Wednesday, July 31.—Sunrise. Court House Rock, Chimney Rock, and Scott’s Bluffs, in sight. At noon passed through Scott’s Bluff’s pass., 580 miles from St. Joseph. This was the first high ground, since entering upon the plains. All was vast, prairie, until we reached Fort Kearney. Soon afterwards, we struck the barren region, and thenceforward we had a level expanse covered with sage brush, and that was the character of the growth until we arrived here, the plains being more or less elevated, or broken, but in other respects preserving the same characteristics. After we crossed the South Platte we found a great deal of cactus. When we crossed Scotts Bluff’s we had been traveling in sight of the North Platte river all day. In the afternoon we found alkali water in the road, giving it a soapy appearance, and the ground in many places appearing as if whitewashed. About 6 P. M., crossed the range of Sand hills which had been stretching along our left in sight, since Sunday. We crossed this long low range near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and massacre in 1856, wherein Babbitt alone was saved, though left for dead. The whole party was killed, including some passengers. There was some treasure in the coach, which the Indians got. (Orion's Notes)
We rattled through Scott’s Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali water in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and a thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places the ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkali water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some other people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it isn’t a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to bench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche!"
At 8 A.M., after breaking our fast upon a tough antelope steak, and dawdling while the herdsman was riding wildly about in search of his runaway mules—an operation now to become of daily occurrence—we dashed over the Sandy Creek with an élan calculated to make timid passengers look “skeery,” and began to finish the rolling divide between the two forks. We crossed several arroyos and “criks” heading in the line of clay highlands to our left, a dwarf sierra which stretches from the northern to the southern branch of the Platte. The principal are Omaha Creek, more generally known as “Little Punkin,” and Lawrence Fork.
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After twelve miles' drive we fronted the Court-house, the remarkable portal of a new region, and this new region teeming with wonders will now extend about 100 miles. It is the mauvaises terres, or Bad lands, a tract about 60 miles wide and 150 long, stretching in a direction from the northeast to the southwest, or from the Mankizitah (White-Earth) River, over the Niobrara (Eau qui court) and Loup Fork to the south banks of the Platte: its eastern límit is the mouth of the Keya Paha. The term is generally applied by the trader to any section of the prairie country where the roads are difficult, and by dint of an ill name the Bad lands have come to be spoken of as a Golgotha, white with the bones of man and beast. American travelers, on the contrary, declare that near parts of the White River “some as beautiful valleys are to be found as any where in the Far West,” and that many places “abound in the most lovely and varied forms in endless variety, giving the most striking and pleasing effects of light and shade.”
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The Court-house, which had lately suffered from heavy rain, resembled any thing more than a court-house; that it did so in former days we may gather from the tales of many travelers, old Canadian voyageurs, who unanimously accounted it a fit place for Indian spooks, ghosts, and hobgoblins to meet in pow-wow, and to "count their coups” delivered in the flesh. The Court-house lies about eight miles from the river, and three from the road; in circumference it may be half a mile, and in height 300 feet; it is, however, gradually degrading, and the rains and snows of not many years will lay it level with the ground.
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Shortly after “ liquoring up" and shaking hands, we found ourselves once more in the valley of the Platte, where a lively green relieved eyes which still retained retina-pictures of the barren, Sindh-like divide. The road, as usual, along the river-side, was rough and broken, and puffs of Simum raised the sand and dust in ponderous clouds. At 12:30 P.M., we nooned for an hour at a little hovel called a ranch, with the normal corral; and I took occasion to sketch the far-famed Chimney Rock.
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After a frugal dinner of biscuit and cheese we remounted and pursued our way through airy fire, which presently changed from our usual pest — a light dust-laden breeze — into a Punjaubian dust-storm, up the valley of the Platte. We passed a ranch called “Robidoux' Fort," from the well-known Indian trader of that name;* it is now occupied by a Canadian or a French Creole, who, as usual with his race in these regions, has taken to himself a wife in the shape of a Sioux squaw, and has garnished his quiv.er with a multitude of whitey-reds. [I have not been able to identify Robidoux' Fort in this location. Burton may be referring to Ficklin's Springs]
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“Scott's Bluffs," situated 285 miles from Fort Kearney and 51 from Fort Laramie, was the last of the great marl formations which we saw on this line, and was of all by far the most curious. In the dull uniformity of the prairies, it is a striking and attractive object, far excelling the castled crag of Drachenfels or any of the beauties of romantic Rhine.
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The whole affair is a spur springing from the main range, and closing upon the Platte so as to leave no room for a road.
After gratifying our curiosity we resumed our way. The route lay between the right-hand fortress and the outwork, through a degraded bed of softer marl, once doubtless part of the range. The sharp, sudden torrents which pour from the heights on both sides, and the draughty winds—Scott's Bluffs are the permanent head-quarters of hurricanes—have cut up the ground into a labyrinth of jagged gulches steeply walled in.
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After galloping down a long slope of twelve miles, with ridgelets of sand and gravel somewhat raised above the bottom, which they cross on their way to the river, we found ourselves, at 5 30 P.M., once more in the valley of the Platte.
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Presently we dashed over the Little Kiowa Creek, forded the Horse Creek, and, enveloped in a cloud of villainous musquetoes, entered at 8 30 P.M. the station in which we were to pass the night. It was tenanted by one Reynal, a French Creole--the son of an old soldier of the Grand Armée, who had settled at St. Louis, a companionable man, but an extortionate: he charged us a florin for every “drink" of his well-watered whisky.
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The day had been fatiguing, and our eyes ached with the wind and dust. We lost no time in spreading on the floor the buffalo robes borrowed from the house, and in defying the smaller tenants of the ranch. Our host, M. Reynal, was a study, but we deferred the lesson till the next morning.
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Our breakfast was prepared in the usual prairie style. First the coffee—three parts burnt beans, which had been duly ground to a fine powder and exposed to the air, lest the aroma should prove too strong for us—was placed on the stove to simmer till every noxious principle was duly extracted from it. Then the rusty bacon, cut into thick slices, was thrown into the fry-pan: here the gridiron is unknown, and if known would be little appreciated, because it wastes the “drippings," which form with the staff of life a luxurious sop. Thirdly, antelope steak, cut off a corpse suspended for the benefit of flies outside, was placed to stew within influence of the bacon's aroma. Lastly came the bread, which of course should have been “cooked” first. The meal is kneaded with water and a pinch of salt; the raising is done by means of a little sour milk, or more generally by the deleterious yeast-powders of the trade. The carbonic acid gas evolved by the addition of water must be corrected, and the dough must be expanded by saleratus or prepared carbonate of soda or alkali, and other vile stuff, which communicates to the food the green-yellow tinge, and suggests many of the properties of poison. A hundred-fold better, the unpretending chapati, flapjack, scone, or, as the Mexicans prettily called it, “ tortilla!" The dough, after being sufficiently manipulated upon a long, narrow, smooth board, is divided into “biscuits” and “dough-nuts,'* and finally it is placed to be half cooked under the immediate influence of the rusty bacon and graveolent antelope. “Uncle Sam's stove," be it said with every reverence for the honored name it bears, is a triumph of convenience, cheapness, unwholesomeness, and nastiness—excuse the word, nice reader. This travelers' bane has exterminated the spit and gridiron, and makes every thing taste like its neighbor: by virtue of it, mutton borrows the flavor of salmon trout, tomatoes resolve themselves into greens. I shall lose my temper if the subject is not dropped.
We set out at 6 A.M. over a sandy bottom, from which the musquetoes rose in swarms.
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At 10 20 A.M. we halted to change mules at Badeau's Ranch, or, as it is more grandiloquently called, “Laramie City." The "city," like many a Western "town,” still appertains to the category of things about to be; it is at present represented by a single large “store,” with out-houses full of small half-breeds. The principal articles of traffic are liquors and groceries for the whites, and ornaments for the Indians, which are bartered for stock (i. e., animals) and peltries. The prices asked for the skins were from $1–$1 30 for a fox or a coyote, $3 for wolf, bear, or deer, $6—$7 for an elk, $5 for a common buffalo, and from $8 to $35 for the same painted, pictographed, and embroidered. Some of the party purchased moccasins, for which they paid $1—$2; the best articles are made by the Snakes, and when embroidered by white women rise as high as $25. I bought, for an old friend who is insane upon the subject of pipes, one of the fine marble-like sandstone bowls brought from the celebrated Côteau (slope) des Prairies, at the head of Sioux River
“On the mountains of the Prairie,
On the Great Red Pipe-stone Quarry."
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Having finished our emplettes at M. Badeau’s, we set out at 11 30 P.M. over a barren and reeking bit of sandy soil. Close to the station, and a little to the right of the road, we passed the barrow which contains the remains of Lieutenant Grattan and his thirty men. A young second lieutenant of Irish origin and fiery temper, he was marching westward with an interpreter, a small body of men, and two howitzers, when a dispute arose, it is said, about a cow, between his party and the Brûlés or Burnt-Thigh Indians. The latter were encamped in a village of 450 to 500 lodges, which, reckoning five to each, gives a total of 2200 to 2500 souls. A fight took place; the whites imprudently discharged both their cannon, overshooting the tents of the enemy; their muskets, however, did more execution, killing Matriya, “the Scattering Bear,” who had been made chief of all the Sioux by Colonel Mitchell of the Indian Bureau. The savages, seeing the fall of Ursa Major, set to in real earnest; about 1200 charged the soldiers before they could reload; the little detachment broke, and not a man survived to tell the tale. The whites in the neighborhood narrowly preserved their scalps—M.Badeau owned that he owed his to his Sioux squaw—and among other acts of violence was the murder and highway robbery which has already been recounted. Both these events occurred in 1854. As has been said, in 1855, General W.S. Harney, who, whatever may be his faults as a diplomatist, is the most dreaded ‘‘Minahaska’”* in the Indian country, punished the Brûlés severely at Ash Hollow. They were led by their chosen chief Little Thunder, who, not liking the prospect, wanted to palaver; the general replied by a charge, which, as usual, scattered the “chivalry of the prairies’ to the four winds. “Tittle Thunder” was solemnly deposed, and Mato Chigukesa, “Bear’s Rib,” was ordered to reign in his stead; moreover, in 1856, a treaty was concluded, giving to whites, among other things, the privilege of making roads along the Platte and White Earth Rivers (Mankisita Wakpa—Smoking-earth Water) to Forts Pierre and Laramie, and to pass up and down the Missouri in boats. Since that time, with the exception of plundering an Eglish sportsman, Sir G—— G , opposing Lieutenant Warren’s expedition to the Black Hills, and slaughtering a few traders and obscure travelers, the Brûlés have behaved tolerably to their paleface rivals….
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As we advanced the land became more barren; it sadly wanted rain : it suffers from drought almost every year, and what vegetable matter the soil will produce the grasshopper will devour. Dead cattle cumbered the way-side; the flesh had disappeared; the bones were scattered over the ground; but the skins, mummified, as it were, by the dry heat, lay life-like and shapeless, as in the Libyan Desert, upon the ground. This phenomenon will last till we enter the humid regions between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Ocean, and men tell wonderful tales of the time during which meat can be kept. The road was a succession of steep ascents and jumps down sandy ground. A Sioux “buck," mounted upon a neat nag, and wrapped up, despite sun and glare, as if it had been the depth of winter, passed us, sedulously averting his eyes. The driver declared that he recognized the horse, and grumbled certain Western facetiæ concerning “hearty-chokes and caper sauce.”
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At 12 15 P.M., crossing Laramie's Fork, a fine clear stream about forty yards broad, we reached Fort Laramie — another "fort” by courtesy, or rather by order— where we hoped to recruit our exhausted stores. [Page 90]