white species (A. filifolia) rarely grows higher than a foot. Its fetor is less rank, and at times of scarcity it forms tolerable fodder for animals. The Western men have made of it, as of the “red root,” a tea, which must be pronounced decidedly inferior to corn coffee. The Indians smoke it, but they are not particular about what they inhale: like that perverse a Ludlow, who smoked the bell-ropes rather than not smoke at all, or like school-boys who break themselves in upon ratan, they use even the larger sage as well as a variety of other graveolent growths. The second kind (A. tridentata) is to the family of shrubs what the prairie cedar is to the trees—a gnarled, crooked, rough-barked deformity. It has no pretensions to beauty except in earliest youth, and in the dewy hours when the breeze turns up its leaves that glitter like silver in the sun; and its constant presence in the worst and most desert tracts teaches one to regard it, like the mangrove in Asia and Africa, with aversion. In size it greatly varies; in some places it is but little larger than the white species; near the Red Buttes its woody stem often attains the height of a man and the thickness of his waist. As many as fifty rings have been counted in one wood, which, according to the normal calculation, would bring its age up to half a century. After its first year, stock will eat it only when threatened with starvation. It has, however, its use; the traveler, despite its ugliness, hails the appearance of its stiff, wiry clumps at the evening halt: it is easily uprooted, and by virtue of its essential oil it makes a hot and lasting fire, and ashes over. According to Colonel Frémont, “it has a small fly accompanying it through every change of elevation and latitude.” The same eminent authority also suggests that the respiration of air so highly impregnated with aromatic plants may partly account for the favorable effect of the climate upon consumption. :
At 5 P.M., as the heat began to mitigate, we arrived at Alkali Lake Station, and discovered some “exiles from Erin,” who supplied us with antelope meat and the unusual luxury of ice taken from the Platte. We attempted to bathe in the river, but found it flowing liquid mire. The Alkali Lake was out of sight; the driver, however, consoled me with the reflection that I should “glimpse” alkali lakes till I was sick of them.
Yesterday and to-day we have been in a line of Indian “removes.” The wild people were shifting their quarters for grass; when it becomes a little colder they will seek some winter abode on the banks of a stream which supplies fuel and where they can find meat, so that with warmth and food, song and chat—they are fond of talking nonsense as African negroes—and smoke and sleep, they can while away the dull and dreary winter. Before describing the scene, which might almost serve for a picture of Bedouin or gipsy life—so similar are the customs of all savages —I have something to say about the Red Man.
This is a country of misnomers. America should not, according to the school-books, have been named America, consequently the Americans should not be called Americans. A geographical error, pardonable in the fifteenth century, dubbed the old tenants of these lands Indians,[3] but why we should still call them the Red Men can not be conceived. I have now seen them in the north, south, east, and west of the United States, yet never, except under the influence of ochre or vermilion, have I seen the Red Man red. The real color of the skin, as may be seen under the leggins, varies from a dead pale olive to a dark dingy brown. The parts exposed to the sun are slightly burnished, as in a Tartar or an Affghan after a summer march. Between the two extremes above indicated there are, however, a thousand shades of color, and often the skin has been so long grimed in with pigment, grease, and dirt that it suggests a brick-dust tinge which a little soap or soda would readily remove. Indeed, the color and the complexion, combined with the lank hair, scant beard, and similar peculiarities, renders it impossible to see this people for the first time without the strongest impression that they are of that Turanian breed which in prehistoric ages passed down from above the Himalayas as far south as Cape Comorin.
Another mistake touching the Indian is the present opinion concerning him and his ancestors. He now suffers in public esteem from the reaction following the high-flown descriptions of Cooper and the herd of minor romancers who could not but make their heroes heroes. Moreover, men acquainted only with the degenerate Pawnees or Diggers extend their evil opinions to the noble tribes now extinct—the Iroquois and Algonquins, for instance, whose remnants, the Delawares and Ojibwas, justify the high opinion of the first settlers. The exploits of King Philip, Pontiac, Gurister Sego, Tecumseh, Keokuk, Iatan, Captain J. Brant, Black Hawk, Red Jacket, Osceola, and Billy Bowlegs, are rapidly fading away from memory, while the failures of such men as Little Thunder, and those like him, stand prominently forth in modern days. Besides the injustice to the manes and memories of the dead, this depreciation of the Indians tends to serious practical evils. Those who see the savage lying drunk about stations, or eaten up with disease, expect to beat him out of the field by merely showing their faces; they fail, and pay the penalty with their lives—an event which occurs every year in some parts of America.
The remove of the village presented an interesting sight—an animated shifting scene of bucks and braves, squaws and pappooses, ponies dwarfed by bad breeding and hard living, dogs and puppies struggling over the plains westward. In front, singly or in pairs, rode the men, not gracefully, not according to the rules of Mexican manége, but like the Abyssinian eunuch, as if born upon and bred to become part of the animal. Some went barebacked ; others rode, like the ancient chiefs of the Western Islands, upon a saddle-tree, stirrupless, or provided with hollow blocks of wood: in some cases the saddle was adorned with bead hangings, and in all a piece of buffalo hide with the hair on was attached beneath to prevent chafing. The cruel ring-bit of the Arabs is not unknown. A few had iron curbs, probably stolen. For the most part they managed their nags with a hide thong lashed round the lower jaw and attached to the neck. A whip, of various sizes and shapes, sometimes a round and tattooed ferule, more often a handle like a butcher’s tally-stick, flat, notched, one foot long, and provided with two or three thongs, hung at the wrist. Their nags were not shod with parfléche, as among the horse-Indians of the South. Their long, lank, thick, brownish-black hair, ruddy from the effects of weather, was worn parted in the middle, and depended from the temples confined with a long twist of otter or beaver’s skin in two queues, or pig-tails, reaching to the breast: from the poll, and distinct from the remainder of the hair, streamed the scalp-lock. This style of hair-dressing, doubtless, aids in giving to the coronal region that appearance of depression which characterizes the North American Indians as a race of ‘ Flatheads,” and which, probably being considered a beauty, led to the artificial deformities of the Peruvian and the Aztec. The parting in men, as well as in women, was generally colored with vermilion, and plates of brass or tin, with beveled edges, varying in size from a shilling to half a crown, were inserted into the front hair. The scalp-lock—in fops the side-locks also—was decorated with tin or silver plates, often twelve in number, beginning from the head and gradually diminishing in size as they approached the heels; a few had eagle’s, hawk’s, and crow’s feathers stuck in the hair, and sometimes, grotesquely enough, crownless Kossuth hats, felt broadbrims, or old military casquettes, surmounted all this finery. Their scanty beard was removed; they compare the bushy-faced European to a dog running away with a squirrel in its mouth. In their ears were rings of beads, with pendants of tin plates or mother of pearl, or huge circles of brass wire not unlike a Hindoo tailor’s; and their fore-arms, wrists, and fingers were, after an African fashion, adorned with the same metals, which the savage ever prefers to gold or silver. Their other decorations were cravats of white or white and blue, oval beads, and necklaces of plates like those worn in the hair. The body dress wasa tight-sleeved waistcoat of dark drugget, over an American cotton shirt; others wore tattered flannels, and the middle was wrapped round with a common blanket, presented by the government agent—scarlet and blue being the colors preferred, white rare: a better stuff is the coarse broadcloth manufactured for the Indian market in the United States. The leggins were a pair of pantaloons without the body part—in their palmy days the Indians laughed to scorn their future conquerors for tightening the hips so as to impede activity—looped up at both haunches with straps to a leathern girdle, and all wore the breech-cloth, which is the common Hindoo languti or T-bandage. The cut of the leggins 1s a parallelogram, a little too short and much too broad for the limb; it is sewn so as to fit tight, and the projecting edges, for which the light-colored list or bordering is usually preserved, answers the effect of a military stripe. When buckskin leggins are made the outside edges are fringed, producing that feathered appearance which distinguishes in our pictures the nether limbs of the Indian brave. The garb ends with moccasins,[4] the American brogues, which are made in two ways. The simplest are of one piece, a cylinder of skin cut from above and below the hock of some large animal—moose, elk, or buffalo—and drawn on before shrinking, the joint forming the heel, while the smaller end is sewn together for a toe. This rough contrivance is little used but as a pis aller. The other kind is made of tanned hide in two pieces—a sole and an upper leather, sewn together at the junction; the last is a bit of board rounded off at the end. They are open over the instep, where also they can be laced or tied, and they fit as closely as the Egyptian mizz or under-slipper, which they greatly resemble. They are worn by officers in the Far West as the expatriated Anglo-Indian adopts the “Juti.” The greatest inconvenience to the novice is the want of heel; moreover, they render the feet uncomfortably tender, and, unless soled with parfléche or thick leather, they are scant defense against stony ground; during dry weather they will last fairly, but they become, after a single wetting, even worse than Bombay-made Wellingtons. A common pair will cost $2; when handsomely embroidered with bead-work by the squaws they rise to $15.
The braves were armed with small tomahawks or iron hatchets, which they carried with the powder-horn, in the belt, on the right side, while the long tobacco-pouch of antelope skin hung by the left. Over their shoulders were leather targes, bows and arrows, and some few had rifles; both weapons were defended from damp in deer-skin cases, and quivers with the inevitable bead-work, and the fringes which every savage seems to love. These articles reminded me of those in use among the Bedouins of El Hejaz. Their nags were lean and ungroomed; they treat them as cruelly as do the Somal; yet nothing—short of whisky—can persuade the Indian warrior, like the man of Nejd, to part with a favorite steed. It is his all in all, his means of livelihood, his profession, his pride; he is an excellent judge of horse-flesh, though ignoring the mule and ass; and if he offers an animal for which he has once refused to trade, it is for the reason that an Oriental takes to market an adult slave—it has become useless. Like the Arab, he considers it dishonorable to sell a horse; he gives it to you, expecting a large present, and if disappointed he goes away grumbling that you have “swallowed” his property. He is fond of short races—spurts they are called—as we had occasion to see: there is nothing novel nor interesting in the American as there is in the Arabian hippology; the former learned all its arts from Europeans, the latter taught them.
Behind the warriors and braves followed the baggage of the village. The lodge poles, in bundles of four and five, had been lashed to pads or pack-saddles, girthed tight to the ponies’ backs, the other ends being allowed to trail along the ground like the shafts of a truck; the sign easily denotes the course of travel. The wolf-like dogs were also harnessed in the same way; more lupine than canine, they are ready when hungry to attack man or mule; and, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, they not a little resemble the Indian pariah dog. Their equipments, however, were of course on a diminutive scale; a little pad girthed round the barrel, with a breastplate to keep it in place, enabled them to drag two short light lodge poles tied together at the smaller extremity. One carried only a hawk on its back—yet falconry has never, I believe, been practiced by the Indian. Behind the ponies the poles were connected by cross-sticks, upon which were lashed the lodge covers, the buffalo robes, and other bulkier articles. Some had strong frames of withes or willow basket-work, two branches being bent into an oval, garnished below with a net-work of hide thongs for a seat, covered with a light wicker canopy, and opening, like a cage, only on one side; a blanket or a buffalo robe defends the inmate from sun and rain. These are the litters for the squaws when weary, the children, and the puppies, which are part of the family till used for feasts. It might be supposed to be a rough conveyance; the elasticity of the poles, however, alleviates much of that inconvenience. A very ancient man, wrinkled as a last year’s walnut, and apparently crippled by old wounds, was carried, probably by his great-grandsons, in a rude sedan. The vehicle was composed of two pliable poles, about ten feet long, separated by three cross-bars twenty inches or so apart; a blanket had been secured to the foremost and hindermost, and under the centre-bit lay Senex secured against falling out. In this way the Indians often bear the wounded back to their villages; apparently they have never thought of a horse-litter, which might be made with equal facility, and would certainly save work.
While the rich squaws rode, the poorer followed their pack-horses on foot, eying the more fortunate as the mercer’s wife regards what she terms the “carriage lady.” The women’s dress not a little resembles their lords’; the unaccustomed eye often hesitates between the sexes. In the fair, however, the waistcoat is absent, the wide-sleeved shift extends below the knees, and the leggins are of somewhat different cut. All wore coarse shawls, or white, blue, and scarlet cloth-blankets round their bodies. Upon the Upper Platte we afterward saw them dressed in cotton gowns, after a semi-civilized fashion, and with bowie-knives by their sides. The grandmothers were fearful to look upon—horrid excrescences of nature, teaching proud man a lesson of humility, and a memento of his neighbor in creation, the “humble ape”—it is only civilization that can save the aged woman from resembling the gorilla. The middle-aged matrons were homely bodies, broad and squat like the African dame after she has become mére de famille; their hands and feet were notably larger from work than those of the men, and the burdens upon their backs caused them to stoop painfully. The young squaws—pity it is that all our household Indian words, pappoose, for instance, tomahawk, wigwam, and powwow, should have been naturalized out of the Abenaki and other harsh dialects of New England—deserved a more euphonious appellation. The belle savage of the party had large and languishing eyes and dentists’ teeth that glittered, with sleek, long black hair like the ears of a Blenheim spaniel, justifying a natural instinct to stroke or pat it, drawn straight over a low, broad, Quadroon-like brow. Her figure had none of the fragility which distinguishes the higher race, who are apparently too delicate for human nature’s daily food — porcelain, in fact, when pottery is wanted; nor had she the square corpulency which appears in the negro woman after marriage. Her ears and neck were laden with tinsel ornaments, brass-wire rings adorned her wrists and fine arms, a bead-work sash encircled her waist, and scarlet leggins, fringed and tasseled, ended in equally costly moccasins. When addressed by the driver in some terms to me unintelligible, she replied with a soft clear laugh—the principal charm of the Indian, as of the smooth-throated African woman—at the same time showing him the palm of her right hand as though it had been a looking-glass. The gesture would have had a peculiar significance in Sindh; here, however, I afterward learned, it simply conveys a refusal. The maidens of the tribe, or those under six, were charming little creatures, with the wildest and most piquant expression, and the prettiest doll-like features imaginable; the young coquettes already conferred their smiles as if they had been of any earthly value. ‘The boys once more reminded me of the East; they had black beady eyes, like snakes, and the wide mouths of young caymans. Their only dress, when they were not in “birth-day suit,” was the Indian languti. None of the braves carried scalps, finger-bones, or notches on the lance, which serve like certain marks on saw-handled pistols farther east, nor had any man lost a limb. They followed us for many a mile, peering into the hinder part of our traveling wigwam, and ejaculating “How! How!” the normal salutation. It is supposed to mean “good,” and the Western man, when he drinks to your health, says “ Here, how!” and expects a return in kind. The politeness of the savages did not throw us off our guard; the Dakotah of these regions are expert and daring kleptomaniacs; they only laughed, however, a little knowingly as we raised the rear curtain, and they left us after begging pertinaciously—bakhshish is an institution here as on the banks of the Nile—for tobacco, gunpowder, ball, copper caps, lucifers, and what not. The women, except the pretty party, looked, methought, somewhat scowlingly, but one can hardly expect a smiling countenance from the human biped trudging ten or twenty miles under a load fit for a mule. A great contrast with these Indians was a train of “Pike’s Peakers,” who, to judge from their grim looks, were returning disappointed from the new gold diggings. I think that if obliged to meet one of the two troops by moonlight alone, my choice would have fallen upon “messieurs les sauvages.”
At 6 P.M. we resumed our route, with a good but fidgety train, up the Dark Valley, where musquetoes and sultry heat combined to worry us. Slowly traveling and dozing the while, we arrived about 9 15 P.M. at Diamond Springs, a bright little water much frequented by the “lightning-bug” and the big-eyed “ Devil’s darning-needle,”[5] where we found whisky and its usual accompaniment, soldiers. The host related an event which he said had taken place but a few days before. An old mountaineer, who had married two squaws, was drinking with certain Cheyennes, a tribe famous for ferocity and hostility to the whites. The discourse turning upon topics stoical, he was asked by his wild boon companions if he feared death. The answer was characteristic: “You may kill me if you like!” Equally characteristic was their acknowledgment; they hacked him to pieces, and threw the corpse under a bank. In these regions the opposite races regard each other as wild beasts; the white will shoot an Indian as he would a coyote. He expects to go under whenever the “all-fired, red-bellied varmints” —I speak, oh reader, Occidentally—get the upper hand, and vice versâ.
The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40° 05’ 05”, and W. long.(G.) 101° 21’ 24”. The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the Iatans, whom the Spaniards term Comanches,[6] averages 600 yards, about 100 less than its rival in breadth, and, according to the prairie people, affords the best drinking. Hunters often ford the river by the Lower Crossing, twenty-eight miles above the bifurcation. Those with heavily-loaded wagons prefer this route, as by it they avoid the deep loose sands on the way to the Upper Crossing. The mail-coach must endure the four miles of difficulty, as the road to Denver City branches off from the western ford.
At 10 P.M, having “caught up” the mules, we left Diamond Springs, and ran along the shallow river which lay like a thin sheet of shimmer broken by clumps and islets that simulated, under the imperfect light of the stars, houses and towns, hulks and ships, wharves and esplanades. On the banks large bare spots, white with salt, glistened through the glooms; the land became so heavy that our fagged beasts groaned; and the descents, water-cuts, and angles were so abrupt that holding on constituted a fair gymnastic exercise. The air was clear and fine. My companions snored while I remained awake enjoying a lovely aurora, and, Epicurean-like, reserving sleep for the Sybaritic apparatus, which, according to report, awaited us at the grand établissement of the Upper Crossing of La Grande Platte.
This was our fifth night in the mail-wagon. I could not but meditate upon the difference between travel in the pure prairie air, despite an occasional “chill,” and the perspiring miseries of an East Indian dawk, or of a trudge in the miasmatic and pestilential regions of Central Africa. Much may be endured when, as was ever the case, the highest temperature in the shade does not exceed 98° F.
[1] Exploration and Survey, etc., chap. ix.
[2] ‘Prairie bitters”—made of a pint of water and a quarter ‘of a gill of buffalo gall—are considered an elixir vitæ by old voyageurs.
[3] Columbus and Vespucius both died in the conviction that they had only discovered portions of Asia. Indeed, as late as 1533, the astronomer Schéner maintained that Mexico was the Quinsai of Marco Polo. The early navigators called the aborigines of the New World ‘Indians,” believing that they inhabited the eastern portion of “India,” a term then applied to the extremity of Oriental Asia. Until the present century the Spaniards applied the names India and Indies to their possessions in America.
[4] This Algonquin word is written moccasson or mocasin, and is pronounced moksin.
[5] The first is the firefly, the second is the dragon-fly, called in country parts of England ‘the Devil’s needle.”
[6] The Kaumainsh (Comanche), a warlike and independent race, who, with the Apaches, have long been the bane of New Spain, were in the beginning of this century entirely erratic, without any kind of cultivation, subsisting, in fact, wholly by the chase and plunder. They were then bounded westward by New Mexico, where they have laid waste many a thriving settlement; eastward by the Pawnees and Osages; northward by the Utahs, Kiowas, and Shoshonees; and southward by the nations on the Lower Red River.