# The City of the Saints/Chapter 1

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS.
CHAPTER I.
Why I went to Great Salt Lake City.—The various Routes.—The Line of Country traversed.—Diaries and Disquisitions.
A tour through the domains of Uncle Samuel without visiting the wide regions of the Far West would be, to use a novel simile, like seeing Hamlet with the part of Prince of Denmark, by desire, omitted. Moreover, I had long determined to add the last new name to the list of "Holy Cities;" to visit the young rival, soi-disant, of Memphis, Benares, Jerusalem, Rome, Meccah; and after having studied the beginnings of a mighty empire "in that New World which is the Old," to observe the origin and the working of a regular go-ahead Western and Columbian revelation. Mingled with the wish of prospecting the City of the Great Salt Lake in a spiritual point of view, of seeing Utah as it is, not as it is said to be, was the mundane desire of enjoying a little skirmishing with the savages, who in the days of Harrison and Jackson had given the pale faces tough work to do, and that failing, of inspecting the line of route which Nature, according to the general consensus of guide-books, has pointed out as the proper, indeed the only practical direction for a railway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The commerce of the world, the Occidental Press had assured me, is undergoing its grand climacteric: the resources of India and the nearer orient are now well-nigh cleared of "loot," and our sons, if they would walk in the paths of their papas, must look to Cipangri and the parts about Cathay for their annexations.
The Man was ready, the Hour hardly appeared propitious for other than belligerent purposes. Throughout the summer of 1860 an Indian war was raging in Nebraska; the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes were "out;" the Federal government had dispatched three columns to the centres of confusion; intestine feuds among the aborigines were talked of; the Dakotah or Sioux had threatened to "wipe out" their old foe the Pawnee, both tribes being possessors of the soil over which the road ran. Horrible accounts of murdered post-boys and cannibal emigrants, greatly exaggerated, as usual, for private and public purposes, ​filled the papers, and that nothing might be wanting, the following positive assertion (I afterward found it to be, as Sir Charles Napier characterized one of a Bombay editor's saying, "a marked and emphatic lie") was copied by full half the press:
"Utah has a population of some fifty-two or fifty-three thousand more or less rascals. Governor Cumming has informed the President exactly how matters stand in respect to them. Neither life nor property is safe, he says, and bands of depredators roam unpunished through the territory. The United States judges have abandoned their offices, and the law is boldly defied every where. He requests that 500 soldiers may be retained at Utah to afford some kind of protection to American citizens who are obliged to remain here."
"Mormon" had in fact become a word of fear; the Gentiles looked upon the Latter-Day Saints much as our crusading ancestors regarded the "Hashshashiyun," whose name, indeed, was almost enough to frighten them. Mr. Brigham Young was the Shaykh-el-Jebel, the Old Man of the Hill redivivus, Messrs. Kimball and Wells were the chief of his Fidawin, and "Zion on the tops of the mountains" formed a fair representation of Alamut.
"Going among the Mormons!" said Mr. M—— to me at New Orleans; "they are shooting and cutting one another in all directions; how can you expect to escape?"
Another general assertion was that "White Indians"—those Mormons again!—had assisted the "Washoes," "Pah Utes," and "Bannacks" in the fatal affair near Honey Lake, where Major Ormsby, of the militia, a military frontier-lawyer, and his forty men, lost the numbers of their mess.
But sagely thus reflecting that "dangers which loom large from afar generally lose size as one draws near;" that rumors of wars might have arisen, as they are wont to do, from the political necessity for another "Indian botheration," as editors call it; that Governor Cumming's name might have been used in vain; that even the President might not have been a Pope, infallible; and that the Mormons might turn out somewhat less black than they were painted; moreover, having so frequently and willfully risked the chances of an "I told you so" from the lips of friends, those "prophets of the past;" and, finally, having been so much struck with the discovery by some Western man of an enlarged truth, viz., that the bugbear approached has more affinity to the bug than to the bear, I resolved to risk the chance of the "red nightcap" from the bloodthirsty Indian and the poisoned bowie-dagger without my Eleonora or Berengaria from the jealous Latter-Day Saints. I forthwith applied myself to the audacious task with all the recklessness of a "party" from town precipitating himself for the first time into "foreign parts" about Calais.
And, first, a few words touching routes.
As all the world knows, there are three main lines proposed ​for a "Pacific Railroad" between the Mississippi and the Western Ocean, the Northern, Central, and Southern.
The first, or British, was in my case not to be thought of; it involves semi-starvation, possibly a thorough plundering by the Bedouins, and, what was far worse, five or six months of slow travel. The third, or Southern, known as the Butterfield or American Express, offered to start me in an ambulance from St. Louis, and to pass me through Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the Gila River, in fact through the vilest and most desolate portion of the West. Twenty-four mortal days and nights—twenty-five being schedule time—must be spent in that ambulance; passengers becoming crazy by whisky, mixed with want of sleep, are often obliged to be strapped to their seats; their meals, dispatched during the ten-minute halts, are simply abominable, the heats are excessive, the climate malarious; lamps may not be used at night for fear of unexisting Indians: briefly, there is no end to ​this Via Mala's miseries. The line received from the United States government upward of half a million of dollars per annum for carrying the mails, and its contract had still nearly two years to run.
There remained, therefore, the central route, which has two branches. You may start by stage to the gold regions about Denver City or Pike's Peak, and thence, if not accidentally or purposely shot, you may proceed by an uncertain ox-train to Great Salt Lake City, which latter part can not take less than thirty-five days. On the other hand, there is "the great emigration route" from Missouri to California and Oregon, over which so many thousands have traveled within the past few years. I quote from a useful little volume, "The Prairie Traveler," by "Randolph B. Marcy, Captain U.S. Army. "The track is broad, well worn, and can not be mistaken. It has received the major part of the Mormon emigration, and was traversed by the army in its march to Utah in 1857."
The mail-coach on this line was established in 1850, by Colonel Samuel H. Woodson, an eminent lawyer, afterward an M.C., and right unpopular with Mormondom, because he sacrilegiously owned part of Temple Block, in Independence, Mo., which is the old original New Zion. The following are the rates of contract and the phases through which the line has passed.
* Colonel Woodson received for carrying a monthly mail $19,500 (or $23,000?): length of contract 4 years.
* Mr. F. M'Graw, $13,500, besides certain considerable extras.
* Messrs. Heber Kimball & Co. (Mormons), $23,000.
* Messrs. Jones & Co., $30,000.
* Mr. J.M. Hockaday, weekly mail, $190,000.
* Messrs. Russell, Majors, & Waddell, army contractors; weekly mail, $190,000.
Thus it will be seen that in 1856 the transit was in the hands of the Latter-Day Saints: they managed it well, but they lost the contracts during their troubles with the federal government in 1857, when it again fell into Gentile possession. In those early days it had but three changes of mules, at Forts Bridger, Laramie, and Kearney. In May, 1859, it was taken up by the present firm, which expects, by securing the monopoly of the whole line between the Missouri River and San Francisco, and by canvassing at head-quarters for a bi-weekly which they have now obtained and even a daily transit, which shall constitutionally extinguish the Mormon community, to insert the fine edge of that ​wedge which is to open an aperture for the Pacific Railroad about to be. At Saint Joseph (Mo.), better known by the somewhat irreverent abbreviation of St. Jo, I was introduced to Mr. Alexander Majors, formerly one of the contractors for supplying the army in Utah—a veteran mountaineer, familiar with life on the prairies. His meritorious efforts to reform the morals of the land have not yet put forth even the bud of promise. He forbade his drivers and employes to drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays; he desired them to peruse Bibles distributed to them gratis; and though he refrained from a lengthy proclamation commanding his lieges to be good boys and girls, he did not the less expect it of them. Results: I scarcely ever saw a sober driver; as for profanity—the Western equivalent for hard swearing—they would make the blush of shame crimson the cheek of the old Isis bargee; and, rare exceptions to the rule of the United States, they are not to be deterred from evil talking even by the dread presence of a "lady." The conductors and road-agents are of a class superior to the drivers; they do their harm by an inordinate ambition to distinguish themselves. I met one gentleman who owned to three murders, and another individual who lately attempted to ration the mules with wild sage. The company was by no means rich; already the papers had prognosticated a failure, in consequence of the government withdrawing its supplies, and it seemed to have hit upon the happy expedient of badly entreating travelers that good may come to it of our evils. The hours and halting-places were equally vilely selected; for instance, at Forts Kearney, Laramie, and Bridger, the only points where supplies, comfort, society, are procurable, a few minutes of grumbling delay were granted as a favor, and the passengers were hurried on to some distant wretched ranch, apparently for the sole purpose of putting a few dollars into the station-master's pockets. The travel was unjustifiably slow, even in this land, where progress is mostly on paper. From St. Jo to Great Salt Lake City, the mails might easily be landed during the fine weather, without inconvenience to man or beast, in ten days; indeed, the agents have offered to place them at Placerville in fifteen. Yet the schedule time being twenty-one days, passengers seldom reached their destination "before the nineteenth; the sole reason given was, that snow makes the road difficult in its season, and that if people were accustomed to fast travel, and if letters were received under schedule time, they would look upon the boon as a right.
Before proceeding to our preparations for travel, it may be as well to cast a glance at the land to be traveled over.
​The United States territory lying in direct line between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean is now about 1200 miles long from north to south, by 1500 of breadth, in 49° and 32° N. lat., about equal to Equatorial Africa, and 1800 in N. lat. 38°. The great uncultivable belt of plain and mountain region through which the Pacific Railroad must run has a width of 1100 statute miles near the northern boundary; in the central line, 1200; and through the southern, 1000. Humboldt justly ridiculed the "maddest natural philosopher" who compared the American continent to a female figure long, thin, watery, and freezing at the 58th°, the degrees being symbolic of the year at which woman grows old. Such description manifestly will not apply to the 2,000,000 of square miles in this section of the Great Republic she is every where broader than she is long.
The meridian of 105° north longitude (G.)—Fort Laramie lies in 104° 31′ 26″—divides this vast expanse into two nearly equal parts. The eastern half is a basin or river valley rising gradually from the Mississippi to the Black Hills, and the other outlying ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The average elevation near the northern boundary (49°) is 2500 feet, in the middle latitude (38°) 6000 feet, and near the southern extremity (32°), about 4000 feet above sea level. These figures explain the complicated features of its water-shed. The western half is a mountain region whose chains extend, as far as they are known, in a general N. and S. direction.
The 99th meridian (G.)—Fort Kearney lies in 98° 58′ 11″—divides the western half of the Mississippian Valley into two unequal parts.
The eastern portion, from the Missouri to Fort Kearney—400 to 500 miles in breadth—may be called the "Prairie land." It is true that passing westward of the 97 meridian, the mauvaises terres or Bad Grounds, are here and there met with, especially near the 42d parallel, in which latitude they extend farther to the east, and that upward to 99° the land is rarely fit for cultivation, though fair for grazing. Yet along the course of the frequent streams there is valuable soil, and often sufficient wood to support settlements. This territory is still possessed by settled Indians, by semi-nomads, and by powerful tribes of equestrian and wandering savages, mixed with a few white men, who, as might be expected, excel them in cunning and ferocity.
The western portion of the valley, from Fort Kearney to the base of the Rocky Mountains—a breadth of 300 to 400 miles—is emphatically "the desert," sterile and uncultivable, a dreary expanse of wild sage (artemisia) and saleratus. The surface is sandy, gravelly, and pebbly; cactus carduus and aloes abound; grass is found only in the rare river bottoms where the soils of the different strata are mixed, and the few trees along the borders of streams—fertile lines of wadis, which laborious irrigation and coal mining ​might convert into oases—are the cotton-wood and willow, to which the mezquite may be added in the southern latitudes. The desert is mostly uninhabited, unendurable even to the wildest Indian. But the people on its eastern and western frontiers, namely, those holding the extreme limits of the fertile prairie, and those occupying the desirable regions of the western mountains, are, to quote the words of Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, U.S. Topographical Engineers, whose valuable reconnaissances and explanations of Nebraska in 1855, '56, and '57 were published in the Reports of the Secretary of War, "on the shore of a sea, up to which population and agriculture may advance and no farther. But this gives these outposts much of the value of places along the Atlantic frontier, in view of the future settlements to be formed in the mountains, between which and the present frontier a most valuable trade would exist. The western frontier has always been looking to the east for a market; but as soon as the wave of emigration has passed over the desert portion of the plains, to which the discoveries of gold have already given an impetus that will propel it to the fertile valleys of the Rocky Mountains, then will the present frontier of Kansas and Nebraska become the starting-point for all the products of the Mississippi Valley which the population of the mountains will require. We see the effects of it in the benefits which the western frontier of Missouri has received from the Santa Fé tract, and still more plainly in the impetus given to Leavenworth by the operations of the army of Utah in the interior region. This flow of products has, in the last instance, been only in one direction; but when those mountains become settled, as they eventually must, then there will be a reciprocal trade materially beneficial to both."
The mountain region westward of the sage and saleratus desert, extending between the 105th and 111th meridian (G.)—a little more than 400 miles—will in time become sparsely peopled. Though in many parts arid and sterile, dreary and desolate, the long bunch grass (Festuca), the short curly buffalo grass (Sisleria dactyloides), the mesquit grass (Stipa spata), and the Gramma, or rather, as it should be called, "Gamma" grass (Chondrosium fœnum), which clothe the slopes west of Fort Laramie, will enable it to rear an abundance of stock. The fertile valleys, according to Lieutenant Warren, "furnish the means of raising sufficient quantities of grain and vegetables for the use of the inhabitants, and beautiful healthy and desirable locations for their homes. The remarkable freedom here from sickness is one of the attractive features of the region, and will in this respect go far to com​pensate the settler from the Mississippi Valley for his loss in the smaller amount of products that can be taken from the soil. The great want of suitable building material, which now so seriously retards the growth of the West, will not be felt there." The heights of the Rocky Mountains rise abruptly from 1000 to 6000 feet over the lowest known passes, computed by the Pacific Railroad surveyors to vary from 4000 to 10,000 feet above sea-level. The two chains forming the eastern and western rims of the Rocky Mountain basin have the greatest elevation, walling in, as it were, the other sub-ranges.
There is a popular idea that the western slope of the Rocky Mountains is smooth and regular; on the contrary, the land is rougher, and the ground is more complicated than on the eastern declivities. From the summit of the Wasach range to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada, the whole region, with exceptions, is a howling wilderness, the sole or bed of an inland sweetwater sea, now shrunk into its remnants the Great Salt and the Utah Lakes. Nothing can be more monotonous than its regular succession of high grisly hills, cut perpendicularly by rough and rocky ravines, and separating bare and barren plains. From the seaward base of the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific—California—the slope is easy, and the land is pleasant, fertile, and populous.
After this aperçu of the motives which sent me forth, once more a pilgrim, to young Meccah in the West, of the various routes, and of the style of country wandered over, I plunge at once into personal narrative.
Lieutenant Dana (U. S. Artillery), my future compagnon de voyage, left St. Louis, "the turning-back place of English sportsmen," for St. Jo on the 2d of August, preceding me by two days. Being accompanied by his wife and child, and bound on a weary voyage to Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, he naturally wanted a certain amount of precise information concerning the route, and one of the peculiarities of this line is that no one knows any thing about it. In the same railway car which carried me from St. Louis were five passengers, all bent upon making Utah with the least delay—an unexpected cargo of officials: Mr. F********, a federal judge with two sons; Mr. W*****, a state secretary; and Mr. G****, a state marshal. As the sequel may show, Dana was doubly fortunate in securing places before the list could be filled up by the unusual throng: all we thought of at the time was our good luck in escaping a septidium at St. Jo, whence the stage started on Tuesdays only. We hurried, therefore, to pay for our tickets—$175 each being the moderate sum—to reduce our luggage to its minimum approach toward 25 Ibs., the price of transport for ex​cess being exorbitantly fixed at $1 per lb., and to lay in a few necessaries for the way, tea and sugar, tobacco and cognac. I will not take liberties with my company's "kit;" my own, however, was represented as follows:
One India-rubber blanket, pierced in the centre for a poncho, and garnished along the longer side with buttons, and corresponding elastic loops with a strap at the short end, converting it into a carpet-bag—a "sine quâ non" from the equator to the pole. A buffalo robe ought to have been added as a bed: ignorance, however, prevented, and borrowing did the rest. With one's coat as a pillow, a robe, and a blanket, one may defy the dangerous "bunks" of the stations.
For weapons I carried two revolvers: from the moment of leaving St. Jo to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the pistol should never be absent from a man's right side—remember, it is handier there than on the other—nor the bowie-knife from his left. Contingencies with Indians and others may happen, when the difference of a second saves life: the revolver should therefore be carried with its butt to the fore, and when drawn it should not be leveled as in target practice, but directed toward the object by means of the right fore finger laid flat along the cylinder while the medius draws the trigger. The instinctive consent between eye and hand, combined with a little practice, will soon enable the beginner to shoot correctly from the hip; all he has to do is to think that he is pointing at the mark, and pull. As a precaution, especially when mounted upon a kicking horse, it is wise to place the cock upon a capless nipple, rather than trust to the intermediate pins. In dangerous places the revolver should be discharged and reloaded every morning, both for the purpose of keeping the hand in, and to do the weapon justice. A revolver is an admirable tool when properly used; those, however, who are too idle or careless to attend to it, had better carry a pair of "Derringers." For the benefit of buffalo and antelope, I had invested $25 at St. Louis in a "shooting-iron" of the "Hawkins" style—that enterprising individual now dwells in Denver City—it was a long, top-heavy rifle; it weighed 12 lbs., and it carried the smallest ball—75 to the pound—a combination highly conducive to good practice. Those, however, who can use light weapons, should prefer the Maynard breech-loader, with an extra barrel for small shot; and if Indian fighting is in prospect, the best tool, without any exception, is a ponderous double-barrel, 12 to the pound, and loaded as fully as it can bear with slugs. The last of the battery was an air-gun to astonish the natives, and a bag of various ammunition.
Captain Marcy outfits his prairie traveler with a "little blue mass, quinine, opium, and some cathartic medicine put up in doses for adults." I limited myself to the opium, which is invaluable when one expects five consecutive days and nights in a prairie ​wagon, quinine, and Warburg's drops, without which no traveler should ever face fever, and a little citric acid, which, with green tea drawn off the moment the leaf has sunk, is perhaps the best substitute for milk and cream. The "holy weed Nicotian" was not forgotten; cigars must be bought in extraordinary quantities, as the driver either receives or takes the lion's share: the most satisfactory outfit is a quantum sufficit of Louisiana Pirique and Lynchburg gold-leaf—cavendish without its abominations of rum and honey or molasses—and two pipes, a meerschaum for luxury, and a brier-root to fall back upon when the meerschaum shall have been stolen. The Indians will certainly pester for matches; the best lighting apparatus, therefore, is the Spanish mechero, the Oriental sukhtah—agate and cotton match—besides which, it offers a pleasing exercise, like billiards, and one at which the British soldier greatly excels, surpassed only by his exquisite skill in stuffing the pipe.
For literary purposes, I had, besides the two books above quoted, a few of the great guns of exploration, Frémont, Stansbury, and Gunnison, with a selection of the most violent Mormon and Anti-Mormon polemicals, sketching materials—I prefer the "improved metallics" five inches long, and serving for both diary and drawing-book—and a tourist's writing-case of those sold by Mr. Field (Bible Warehouse, The Quadrant), with but one alteration, a snap lock, to obviate the use of that barbarous invention called a key. For instruments I carried a pocket sextant with a double face, invented by Mr. George, of the Royal Geographical Society, and beautifully made by Messrs. Cary, an artificial horizon of black glass, and bubble tubes to level it, night and day compasses, with a portable affair attached to a watch-chain—a traveler feels nervous till he can "orienter" himself—a pocket thermometer, and a B. P. ditto. The only safe form for the latter would be a strong neckless tube, the heavy pyriform bulbs in general use never failing to break at the first opportunity. A Stanhope lens, a railway whistle, and instead of the binocular, useful things of earth, a very valueless telescope—(warranted by the maker to show Jupiter's satellites, and by utterly declining so to do, reading a lesson touching the non-advisability of believing an instrument-maker)—completed the outfit.
The prairie traveler is not particular about toilet: the easiest dress is a dark flannel shirt, worn over the normal article; no braces—I say it, despite Mr. Galton—but broad leather belt for "six-shooter" and for "Arkansas tooth-pick," a long clasp-knife, or for the rapier of the Western world, called after the hero who perished in the "red butchery of the Alamo." The nether garments should be forked with good buckskin, or they will infallibly give out, and the lower end should be tucked into the boots, after the sensible fashion of our grandfathers, before those ridiculous Wellingtons were dreamed of by our sires. In warm weath​er, a pair of moccasins will be found easy as slippers, but they are bad for wet places; they make the feet tender, they strain the back sinews, and they form the first symptom of the savage mania. Socks keep the feet cold; there are, however, those who should take six pair. The use of the pocket-handkerchief is unknown in the plains; some people, however, are uncomfortable without it, not liking "se emungere" after the fashion of Horace's father.
In cold weather—and rarely are the nights warm—there is nothing better than the old English tweed shooting-jacket, made with pockets like a poacher's, and its similar waistcoat, a "stomach warmer" without a roll collar, which prevents comfortable sleep, and with flaps as in the Year of Grace 1760, when men were too wise to wear our senseless vests, whose only property seems to be that of disclosing after exertions a lucid interval of linen or longcloth. For driving and riding, a large pair of buckskin gloves, or rather gauntlets, without which even the teamster will not travel, and leggins—the best are made in the country, only the straps should be passed through and sewn on to the leathers—are advisable, if at least the man at all regards his epidermis: it is almost unnecessary to bid you remember spurs, but it may be useful to warn you that they will, like riches, make to themselves wings. The head-covering by excellence is a brown felt, which, by a little ingenuity, boring, for instance, holes round the brim to admit a ribbon, you may convert into a riding-hat or night-cap, and wear alternately after the manly slouch of Cromwell and his Martyr, the funny three-cornered spittoon-like "shovel" of the Dutch Georges, and the ignoble cocked-hat, which completes the hideous metamorphosis.
And, above all things, as you value your nationality this is written for the benefit of the home reader—let no false shame cause you to forget your hat-box and your umbrella. I purpose, when a moment of inspiration waits upon leisure and a mind at ease, to invent an elongated portmanteau, which shall be perfection—portable—solid leather of two colors, for easy distinguishment—snap lock—in length about three feet; in fact, long enough to contain without creasing "small clothes," a lateral compartment destined for a hat, and a longitudinal space where the umbrella can repose: its depth—but I must reserve that part of the secret until this benefit to British humanity shall have been duly made by Messrs. Bengough Brothers, and patented by myself.
The dignitaries of the mail-coach, acting upon the principle "first come first served," at first decided, maugre all our attempts at "moral suasion," to divide the party by the interval of a week. Presently reflecting, I presume, upon the unadvisability of leaving at large five gentlemen, who, being really in no particular hurry, might purchase a private conveyance and start leisurely westward, they were favored with a revelation of "'cuteness." On the day before departure, as, congregated in the Planter's House ​Hotel, we were lamenting over our "morning glory," the necessity of parting—in the prairie the more the merrier, and the fewer the worse cheer—a youth from the office was introduced to tell, Hope-like, a flattering tale and a tremendous falsehood. This juvenile delinquent stated with unblushing front, over the hospitable cocktail, that three coaches instead of one had been newly and urgently applied for by the road-agent at Great Salt Lake City, and therefore that we could not only all travel together, but also all travel with the greatest comfort. We exulted. But on the morrow only two conveyances appeared, and not long afterward the two dwindled off to one. "The Prairie Traveler" doles out wisdom in these words: "Information concerning the route coming from strangers living or owning property near them, from agents of steam-boats and railways, or from other persons connected with transportation companies"—how carefully he piles up the heap of sorites—"should be received with great caution, and never without corroboratory evidence from disinterested sources." The main difficulty is to find the latter—to catch your hare—to know whom to believe.
I now proceed to my Diary.
The Start.
Tuesday, 7th August, 1860.
Precisely at 8 A.M. appeared in front of the Patee House—the Fifth Avenue Hotel of St. Jo—the vehicle destined to be our home for the next three weeks. We scrutinized it curiously.
The mail is carried by a "Concord coach," a spring wagon, comparing advantageously with the horrible vans which once dislocated the joints of men on the Suez route. The body is shaped somewhat like an English tax-cart considerably magnified. It is built to combine safety, strength, and lightness, without the slightest regard to appearances. The material is well-seasoned white oak—the Western regions, and especially Utah, are notoriously deficient in hard woods—and the manufacturers are the well-known coachwrights, Messrs. Abbott, of Concord, New Hampshire; the color is sometimes green, more usually red, causing the antelopes to stand and stretch their large eyes whenever the vehicle comes in sigjht. The wheels are five to six feet apart, affording security against capsising, with little "gather" and less "dish;" the larger have fourteen spokes and seven fellies; the smaller twelve and six. The tires are of unusual thickness, and polished like steel by the hard dry ground; and the hubs or naves and the metal nave-bands are in massive proportions. The latter not unfrequently fall off as the wood shrinks, unless the wheel is allowed to stand in water; attention must be paid to resetting them, or in the frequent and heavy "sidlins" the spokes may snap off all round like pipe-stems. The wagon-bed is supported by iron bands or perpendiculars abutting upon wooden rockers, which ​rest on strong leather thoroughbraces: these are found to break the jolt better than the best steel springs, which, moreover, when injured, can not readily be repaired. The whole bed is covered with stout osnaburg supported by stiff bars of white oak; there is a sun-shade or hood in front, where the driver sits, a curtain behind which can be raised or lowered at discretion, and four flaps on each side, either folded up or fastened down with hooks and eyes. In heavy frost the passengers must be half dead with cold, but they care little for that if they can go fast. The accommodations are as follows: In front sits the driver, with usually a conductor or passenger by his side; a variety of packages, large and small, is stowed away under his leather cushion; when the brake must be put on, an operation often involving the safety of the vehicle, his right foot is planted upon an iron bar which presses by a leverage upon the rear wheels; and in hot weather a bucket for watering the animals hangs over one of the lamps, whose companion is usually found wanting. The inside has either two or three benches fronting to the fore or placed vis-à-vis; they are movable and reversible, with leather cushions and hinged padded backs; unstrapped and turned down, they convert the vehicle into a tolerable bed for two persons or two and a half. According to Cocker, the mail-bags should be safely stowed away under these seats, or if there be not room enough, the passengers should perch themselves upon the correspondence; the jolly driver, however, is usually induced to cram the light literature between the wagon-bed and the platform, or running-gear beneath, and thus, when ford-waters wash the hubs, the letters are pretty certain to endure ablution. Behind, instead of dicky, is a kind of boot where passengers' boxes are stored beneath a stout canvas curtain with leather sides. The comfort of travel depends upon packing the wagon; if heavy in front or rear, or if the thoroughbraces be not properly "fixed," the bumping will be likely to cause nasal hemorrhage. The description will apply to the private ambulance, or, as it is called in the West, "avalanche," only the latter, as might be expected, is more convenient; it is the drosky in which the vast steppes of Central America are crossed by the government employés.
On this line mules are preferred to horses as being more enduring. They are all of legitimate race; the breed between the horse and the she-ass is never heard of, and the mysterious jumard is not believed to exist. In dry lands, where winter is not severe—they inherit the sire's impatience of cold—they are invaluable animals; in swampy ground this American dromedary is the meanest of beasts, requiring, when stalled, to be hauled out of the mire before it will recover spirit to use its legs. For sureness of foot (during a journey of more than 1000 miles, I saw but one fall and two severe stumbles), sagacity in finding the road, apprehension of danger, and general cleverness, mules are supe​rior to their mothers: their main defect is an unhappy obstinacy derived from the other side of the house. They are great in hardihood, never sick nor sorry, never groomed nor shod, even where ice is on the ground; they have no grain, except five quarts per diem when snow conceals the grass; and they have no stable save the open corral. Moreover, a horse once broken down requires a long rest; the mule, if hitched up or ridden for short distances, with frequent intervals to roll and repose, may still, though "resté" get over 300 miles in tolerable time. The rate of travel on an average is five miles an hour; six is good; between seven and eight is the maximum, which sinks in hilly countries to three or four. I have made behind a good pair, in a light wagon, forty consecutive miles at the rate of nine per hour, and in California a mule is little thought of if it can not accomplish 250 miles in forty-eight hours. The price varies from $100 to $130 per head when cheap, rising to $150 or $200, and for fancy animals from $250 to $400. The value, as in the case of the Arab, depends upon size; "rats," or small mules, especially in California, are not esteemed. The "span"—the word used in America for beasts well matched—is of course much more expensive. At each station on this road, averaging twenty-five miles apart—beyond the forks of the Platte they lengthen out by one third—are three teams of four animals, with two extra, making a total of fourteen, besides two ponies for the express riders. In the East they work beautifully together, and are rarely mulish beyond a certain ticklishness of temper, which warns you not to meddle with their ears when in harness, or to attempt encouraging them by preceding them upon the road. In the West, where they run half wild and are lassoed for use once a week, they are fearfully handy with their heels; they flirt out with the hind legs, they rear like goats, breaking the harness and casting every strap and buckle clean off the body, and they bite their replies to the chorus of curses and blows: the wonder is that more men are not killed. Each fresh team must be ringed half a dozen times before it will start fairly; there is always some excitement in change; some George or Harry, some Julia or Sally disposed to shirk work or to play tricks, some Brigham Young or General Harney—the Trans-Vaal Republican calls his worst animal "England"—whose stubbornness is to be corrected by stone-throwing or the lash.
But the wagon still stands at the door. We ought to start at 8 30 A.M.; we are detained an hour while last words are said, and adieu—a long adieu—is bidden to joke and julep, to ice and idleness. Our "plunder" is clapped on with little ceremony; a hat-case falls open—it was not mine, gentle reader—collars and other small gear cumber the ground, and the owner addresses to the clumsy-handed driver the universal G— d— , which in these lands changes from its expletive or chrysalis form to an adjec​tival development. We try to stow away as much as possible; the minor officials, with all their little faults, are good fellows, civil and obliging; they wink at non-payment for bedding, stores, weapons, and they rather encourage than otherwise the multiplication of whisky-kegs and cigar-boxes. We now drive through the dusty roads of St. Jo, the observed of all observers, and presently find ourselves in the steam ferry which is to convey us from the right to the left bank of the Missouri River. The "Big Muddy," as it is now called—the Yellow River of old writers—venerable sire of snag and sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid waters of the "Big Drink." It runs, like the lower Indus, through deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies, when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid matter), are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. The Plata of this region, it is the great sewer of the prairies, the main channel and common issue of the water-courses and ravines which have carried on the work of denudation and degradation for days dating beyond the existence of Egypt.
According to Lieutenant Warren, who endorses the careful examinations of the parties under Governor Stevens in 1853, the Missouri is a superior river for navigation to any in the country, except the Mississippi below their junction. It has, however, serious obstacles in wind and frost. From the Yellow Stone to its mouth, the breadth, when full, varies from one third to half a mile; in low water the width shrinks, and bars appear. Where timber does not break the force of the winds, which are most violent in October, clouds of sand are seen for miles, forming banks, which, generally situated at the edges of trees on the islands and points, often so much resemble the Indian mounds in the Mississippi Valley, that some of them—for instance, those described by Lewis and Clarke at Bonhomme Island—have been figured as the works of the ancient Toltecs. It would hardly be feasible to correct the windage by foresting the land. The bluffs of the Missouri are often clothed with vegetation as far as the debouchure of the Platte River. Above that point the timber, which is chiefly cotton-wood, is confined to ravines and bottom lands, varying in width from ten to fifteen miles above Council Bluffs, which is almost continuous to the mouth of the James River. Every where, except between the mouth of the Little Cheyenne and the Cannon Ball rivers, there is a sufficiency of fuel for navigation; but, ascending above Council Bluffs, the protection afforded by forest growth on the banks is constantly diminishing. The trees also are injurious; imbedded in the channel by the "caving-in" of the banks, they form the well-known sawyers, or floating timbers, and snags, trunks standing like chevaux de frise at various ​inclinations, pointing down the stream. From the mouth of the James River down to the Mississippi, it is a wonder how a steamer can run: she must lose half her time by laying to at night, and is often delayed for days, as the wind prevents her passing by bends filled with obstructions. The navigation is generally closed by ice at Sioux City on the 10th of November, and at Fort Leavenworth by the 1st of December. The rainy season of the spring and summer commences in the latitude of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Southern Nebraska, between the 15th of May and the 30th of June, and continues about two months. The floods produced by the melting snows in the mountains come from the Platte, the Big Cheyenne, the Yellow Stone, and the Upper Missouri, reaching the lower river about the 1st of July, and lasting a month. Rivers like this, whose navigation depends upon temporary floods, are greatly inferior for ascent than for descent. The length of the inundation much depends upon the snow on the mountains: a steamer starting from St. Louis on the first indication of the rise would not generally reach the Yellow Stone before low water at the latter point, and if a miscalculation is made by taking the temporary rise for the real inundation, the boat must lay by in the middle of the river till the water deepens.
Some geographers have proposed to transfer to the Missouri, on account of its superior length, the honor of being the real head of the Mississippi; they neglect, however, to consider the direction and the course of the stream, an element which must enter largely in determining the channels of great rivers. It will, I hope, be long before this great ditch wins the day from the glorious Father of Waters.
The reader will find in Appendix No. I. a detailed itinerary, showing him the distances between camping-places, the several mail stations where mules are changed, the hours of travel, and the facilities for obtaining wood and water—in fact, all things required for the novice, hunter, or emigrant. In these pages I shall consider the route rather in its pictorial than in its geographical aspects, and give less of diary than of dissertation upon the subjects which each day's route suggested.
Landing in Bleeding Kansas—she still bleeds—we fell at once into "Emigration Road," a great thoroughfare, broad and well worn as a European turnpike or a Roman military route, and undoubtedly the best and the longest natural highway in the world. ​For five miles the line bisected a bottom formed by a bend in the river, with about a mile's diameter at the neck. The scene was of a luxuriant vegetation. A deep tangled wood—rather a thicket or a jungle than a forest—of oaks and elms, hickory, basswood, and black walnut, poplar and hackberry (Celtis crassifolia), box elder, and the common willow (Salix longifolia), clad and festooned, bound and anchored by wild vines, creepers, and huge llianas, and sheltering an undergrowth of white alder and red sumach, whose pyramidal flowers were about to fall, rested upon a basis of deep black mire, strongly suggestive of chills—fever and ague. After an hour of burning sun and sickly damp, the effects of the late storms, we emerged from the waste of vegetation, passed through a straggling "neck o' the woods," whose yellow inmates reminded me of Mississippian descriptions in the days gone by, and after spanning some very rough ground we bade adieu to the valley of the Missouri, and emerged upon the region of the Grand Prairie, which we will pronounce "perrairey."
Differing from the card-table surfaces of the formation in Illinois and the lands east of the Mississippi, the Western prairies are rarely flat ground. Their elevation above sea-level varies from 1000 to 2500 feet, and the plateau's aspect impresses the eye with an exaggerated idea of elevation, there being no object of comparison—mountain, hill, or sometimes even a tree—to give a juster measure. Another peculiarity of the prairie is, in places, its seeming horizontality, whereas it is never level: on an open plain, apparently flat as a man's palm, you cross a long groundswell which was not perceptible before, and on its farther incline you come upon a chasm wide and deep enough to contain a settlement. The aspect was by no means unprepossessing. Over the rolling surface, which, however, rarely breaks into hill and dale, lay a tapestry of thick grass already turning to a ruddy yellow under the influence of approaching autumn. The uniformity was relieved by streaks of livelier green in the rich soils of the slopes, hollows, and ravines, where the water gravitates, and, in the deeper "intervales" and bottom lands on the banks of streams and courses, by the graceful undulations and the waving lines of ​mottes or prairie islands, thick clumps and patches simulating orchards by the side of cultivated fields. The silvery cirri and cumuli of the upper air flecked the surface of earth with spots of dark cool shade, surrounded by a blaze of sunshine, and by their motion, as they trooped and chased one another, gave a peculiar liveliness to the scene; while here and there a bit of hazy blue distance, a swell of the sea-like land upon the far horizon, gladdened the sight—every view is fair from afar. Nothing, I may remark, is more monotonous, except perhaps the African and Indian jungle, than those prairie tracts, where the circle of which you are the centre has but about a mile of radius; it is an ocean in which one loses sight of land. You see, as it were, the ends of the earth, and look around in vain for some object upon which the eye may rest: it wants the sublimity of repose so suggestive in the sandy deserts, and the perpetual motion so pleasing in the aspect of the sea. No animals appeared in sight where, thirty years ago, a band of countless bisons dotted the plains; they will, however, like the wild aborigines, their congeners, soon be followed by beings higher in the scale of creation. These prairies are preparing to become the great grazing-grounds which shall supply the unpopulated East with herds of civilized kine, and perhaps with the yak of Tibet, the llama of South America, and the koodoo and other African antelopes.
As we sped onward we soon made acquaintance with a traditionally familiar feature, the "pitch-holes," or "chuck-holes"—the ugly word is not inappropriate—which render traveling over the prairies at times a sore task. They are gullies and gutters, not unlike the Canadian "cahues" of snow formation: varying from 10 to 50 feet in breadth, they are rivulets in spring and early summer, and—few of them remain perennial—they lie dry during the rest of the year. Their banks are slightly raised, upon the principle, in parvo, that causes mighty rivers, like the Po and the Indus, to run along the crests of ridges, and usually there is in the sole a dry or wet cunette, steep as a step, and not unfrequently stony; unless the break be attended to, it threatens destruction to wheel and axle-tree, to hound and tongue. The pitch-hole is more frequent where the prairies break into low hills; the inclines along which the roads run then become a net-work of these American nullahs.
Passing through a few wretched shanties called Troy—last insult to the memory of hapless Pergamus—and Syracuse (here we are in the third, or classic stage of United States nomenclature), we made, at 3 P.M., Cold Springs, the junction of the Leavenworth route. Having taken the northern road to avoid rough ground and bad bridges, we arrived about two hours behind time. The aspect of things at Cold Springs, where we were allowed an ​hour's halt to dine and to change mules, somewhat dismayed our fine-weather prairie travelers. The scene was the rale "Far West." The widow body to whom the shanty belonged lay sick with fever. The aspect of her family was a "caution to snakes:" the ill-conditioned sons dawdled about, listless as Indians, in skin tunics and pantaloons fringed with lengthy tags such as the redoubtable "Billy Bowlegs" wears on tobacco labels; and the daughters, tall young women, whose sole attire was apparently a calico morning-wrapper, color invisible, waited upon us in a protesting way. Squalor and misery were imprinted upon the wretched log hut, which ignored the duster and the broom, and myriads of flies disputed with us a dinner consisting of doughnuts, green and poisonous with saleratus, suspicious eggs in a massive greasy fritter, and rusty bacon, intolerably fat. It was our first sight of squatter life, and, except in two cases, it was our worst. We could not grudge 50 cents a head to these unhappies; at the same time, we thought it a dear price to pay—the sequel disabused us—for flies and bad bread, worse eggs and bacon.
The next settlement, Valley Home, was reached at 6 P.M. Here the long wave of the ocean land broke into shorter seas, and for the first time that day we saw stones, locally called rocks (a Western term embracing every thing between a pebble and a boulder), the produce of nullahs and ravines. A well 10 to 12 feet deep supplied excellent water. The ground was in places so far reclaimed as to be divided off by posts and rails; the scanty crops of corn (Indian corn), however, were wilted and withered by the drought, which this year had been unusually long. Without changing mules we advanced to Kennekuk, where we halted for an hour's supper under the auspices of Major Baldwin, whilom Indian agent; the place was clean, and contained at least one charming face.
Kennekuk derives its name from a chief of the Kickapoos, in whose reservation we now are. This tribe, in the days of the Baron la Hontan (1689), a great traveler, but "aiblins," as Sir Walter Scott said of his grandmither, "a prodigious story-teller," then lived on the Rivière des Puants, or Fox River, upon the brink of a little lake supposed to be the Winnebago, near the Sakis (Osaki, Sawkis, Sauks, or Sacs), and the Pouteoustamies (Potawotomies). They are still in the neighborhood of their ​dreaded foes, the Sacs and Foxes, who are described as stalwart and handsome bands, and they have been accompanied in their southern migration from the waters westward of the Mississippi, through Illinois, to their present southern seats by other allies of the Winnebagoes, the Iowas, Nez Percés, Ottoes, Omahas, Kansas, and Osages. Like the great nations of the Indian Territory, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, they form intermediate social links in the chain of civilization between the outer white settlements and the wild nomadic tribes to the west, the Dakotahs and Arapahoes, the Snakes and Cheyennes. They cultivate the soil, and rarely spend the winter in hunting buffalo upon the plains. Their reservation is twelve miles by twenty-four; as usual with land set apart for the savages, it is well watered and timbered, rich and fertile; it lies across the path and in the vicinity of civilization; consequently, the people are greatly demoralized. The men are addicted to intoxication, and the women to unchastity; both sexes and all ages are inveterate beggars, whose principal industry is horse-stealing. Those Scottish clans were the most savage that vexed the Lowlands; it is the case here: the tribes nearest the settlers are best described by Colonel B———'s phrase, "great liars and dirty dogs." They have well-nigh cast off the Indian attire, and rejoice in the splendors of boiled and ruffled shirts, after the fashion of the whites. According to our host, a stalwart son of that soil which for generations has sent out her best blood westward, Kain-tuk-ee, the Land of the Cane, the Kickapoos number about 300 souls, of whom one fifth are braves. He quoted a specimen of their facetiousness: when they first saw a crinoline, they pointed to the wearer and cried, "There walks a wigwam." Our "vertugardin" of the 19th century has run the gauntlet of the world's jests, from the refined ​impertinence of Mr. Punch to the rude grumble of the American Indian and the Kaffir of the Cape.
Beyond Kennekuk we crossed the first Grasshopper Creek. Creek, I must warn the English reader, is pronounced "crik," and in these lands, as in the jargon of Australia, means not "an arm of the sea," but a small stream of sweet water, a rivulet; the rivers of Europe, according to the Anglo-American of the West, are "criks." On our line there are many grasshopper creeks; they anastomose with, or debouch into, the Kansas River, and they reach the sea viâ the Missouri and the Mississippi. This particular Grasshopper was dry and dusty up to the ankles; timber clothed the banks, and slabs of sandstone cumbered the sole. Our next obstacle was the Walnut Creek, which we found, however, provided with a corduroy bridge; formerly it was a dangerous ford, rolling down heavy streams of melted snow, and then crossed by means of the "bouco" or coracle, two hides sewed together, distended like a leather tub with willow rods, and poled or paddled. At this point the country is unusually well populated; a house appears after every mile. Beyond Walnut Creek a dense nimbus, rising ghost-like from the northern horizon, furnished us with a spectacle of those perilous prairie storms which make the prudent lay aside their revolvers and disembarrass themselves of their cartridges. Gusts of raw, cold, and violent wind from the west whizzed overhead, thunder crashed and rattled closer and closer, and vivid lightning, flashing out of the murky depths around, made earth and air one blaze of living fire. Then the rain began to patter ominously upon the carriages; the canvas, however, by swelling, did its duty in becoming water-tight, and we rode out the storm dry. Those learned in the weather predicted a succession of such outbursts, but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The thermometer fell about 6° (F), and a strong north wind set in, blowing dust or gravel, a fair specimen of "Kansas gales," which are equally common in Nebraska, especially during the month of October. It subsided on the 9th of August.
Arriving about 1 A.M. at Locknan's Station, a few log and timber huts near a creek well feathered with white oak and American elm, hickory and black walnut, we found beds and snatched an hourful of sleep.
8th August, to Rock Creek.
Resuming, through air refrigerated by rain, our now weary way, we reached at 6 A.M. a favorite camping-ground, the "Big Nemehaw" Creek, which, like its lesser neighbor, flows after rain into the Missouri River, viâ Turkey Creek, the Big Blue, and the Kansas. It is a fine bottom of rich black soil, whose green woods at that early hour were wet with heavy dew, and scattered over the surface lay pebbles and blocks of quartz and porphyritic granites. "Richland," a town mentioned in guide-books, haying disappeared, we drove for breakfast to Seneca, a city consisting of a few ​shanties, mostly garnished with tall square lumber fronts, ineffectually, especially when the houses stand one by one, masking the diminutiveness of the buildings behind them. The land, probably in prospect of a Pacific Railroad, fetched the exaggerated price of $20 an acre, and already a lawyer has "hung out his shingle" there.
Refreshed by breakfast and the intoxicating air, brisk as a bottle of veuve Clicquot—it is this that gives one the "prairie fever"—we bade glad adieu to Seneca, and prepared for another long stretch of twenty-four hours. That day's chief study was of wagons, those ships of the great American Sahara which, gathering in fleets at certain seasons, conduct the traffic between the eastern and the western shores of a waste which is every where like a sea, and which presently will become salt. The white-topped wain—banished by railways from Pennsylvania, where, drawn by the "Conestoga horse," it once formed a marked feature in the landscape—has found a home in the Far West. They are not unpicturesque from afar, these long-winding trains, in early morning like lines of white cranes trooping slowly over the prairie, or in more mysterious evening resembling dim sails crossing a rolling sea. The vehicles are more simple than our Cape wagons—huge beds like punts mounted on solid wheels, with logs for brakes, and contrasting strongly with the emerald plain, white tilts of twilled cotton or osnaburg, supported by substantial oaken or hickory bows. The wain is literally a "prairie ship:" its body is often used as a ferry, and when hides are unprocurable the covering is thus converted into a "bull boat." Two stakes driven into the ground, to mark the length, are connected by a longitudinal keel and ribs of willow rods; cross-sticks are tied with thongs to prevent "caving in," and the canvas is strained over the frame-work. In this part of the country the wagon is unnecessarily heavy; made to carry 4000 lbs., it rarely carries 3000: westward I have seen many a load of 3½ tons of 2000 lbs. each, and have heard of even 6 tons. The wheels are of northern white oak, well seasoned under pain of perpetual repairs, the best material, "bow-dark" Osage orange-wood (bois d'arc or Maclura aurantiaca), which shrinks but little, being rarely procurable about Concord and Troy, the great centres of wagon manufacture. The neap or tongue (pole) is jointed where it enters the hounds, or these will be broken by the heavy jolts; and the perch is often made movable, so that after accidents a temporary conveyance can be made out of the débris. A long covered wooden box hangs behind: on the road it carries fuel; at the halt it becomes a trough, being preferred to nose-bags, which prevent the animals breathing comfortably; and in the hut, where every part of the wagon is utilized, it acts as a chest for valuables. A bucket swings beneath the vehicle, and it is generally provided with an extra chain for "coraling." The teams vary in number from six ​to thirteen yoke; they are usually oxen, an "Old Country" prejudice operating against the use of cows. The yoke, of pine or other light wood, is, as every where in the States, simple and effective, presenting a curious contrast to the uneasy and uncertain contrivances which still prevail in the antiquated Campagna and other classic parts of Europe. A heavy cross-piece, oak or cotton-wood, is beveled out in two places, and sometimes lined with sheet-lead, to fit the animals' necks, which are held firm in bows of bent hickory passing through the yoke and pinned above. The several pairs of cattle are connected by strong chains and rings projecting from the under part of the wood-work.
The Western Yoke.
The "ripper," or driver, who is bound to the gold regions of Pike's Peak, is a queer specimen of humanity. He usually hails from one of the old Atlantic cities—in fact, from settled America—and, like the civilized man generally, he betrays a remarkable aptitude for facile descent into savagery. His dress is a harlequinade, typical of his disposition. Eschewing the chimney-pot or stove-pipe tile of the bourgeois, he affects the "Kossuth," an Anglo-American version of the sombrero, which converts felt into every shape and form, from the jaunty little head-covering of the modern sailor to the tall steeple-crown of the old Puritan. He disregards the trichotomy of St. Paul, and emulates St. Anthony and the American, aborigines in the length of his locks, whose ends are curled inward, with a fascinating sausage-like roll not unlike the Cockney "aggrawator." If a young hand, he is probably in the buckskin mania, which may pass into the squaw mania, a disease which knows no cure: the symptoms are, a leather coat and overalls to match, embroidered if possible, and finished along the arms and legs with fringes cut as long as possible, while a pair of gaudy moccasins, resplendent with red and blue porcelain beads, fits his feet tightly as silken hose. I have heard of coats worth $250, vests $100, and pants $150: indeed, the poorest of buckskin suits will cost $75, and if hard-worked it must be renewed every six months. The successful miner or the gambler—in these lands the word is confined to the profession—will add $10 gold buttons to the attractions of his attire. The older hand prefers to buckskin a "wamba" or round-about, a red or ​rainbow-colored flannel over a check cotton shirt; his lower garments, garnished a tergo with leather, are turned into Hessians by being thrust inside his cow-hide Wellingtons; and, when in riding gear, he wraps below each knee a fold of deer, antelope, or cow skin, with edges scalloped where they fall over the feet, and gartered tightly against thorns and stirrup thongs, thus effecting that graceful elephantine bulge of the lower leg for which "Jack ashore" is justly celebrated. Those who suffer from sore eyes wear huge green goggles, which give a crab-like air to the physiognomy, and those who can not procure them line the circumorbital region with lampblack, which is supposed to act like the surma or kohl of the Orient. A broad leather belt supports on the right a revolver, generally Colt's Navy or medium size (when Indian fighting is expected, the large dragoon pistol is universally preferred); and on the left, in a plain black sheath, or sometimes in the more ornamental Spanish scabbard, is a buck-horn or ivory-handled bowie-knife. In the East the driver partially conceals his tools; he has no such affectation in the Far West: moreover, a glance through the wagon-awning shows guns and rifles stowed along the side. When driving he is armed with a mammoth fustigator, a system of plaited cow-hides cased with smooth leather; it is a knout or an Australian stock-whip, which, managed with both hands, makes the sturdiest ox curve and curl its back. If he trudges along an ox-team, he is a grim and grimy man, who delights to startle your animals with a whip-crack, and disdains to return a salutation: if his charge be a muleteer's, you may expect more urbanity; he is then in the "upper-crust" of teamsters; he knows it, and demeans himself accordingly. He can do nothing without whisky, which he loves to call tarantula juice, strychnine, red-eye, corn juice, Jersey lightning, leg-stretcher, "tangleleg," and many other hard and grotesque names; he chews tobacco like a horse; he becomes heavier "on the shoulder" or "on the shyoot," as, with the course of empire, he makes his way westward; and he frequently indulges in a "spree," which in these lands means four acts of drinking-bout, with a fifth of rough-and-tumble. Briefly, he is a post-wagon driver exaggerated.
Each train is accompanied by men on horse or mule back—oxen are not ridden after Cape fashion in these lands. The equipment of the cavalier excited my curiosity, especially the saddle, which has been recommended by good authorities for military use. The coming days of fast warfare, when "heavies," if not wholly ​banished to the limbo of things that were, will be used as mounted "beef-eaters," only for show, demand a saddle with as little weight as is consistent with strength, and one equally easy to the horse and the rider. In no branch of improvement, except in hat-making for the army, has so little been done as in saddles. The English military or hunting implement still endures without other merit than facility to the beast, and, in the man's case, faculty of falling uninjured with his horse. Unless the rider be copper-lined and iron-limbed, it is little better in long marches than a rail for riding. As far as convenience is concerned, an Arab pad is preferable to Peat's best. But the Californian saddle can not supply the deficiency, as will, I think, appear in the course of description.
The native Indian saddle is probably the degenerate offspring of the European pack-saddle: two short forks, composing the pommel and cantle, are nailed or lashed to a pair of narrow sideboards, and the rude tree is kept in shape by a green skin or hide allowed to shrink on. It remarkably resembles the Abyssinian, the Somal, and the Circassian saddle, which, like the "dug-out" canoe, is probably the primitive form instinctively invented by mankind. It is the sire of the civilized saddle, which in these lands varies with every region. The Texan is known by its circular seat; a string passed round the tree forms a ring: provided with flaps after the European style, it is considered easy and comfortable. The Californian is rather oval than circular; borrowed and improved from the Mexican, it has spread from the Pacific to the Atlantic slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the hardy and experienced mountaineer prefers it to all others: it much resembles the Hungarian, and in some points recalls to mind the old French cavalry demipique. It is composed of a single tree of light strong wood, admitting a freer circulation of air to the horse's spine—an immense advantage—and, being without iron, it can readily be taken to pieces, cleaned or mended, and refitted. The tree is strengthened by a covering of raw-hide carefully sewed on; it rests upon a "sweat-leather," a padded sheet covering the back, and it is finished off behind with an "anchero" of the same material protecting the loins. The pommel is high, like the crutch of a woman's saddle, rendering impossible, under pain of barking the knuckles, that rule of good riding which directs the cavalier to keep his hands low. It prevents the inexperienced horseman being thrown forward, and enables him to "hold on" when likely to be dismounted; in the case of a good rider, its only use is to attach the lariat, riata, or lasso. The great merit of this "unicorn" saddle is its girthing: with the English system, the strain of a wild bull or of a mustang "bucker" would soon dislodge the riding gear. The "sincho" is an elastic horsehair cingle, five to six inches wide, connected with "lariat straps," strong thongs passing round the pommel and cantle; it is girthed well back ​from the horse's shoulder, and can be drawn till the animal suffers pain: instead of buckle, the long terminating strap is hitched two or three times through an iron ring. The whole saddle is covered with a machila, here usually pronounced macheer, two pieces of thick leather handsomely and fancifully worked or stamped, joined by a running thong in the centre, and open to admit the pommel and cantle. If too long, it draws in the stirrup-leathers, and cramps the ankles of any but a bowlegged man. The machila is sometimes garnished with pockets, always with straps behind to secure a valise, and a cloak can be fastened over the pommel, giving purchase and protection to the knees. The rider sits erect, with the legs in a continuation of the body line, and the security of the balance-seat enables him to use his arms freely: the pose is that of the French schools in the last century, heels up and toes down. The advantages of this equipment are obvious; it is easier to horse and man probably than any yet invented. On the other hand, the quantity of leather renders it expensive: without silver or other ornaments, the price would vary from $25 at San Francisco to $50 at Great Salt Lake City, and the highly got-up rise to $250=£50 for a saddle! If the saddle-cloth slips out, and this is an accident which frequently occurs, the animal's back will be galled. The stirrup-leathers can not be shortened or lengthened without dismounting, and without leggins the board-like leather macheer soon makes the mollets innocent of skin. The pommel is absolutely dangerous: during my short stay in the country I heard of two accidents, one fatal, caused by the rider being thrown forward on his fork. Finally, the long seat, which is obligatory, answers admirably with the Californian pacer or canterer, but with the high-trotting military horse it would inevitably lead—as has been proved before the European stirrup-leather was shortened—to hernias and other accidents.
To the stirrups I have but one serious objection—they can not be made to open in case of the horse falling; when inside the stiff leather macheer, they cramp the legs by bowing them inward, but habit soon cures this. Instead of the light iron contrivances which before recovered play against the horse's side, which freeze the feet in cold, and which toast them in hot weather, this stirrup is sensibly made of wood. In the Eastern States it is a lath bent somewhat in the shape of the dragoon form, and has too little weight; the Californian article is cut out of a solid block of wood, mountain mahogany being the best, then maple, and lastly the softer pine and cotton-wood. In some parts of the country it is made so narrow that only the toe fits in, and then the instep is liable to be bruised. For riding through bush and thorns, it is provided in front with zapateros or leathern curtains, secured to the straps above, and to the wood on both sides: they are curiously made, and the size, like that of the Turk's lantern, ​denotes the owner's fashionableness; dandies may be seen with the pointed angles of their stirrup-guards dangling almost to the ground. The article was borrowed from Mexico—the land of character dresses. When riding through prickly chapparal, the leathers begin higher up, and protect the leg from the knee downward. I would not recommend this stirrup for Hyde Park, or even Brighton; but in India and other barbarous parts of the British empire, where, on a cold morning's march, men and officers may be seen with wisps of straw defending their feet from the iron, and on African journeys, where the bush is more than a match for any texture yet woven, it might, methinks, be advantageously used.
The same may be said of the spurs, which, though cruel in appearance, are really more merciful than ours. The rowels have spikes about two inches long; in fact, are the shape and size of a small starfish; but they are never sharpened, and the tinkle near the animal's sides serves to urge it on without a real application. The two little bell-like pendants of metal on each side of the rowel-hinge serve to increase the rattling, and when a poor rider is mounted upon a tricksy horse, they lock the rowels, which are driven into the sincho, and thus afford another point d'appui. If the rider's legs be long enough, the spurs can be clinched under the pony's belly. Like the Mexican, they can be made expensive: $25 a pair would be a common price.
The bridle is undoubtedly the worst part of the horse's furniture. The bit is long, clumsy, and not less cruel than a Chifney. I have seen the Arab ring, which, with sufficient leverage, will break a horse's jaw, and another, not unlike an East Indian invention, with a sharp triangle to press upon the animal's palate, apparently for the purpose of causing it to rear and fall backward. It is the offspring of the Mexican manége, which was derived, through Spain, from the Moors.
Passing through Ash Point at 9 30 A.M., and halting for water at Uncle John's Grocery, where hang-dog Indians, squatting, standing, and stalking about, showed that the forbidden luxury—essence of corn—was, despite regulations, not unprocurable there, we spanned the prairie to Guittard's Station. This is a clump of board houses on the far side of a shady, well-wooded creek—the Vermilion, a tributary of the Big Blue River, so called from its red sandstone bottom, dotted with granitic and porphyritic boulders.
Our conductor had sprained his ankle, and the driver, being in plain English drunk, had dashed like a Phaeton over the "chuck-holes;" we willingly, therefore, halted at 11 30 A.M. for dinner. The host was a young Alsatian, who, with his mother and sister, had emigrated under the excitement of Californian fever, and had been stopped, by want of means, half way. The improvement upon the native was palpable: the house and kitchen were clean, the fences neat; the ham and eggs, the hot rolls and coffee, were ​fresh and good, and, although drought had killed the salad, we had abundance of peaches and cream, an offering of French to American taste which, in its simplicity, luxuriates in the curious mixture of lacteal with hydrocyanic acid.
At Guittard's I saw, for the first time, the Pony Express rider arrive. In March, 1860, "the great dream of news transmitted from New York to San Francisco (more strictly speaking from St. Joseph to Placerville, California) in eight days was tested." It appeared, in fact, under the form of an advertisement in the St. Louis "Republican," and threw at once into the shade the great Butterfield Mail, whose expedition had been the theme of universal praise. Very meritoriously has the contract been fulfilled. At the moment of writing (Nov., 1860), the distance between New York and San Francisco has been farther reduced by the advance of the electric telegraph—it proceeds at the rate of six miles a day—to Fort Kearney from the Mississippi and to Fort Churchill from the Pacific side. The merchant thus receives his advices in six days. The contract of the government with Messrs. Russell, Majors, and Co., to run the mail from St. Joseph to Great Salt Lake City, expired the 30th of November, and it was proposed to continue it only from Julesburg on the crossing of the South Platte, 480 miles west of St. Joseph. Mr. Russell, however, objected, and so did the Western States generally, to abbreviating the mail-service as contemplated by the Post-office Department. His spirit and energy met with supporters whose interest it was not to fall back on the times when a communication between New ​York and California could not be secured short of twenty-five or thirty days; and, aided by the newspapers, he obtained a renewal of his contract. The riders are mostly youths, mounted upon active and lithe Indian nags. They ride 100 miles at a time—about eight per hour—with four changes of horses, and return to their stations the next day: of their hardships and perils we shall hear more anon. The letters are carried in leathern bags, which are thrown about carelessly enough when the saddle is changed, and the average postage is $5=£1 per sheet.
Beyond Guittard's the prairies bore a burnt-up aspect. Far as the eye could see the tintage was that of the Arabian Desert, sere and tawny as a jackal's back. It was still, however, too early; October is the month for those prairie fires which have so frequently exercised the Western author's pen. Here, however, the grass is too short for the full development of the phenomenon, and beyond the Little Blue River there is hardly any risk. The fire can easily be stopped, ab initio, by blankets, or by simply rolling a barrel; the African plan of beating down with boughs might also be used in certain places; and when the conflagration has extended, travelers can take refuge in a little Zoar by burning the vegetation to windward. In Texas and Illinois, however, where the grass is tall and rank, and the roaring flames leap before the wind with the stride of maddened horses, the danger is imminent, and the spectacle must be one of awful sublimity.
In places where the land seems broken with bluffs, like an iron-bound coast, the skeleton of the earth becomes visible; the formation is a friable sandstone, overlying fossiliferous lime, which is based upon beds of shale. These undergrowths show themselves at the edges of the ground-waves and in the dwarf precipices, where the soil has been degraded by the action of water. The yellow-brown humus varies from forty to sixty feet deep in the most favored places, and erratic blocks of porphyry and various granites encumber the dry water-courses and surface drains. In the rare spots where water then lay, the herbage was still green, forming oases in the withering waste, and showing that irrigation is its principal, if not its only want.
Passing by Marysville, in old maps Palmetto City, a county town which thrives by selling whisky to ruffians of all descriptions, we forded before sunset the "Big Blue," a well-known tributary of the Kansas River. It is a pretty little stream, brisk and clear as crystal, about forty or fifty yards wide by 2·50 feet deep at the ford. The soil is sandy and solid, but the banks are too precipitous to be pleasant when a very drunken driver hangs on by the lines of four very weary mules. We then stretched once more over the "divide"—the ground, generally rough or rolling, between the fork or junction of two streams, in fact, the Indian Doab—separating the Big Blue from its tributary the Little Blue. At 6 P.M. we changed our fagged animals for fresh, and the land ​of Kansas for Nebraska, at Cotton-wood Creek, a bottom where trees flourished, where the ground had been cleared for corn, and where we detected the prairie wolf watching for the poultry. The fur of our first coyote was light yellow-brown, with a tinge of red, the snout long and sharp, the tail bushy and hanging, the gait like a dog's, and the manner expressive of extreme timidity; it is a far more cowardly animal than the larger white buffalo-wolf and the black wolf of the woods, which are also far from fierce. At Cotton-wood Station we took "on board" two way passengers, "lady" and "gentleman," who were drafted into the wagon containing the Judiciary. A weary drive over a rough and dusty road, through chill night air and clouds of musquetoes, which we were warned would accompany us to the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, placed us about 10 P.M. at Rock, also called Turkey Creek—surely a misnomer; no turkey ever haunted so villainous a spot! Several passengers began to suffer from fever and nausea; in such travel the second night is usually the crisis, after which a man can endure for an indefinite time. The "ranch" was a nice place for invalids, especially for those of the softer sex. Upon the bedded floor of the foul "doggery" lay, in a seemingly promiscuous heap, men, women, children, lambs, and puppies, all fast in the arms of Morpheus, and many under the influence of a much jollier god. The employés, when aroused pretty roughly, blinked their eyes in the atmosphere of smoke and musquetoes, and declared that it had been "merry in hall" that night—the effects of which merriment had not passed off. After half an hour's dispute about who should do the work, they produced cold scraps of mutton and a kind of bread which deserves a totally distinct generic name. The strongest stomachs of the party made tea, and found some milk which was not more than one quarter flies. This succulent meal was followed by the usual douceur. On this road, however mean or wretched the fare, the station-keeper, who is established by the proprietor of the line, never derogates by lowering his price.
The Valley of the Little Blue, 9th August.
A little after midnight we resumed our way, and in the state which Mohammed described when he made his famous night journey to heaven—bayni 'l naumi wa 'l yakzán—we crossed the deep shingles, the shallow streams, and the heavy vegetation of the Little Sandy, and five miles beyond it we forded the Big Sandy. About early dawn we found ourselves at another station, better than the last only as the hour was more propitious. The colony of Patlanders rose from their beds without a dream of ablution, and clearing the while their lungs of Cork brogue, prepared a neat déjeûner à la fourchette by hacking "fids" off half a sheep suspended from the ceiling, and frying them in melted tallow. Had the action occurred in Central Africa, among the Es​quimaux, or the Araucanians, it would not have excited my attention: mere barbarism rarely disgusts; it is the unnatural cohabitation of civilization with savagery that makes the traveler's gorge rise.
Issuing from Big Sandy Station at 6 30 A.M., and resuming our route over the divide that still separated the valleys of the Big Blue and the Little Blue, we presently fell into the line of the latter, and were called upon by the conductor to admire it. It is pretty, but its beauties require the cosmetic which is said to act unfailingly in the case of fairer things—the viewer should have lately spent three months at sea, out of sight of rivers and women. Averaging two miles in width, which shrinks to one quarter as you ascend, the valley is hedged on both sides by low rolling bluffs or terraces, the boundaries of its ancient bed and modern debordements. As the hills break off near the river, they show a diluvial formation; in places they are washed into a variety of forms, and being white, they stand out in bold relief. In other parts they are sand mixed with soil enough to support a last-year's growth of wheat-like grass, weed-stubble, and dead trees, that look like old corn-fields in new clearings. One could not have recognized at this season Colonel Frémont's description written in the month of June—the "hills with graceful slopes looking uncommonly green and beautiful." Along the bluffs the road winds, crossing at times a rough projecting spur, or dipping into some gully washed out by the rains of ages. All is barren beyond the garden-reach which runs along the stream; there is not a tree to a square mile—in these regions the tree, like the bird in Arabia and the monkey in Africa, signifies water—and animal life seems well-nigh extinct. As the land sinks toward the river bottom, it becomes less barren. The wild sunflower (Helianthus)—it seldom, however, turns toward the sun—now becomes abundant; it was sparse near the Missouri; it will wax even more plentiful around Great Salt Lake City, till walking through the beds becomes difficult. In size it greatly varies according to the quality of the soil; six feet is perhaps the maximum. It is a growth of some value. The oleaginous seeds form the principal food of half-starved Indians, while the stalks supply them with a scanty fuel: being of rapid growth, it has been used in the States to arrest the flow of malaria, and it serves as house and home to the rattlesnake. Conspicuous by its side is the sumach, whose leaf, mixed with kinnikinik, the peel of the red willow, forms the immemorial smoking material of the Wild Man of the North. Equally remarkable for their strong odor are large beds of wild onions; they are superlatively wholesome, but they affect the eater like those of Tibet. The predominant colors are pink and yellow, the former a lupine, the latter a shrub, locally called the rabbit-bush. The blue lupine also appears with the white mallow, the eccentric putoria, and the taraxacum (dandelion), so much ​used as salad in France and in the Eastern States. This land appears excellently adapted for the growth of manioc or cassava. In the centre of the bottom flows the brownish stream, about twenty yards wide, between two dense lines of tall sweet cotton-wood. The tree which was fated to become familiar to us during our wanderings is a species of poplar (P. monilifera), called by the Americo-Spaniards, and by the people of Texas and New Mexico, "Alamo:" resembling the European aspen, without its silver lining, the color of the leaf, in places, appears of a dull burnished hue, in others bright and refreshingly green. Its trivial name is derived, according to some, from the fibrous quality of the bark, which, as in Norway, is converted into food for cattle and even man; according to others, from the cotton-like substance surrounding the seeds. It is termed "sweet" to distinguish it from a different tree with a bitter bark, also called a cotton-wood or narrow-leaved cotton-wood (Populus angustifolia), and by the Canadians liard amère. The timber is soft and easily cut; it is in many places the only material for building and burning, and the recklessness of the squatters has already shortened the supply.
This valley is the Belgium of the adjoining tribes, the once terrible Pawnees, who here met their enemies, the Dakotahs and the Delawares: it was then a great buffalo ground; and even twenty years ago it was well stocked with droves of wild horses, turkeys, and herds of antelope, deer, and elk. The animals have of late migrated westward, carrying off with them the "bones of contention." Some details concerning the present condition of these bands and their neighbors may not be uninteresting—these poor remnants of nations which once kept the power of North America at bay, and are now barely able to struggle for existence.
In 1853, the government of the United States, which has ever acted paternally toward the Indians, treating with them—Great Britain did the same with the East Indians—as though they were a civilized people, availed itself of the savages' desire to sell lands encroached upon by the whites, and set apart for a general reservation 181,171 square miles. Here, in the Far West, were collected into what was then believed to be a permanent habitation, the indigenes of the land, and the various bands once lying east of the Mississippi. This "Indian's home" was bounded, in 1853, on the north by the Northwestern Territory and Minnesota; on the south by Texas and New Mexico; to the east lay Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas; and to the west, Oregon, Utah, and New Mexico.
The savages' reservation was then thus distributed. The eastern portion nearest the river was stocked with tribes removed to it from the Eastern States, namely, the lowas, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos, Delawares, Potawotomies, Wyandottes, Quapaws, Senecas, Cherokees, Seminoles, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Miamis, ​and Ottawas. The west and part of the northeast—poor and barren lands—were retained by the aboriginal tribes, Ponkahs, Omahas or Mahas, Pawnees, Ottoes, Kansas or Konzas, and Osages. The central and the remainder of the western portion—wild countries abounding in buffalo—were granted to the Western Pawnees, the Arickarees, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Comanches, Utahs, Grosventres, and other nomads.
It was somewhat a confusion of races. For instance, the Pawnees form an independent family, to which some authors join the Arickaree; the Sacs (Sauk) and Foxes, Winnebagoes, Ottoes, Kaws, Omahas, Cheyennes, Mississippi Dakotahs, and Missouri Dakotahs, belong to the Dakotan family; the Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles are Appalachians; the Wyandottes, like the Iroquois, are Hodesaunians; and the Ottawas, Delawares, Shawnees, Potawotomies, Peorians, Mohekuneuks, Kaskaskias, Piankeshaws, Weaws, Miamis, Kickapoos, and the Menomenes, are, like the Ojibwas, Algonquins.
The total number of Indians on the prairies and the Rocky Mountains was estimated roughly at 63,000.
Still the resistless tide of emigration swept westward: the federal government was as powerless to stem it as was General Fitzroy of New South Wales to prevent, in 1852, his subjects flocking to the "gold diggings." Despite all orders, reckless whites would squat upon, and thoughtless reds, bribed by whisky, tobacco, and gunpowder, would sell off the lands. On the 20th of May, 1854, was passed the celebrated "Kansas-Nebraska Bill," an act converting the greater portion of the "Indian Territory," and all the "Northwestern Territory," into two new territories—Kansas, north of the 37th parallel, and Nebraska, north of the 40th. In the passage of this bill, the celebrated "Missouri Compromise" of 1828, prohibiting negro slavery north of 36° 30', was repealed, under the presidency of General Pierce. It provided that the ​rights and properties of the Indians, within their shrunken possessions, should be respected. By degrees the Indians sold their lands for whisky, as of old, and retired to smaller reservations. Of course, they suffered in the bargain; the savage ever parts with his birthright for the well-known mess of pottage. The Osages, for instance, canceled $4000, claimed by unscrupulous traders, by a cession of two million acres of arable land. The Potawotomies fared even worse; under the influence of liquor, ὡς λέγουσι, their chiefs sold 100,000 acres of the best soil on the banks of the Missouri for a mere song. The tribe was removed to a bald smooth prairie, sans timber and consequently sans game; many fled to the extreme wilds, and the others, like the Acadians of yore, were marched about till they found homes—many of them six feet by two—in Fever Patch, on the Kaw or Kansas River. Others were more fortunate. The Ottoes, Omahas, and Kansas had permanent villages near the Missouri and its two tributaries, the Platte and the Kansas. The Osages, formerly a large nation in Arkansas, after ceding 10,000,000 of acres for a stipend of $52,000 for thirty years, were settled in a district on the west bank of the Neosho or Whitewater—the Grand River. They are described as the finest and largest men of the semi-nomad races, with well-formed heads and symmetrical figures, brave, warlike, and well disposed to the whites. Early in June, after planting their maize, they move in mounted bands to the prairies, feast upon the buffalo for months, and bring home stores of smoked and jerked meat. When the corn is in milk they husk and sun-dry it; it is then boiled, and is said to be better flavored and more nutritious than the East Indian "butah" or the American hominy. After the harvest in October they return to the game country, and then pass the winter under huts or skin lodges. Their chief scourge is small-pox: apparently, all the tribes carry some cross. Of the settled races the best types are the Choctaws and the Cherokees; the latter have shown a degree of ​improvability, which may still preserve them from destruction; they have a form of government, churches, theatres, and schools; they read and write English; and George Guess, a well-known chief, like the negro inventor of the Vai syllabarium in West Africa, produced an alphabet of sixty-eight characters, which, improved and simplified by the missionaries, is found useful in teaching the vernacular.
Upon the whole, however, the philanthropic schemes of the government have not met with brilliant success. The chiefs are still bribed, and the people cheated by white traders, and poverty, disease, and debauchery rapidly thin the tribesmen. Sensible heads have proposed many schemes for preserving the race. Apparently the best of these projects is to introduce the Moravian discipline. Of all missionary systems, I may observe, none have hitherto been crowned with important results, despite the blood and gold so profusely expended upon them, except two—those of the Jesuits and the United Brethren. The fraternity of Jesus spread the Gospel by assimilating themselves to the heathen; the Unitas Fratrum by assimilating the heathen to themselves. The day of Jesuitism, like that of protection, is going by. The advance of Moravianism, it may safely be prophesied, is to come. These civilization societies have as yet been little appreciated, because they will not minister to that ignorant enthusiasm which extracts money from the pockets of the many. Their necessarily slow progress is irksome to ardent propagandists. We naturally wish to reap as well as to sow; and man rarely invests capital in schemes of which only his grandson will see the results.
The American philanthropist proposes to wean the Indian savage from his nomad life by turning his lodge into a log tent, and by providing him with cattle instead of buffalo, and the domestic fowl instead of grasshoppers. The hunter become a herdsman would thus be strengthened for another step—the agricultural life, which necessarily follows the pastoral. Factors would be appointed instead of vicious traders—coureurs des bois, as the Canadians call them; titles to land would be granted in fee-simple, practically teaching the value of property in severalty, alienation into white hands would be forbidden, and, if possible, a cordon militaire would be stretched between the races. The agricultural would lead to the mechanical stage of society. Agents and assistant craftsmen would teach the tribes to raise mills and smithies (at present there are mills without millers, stock without breeders, and similar attempts to make civilization run before she can walk), and a growing appreciation for the peace, the comfort, and the luxuries of settled life would lay the nomad instinct forever.
The project labors only under one difficulty—the one common to philanthropic schemes. In many details it is somewhat visionary—Utopian. It is, like peace on earth, a "dream of the wise." Under the present system of Indian agencies, as will in a future ​page appear, it is simply impossible. It has terrible obstacles in the westward gravitation of the white race, which, after sweeping away the aborigines—as the gray rat in Europe expelled the black rat—from the east of the Mississippi in two centuries and a half, threatens, before a quarter of that time shall have elapsed, to drive in its advance toward the Pacific the few survivors of now populous tribes, either into the inhospitable regions north of the 49th parallel, or into the anarchical countries south of the 32d. And where, I may ask, in the history of the world do we read of a people learning civilization from strangers instead of working it out for themselves, through its several degrees of barbarism, feudalism, monarchy, republicanism, despotism? Still it is a noble project; mankind would not willingly see it die.
The Pawnees were called by the French and Canadian traders Les Loups, that animal being their totem, and the sign of the tribe being an imitation of the wolf's ears, the two fore fingers of the right hand being stuck up on the side of the head. They were in the last generation a large nation, containing many clans—Minnikajus, the Sans Arc, the Loup Fork, and others. Their territory embraced both sides of the Platte River, especially the northern lands; and they rendered these grounds terrible to the trapper, trader, and traveler. They were always well mounted. Old Mexico was then, and partially is still, their stable, and a small band has driven off horses by hundreds. Of late years they have become powerless. The influenza acts as a plague among them, killing off 400 or 500 in a single season, and the nation now numbers little more than 300 braves, or rather warriors, the latter, in correct parlance, being inferior to the former, as the former are subservient to the chief. A treaty concluded between them and the United States in the winter of 1857 sent them to a reserve on the Loup Fork, where their villages were destroyed by the Sioux. They are Ishmaelites, whose hand is against every man. They have attempted, after the fashion of declining tribes, to strengthen themselves by alliances with their neighbors, but have always failed in consequence of their propensity to plunder developing itself even before the powwow was concluded. They and the northern Dakotahs can never be trusted. Most Indian races, like the Bedouin Arabs, will show hospitality to the stranger who rides into their villages, though no point of honor deters them from robbing him after he has left the lodge-shade. The Pawnees, African-like, will cut the throat of a sleeping guest. They are easily distinguished from their neighbors by the scalp-lock protruding from a shaven head. After killing white men, they have insulted the corpse in a manner familiar to those who served in the Affghan war. They have given up the practice of torturing prisoners, saying that the "Great Spirit," or rather, as the expression should be translated, the "Great Father" no longer wills it. The tradition is, that a few years ago a squaw of a hostile tribe was snatch​ed from the stake by a white trader, and the action was interpreted as a decree of heaven. It is probably a corruption of the well-known story of the rescue of the Itean woman by Petalesharoo, the son of the "Knife Chief." Like the Southern and Western Indians generally, as is truly remarked by Captain Mayne Reid, "They possess more of that cold continence and chivalrous delicacy than characterize the Red Men of the forest." They are too treacherous to be used as soldiers. Like most pedestrian Indians, their arms and bodies are light and thin, and their legs are muscular and well developed. They are great in endurance. I have heard of a Pawnee, who, when thoroughly "stampeded" by his enemies, "loped" from Fort Laramie to Kearney—300 miles—making the distance as fast as the mail. This bad tribe is ever at war with their hereditary enemies the Sioux. They do not extend westward of Fort Kearney. The principal sub-tribe is the Arickaree, or Ree, called Pedani by the Dakotah, who attacked and conquered them. Their large villages, near the mouth of the Grand River, were destroyed by the expedition sent in 1825–26, under Colonel Leavenworth, to chastise the attack upon the trading party of General Ashley.
A more interesting people than the Pawnee is the Delaware, whose oldest tradition derives him from the region west of the Mississippi. Thence the tribe migrated to the Atlantic shores, where they took the title of Lenne Lenape, or men, and the neighboring races in respect called them "uncle." William Penn and his followers found this remnant of the great Algonquin confederacy in a depressed state: subjugated by the Five Nations, they had been compelled to take the name of "Iroquois Squaws." In those days they felt an awe of the white man, and looked upon him as a something godlike. Since their return to the West their spirit has revived, their war-path has reached through Utah to the Pacific Ocean, to Hudson's Bay on the north, and southward to the heart of Mexico. Their present abodes are principally near Fort Leavenworth upon the Missouri, and in the Choctaw territory near Fort Arbuckle, upon the eastern Colorado or Canadian River. They are familiar with the languages, manners, and customs of their pale-faced neighbors; they are so feared as rifle shots that a host of enemies will fly from a few of their warriors, and they mostly lead a vagrant life, the wandering Jews of the West, as traders, hunters, and trappers, among the other Indian tribes. For 185 years the Shawnees have been associated with them in intermarriage, yet they are declining in numbers; here and there some are lost, one by one, in travel or battle; they have now dwindled to about a hundred warriors, and the extinction of the tribe appears imminent. As hunters and guides, they are preferred to all others by the whites, and it is believed that they would make as formidable partisan soldiers as any on this conti​nent. When the government of the United States, after the fashion of France and England, begins to raise "Irregular Native Corps," the loss of the Delawares will be regretted.
Changing mules at Kiowa about 10 A.M., we pushed forward through the sun, which presently was mitigated by heavy nimbi, to Liberty Farm, where a station supplied us with the eternal eggs and bacon of these mangeurs de lard. It is a dish constant in the great West, as the omelet and pigeon in the vetturini days of Italy, when, prompted by the instincts of self-preservation, the inmates of the dove-cot, unless prevented in time, are said to have fled their homes at the sight of Milordo's traveling carriage, not to return until the portent had disappeared. The Little Blue ran hard by, about fifty feet wide by three or four deep, fringed with emerald-green oak groves, cotton-wood, and long-leaved willow: its waters supply catfish, suckers, and a soft-shelled turtle, but the fish are full of bones, and taste, as might be imagined, much like mud. The country showed vestiges of animal life, the prairie bore signs of hare and antelope; in the valley, coyotes, wolves, and foxes, attracted by the carcasses of cattle, stared us in the face, and near the stream, plovers, jays, the bluebird (sialia), and a kind of starling, called the swamp or redwinged blackbird, twittered a song of satisfaction. We then resumed our journey over a desert, waterless save after rain, for twenty-three miles; it is the divide between the Little Blue and the Platte rivers, a broken table-land rising gradually toward the west, with, at this season, a barren soil of sand and clay. As the evening approached, a smile from above lit up into absolute beauty the homely features of the world below. The sweet commune with nature in her fairest hours! denied to the sons of cities—who must contemplate her charms through a vista of brick wall, or over a foreground of chimney-pots—consoled us amply for all the little hardships of travel. Strata upon strata of cloud-banks, burnished to golden red in the vicinity of the setting sun, and polished to dazzling silvery white above, lay piled half way from the horizon to the zenith, with a distinct strike toward a vanishing point in the west, and dipping into a gateway through which the orb of day slowly retired. Overhead floated in a sea of amber and yellow, pink and green, heavy purple nimbi, apparently turned upside down—their convex bulges below, and their horizontal lines high in the air—while in the east black and blue were so curiously blended that the eye could not distinguish whether it rested upon darkening air or upon a lowering thunder-cloud. We enjoyed these beauties in silence; not a soul said, "Look there!" or "How pretty!"
At 9 P.M., reaching "Thirty-two-mile Creek," we were pleasantly surprised to find an utter absence of the Irishry. The station-master was the head of a neat-handed and thrifty family from Vermont; the rooms, such as they were, looked cosy and clean and the chickens and peaches were plump and well "fixed." Sol​diers from Fort Kearney loitered about the adjoining store, and from them we heard past fights and rumors of future wars which were confirmed on the morrow. Remounting at 10 30 P.M., and before moonrise, we threaded the gloom without other accident than the loss of a mule that was being led to the next station. The amiable animal, after breaking loose, coquetted with its pursuers for a while, according to the fashion of its kind, and when the cerne or surround was judged complete, it dashed through the circle and gave leg-bail, its hoofs ringing over the stones till the sound died away in the distant shades.
The Platte River and Fort Kearney, August 10.
After a long and chilly night—extensive evaporation making 40° F. feel excessively cold—lengthened by the atrocity of the musquetoes, which sting even when the thermometer stands below 45°, we awoke upon the hill sands divided by two miles of level green savanna, and at 4 A.M. reached Kearney Station, in the valley of La Grande Platte, seven miles from the fort of that name. The first aspect of the stream was one of calm and quiet beauty, which, however, it owed much to its accessories: some travelers have not hesitated to characterize it as "the dreariest of rivers." On the south is a rolling range of red sandy and clayey hillocks, sharp toward the river—the "coasts of the Nebraska." The valley, here two miles broad, resembles the ocean deltas of great streams; it is level as a carpet, all short green grass without sage or bush. It can hardly be called a bottom, the rise from the water's edge being, it is calculated, about 4 feet per 1000. Under a bank, from half a yard to a yard high, through its two lawns of verdure, flowed the stream straight toward the slanting rays of the rising sun, which glittered upon its broad bosom, and shed rosy light over half the heavens. In places it shows a sea horizon, but here it was narrowed by Grand Island, which is fifty-two miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and three quarters, and sufficiently elevated above the annual flood to be well timbered.
Without excepting even the Missouri, the Platte is doubtless the most important western influent of the Mississippi. Its valley offers a route scarcely to be surpassed for natural gradients, requiring little beyond the superstructure for light trains; and by following up its tributary—the Sweetwater—the engineer finds a line laid down by nature to the foot of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the dividing ridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific water-beds. At present the traveler can cross the 300 or 400 miles of desert between the settlements in the east and the populated parts of the western mountains by its broad highway, with never-failing supplies of water, and, in places, fuel. Its banks will shortly supply coal to take the place of the timber that has thinned out.
​The Canadian voyageurs first named it La Platte, the Flat River, discarding, or rather translating after their fashion, the musical and picturesque aboriginal term, "Nebraska," the "shallow stream:" the word has happily been retained for the Territory. Springing from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, it has, like all the valley streams westward of the Mississippi, the Niobrara, or Eau qui court, the Arkansas, and the Canadian River, a declination to the southeast. From its mouth to the junction of its northern and southern forks, the river valley is mostly level, and the scenery is of remarkable sameness: its singularity in this point affects the memory. There is not a tributary, not a ravine, in places not a tree to distract attention from the grassy intermediate bottom, which, plain as a prairie, extends from four to five and even twelve miles in width, bounded on both sides by low, rolling, sandy hills, thinly vegetated, and in few places showing dwarf bluffs. Between the forks and Fort Laramie the ground is more accented, the land near its banks often becomes precipitous, the road must sometimes traverse the tongues and ridges which project into the valley, and in parts the path is deep with sand. The stream averages about a mile in breadth, and sometimes widens out into the semblance of an estuary, flowing in eddies where holes are, and broken by far-reaching sand-bars and curlew shallows. In places it is a labyrinth of islets, variously shaped and of all sizes, from the long tongue which forms a vista to the little bouquet of cool verdure, grass, young willows, and rose-bushes. The shallowness of the bed causes the water to be warm in summer; a great contrast to the clear, cool springs on its banks. The sole is treacherous in the extreme, full of quicksands and gravel shoals, channels and cuts, which shift, like those of the Indus, with each year's flood; the site being nearly level, the river easily swells, and the banks, here of light, there of dark colored silt, based, like the floor, on sand, are, though vertical, rarely more than two feet high. It is a river willfully wasted by nature. The inundation raises it to about six feet throughout: this freshet, however, is of short duration, and the great breadth of the river causes a want of depth which renders it unfit for the navigation of a craft more civilized than the Indian's birch or the Canadian fur-boat. Colonel Frémont failed to descend it in September with a boat drawing only four inches. The water, like that of the Missouri, and for the same reason, is surcharged with mud drained from the prairies; carried from afar, it has usually a dark tinge; it is remarkably opaque after floods; if a few inches deep, it looks bottomless, and, finally, it contains little worth fishing for. From the mouth to Fort Kearney, beyond which point timber is rare, one bank, and one only, is fringed with narrow lines of well-grown cotton-wood, red wil​lows, and cedars, which are disappearing before the emigrant's axe. The cedar now becomes an important tree. It will not grow on the plains, owing to the dryness of the climate and the excessive cold; even in the sheltered ravines the wintry winds have power to blight all the tops that rise above prairie level, and where the locality is better adapted for plantations, firs prevail. An interesting effect of climate upon the cedar is quoted by travelers on the Missouri River. At the first Cedar Island (43° N lat.) large and straight trees appear in the bottom lands, those on the bluffs being of inferior growth; higher up the stream they diminish, seldom being seen in any number together above the mouth of the Little Cheyenne (45° N. lat.), and there they are exceedingly crooked and twisted. In the lignite formations above the Missouri and the Yellow Stone, the cedar, unable to support itself above ground, spreads over the hill-sides and presents the appearance of grass or moss.
Beyond the immediate banks of the Platte the soil is either sandy, quickly absorbing water, or it is a hard, cold, unwholesome clay, which long retains muddy pools, black with decayed vegetation, and which often, in the lowest levels, becomes a mere marsh. The wells deriving infiltration from the higher lands beyond are rarely more than three feet deep; the produce is somewhat saline, and here and there salt may be seen efflorescing from the soil around them. In the large beds of prêle (an equisetum), scouring rush, and other aquatic plants which garnish the banks, myriads of musquetoes find a home. Flowers of rich, warm color appear, we remark, in the sandy parts: the common wild helianthus and a miniature sunflower like chamomile, a thistle (Carduus leucographus), the cactus, a peculiar milk-plant (Asclepias syrivea), a spurgewort (Asclepias tuberosa), the amorpha, the tradescantia, the putoria, and the artemisia, or prairie sage. The richer soils and ravines produce in abundance the purple aster—violet of these regions—a green plant, locally known as "Lamb's Quarters," a purple flower with bulbous root, wild flax with pretty blue blossoms, besides mallow, digitalis, anemone, streptanthis, and a honeysuckle. In parts the valley of the Platte is a perfect parterre of wild flowers.
After satisfying hunger with vile bread and viler coffee—how far from the little forty-berry cup of Egypt!—for which we paid 75 cents, we left Kearney Station without delay. Hugging the right bank of our strange river, at 8 A.M. we found ourselves at Fort Kearney, so called, as is the custom, after the gallant officer, now deceased, of that name.
Every square box or block-house in these regions is a fort; no misnomer, however, can be more complete than the word applied to the military cantonments on the frontier. In former times the traders to whom these places mostly belonged erected quadrangles of sun-dried brick with towers at the angles; their forts still ​appear in old books of travels: the War Department, however, has been sensible enough to remove them. The position usually chosen is a river bottom, where fuel, grass, and water are readily procurable. The quarters are of various styles; some, with their low verandas, resemble Anglo-Indian bungalows or comfortable farm-houses; others are the storied houses, with the "stoop" or porch of the Eastern States in front; and low, long, peat-roofed tenements are used for magazines and out-houses. The best material is brown adobe or unburnt brick; others are of timber, whitewashed and clean-looking, with shingle roofs, glass windows, and gay green frames—that contrast of colors which the New Englander loves. The habitations surround a cleared central space for parade and drill; the ground is denoted by the tall flag-staff, which does not, as in English camps, distinguish the quarters of the commanding officer. One side is occupied by the officers' bungalows, the other, generally that opposite, by the adjutant's and quartermaster's offices, and the square is completed by low ranges of barrack and commissariat stores, while various little shops, stables, corrals for cattle, a chapel, perhaps an artillery park, and surely an ice-house—in this point India is far behind the wilds of America—complete the settlement. Had these cantonments a few more trees and a far more brilliant verdure, they would suggest the idea of an out-station in Guzerat, the Deccan, or some similar Botany Bay for decayed gentlemen who transport themselves.
While at Washington I had resolved—as has already been intimated—when the reports of war in the West were waxing loud, to enjoy a little Indian fighting. The meritorious intention—for which the severest "wig," concluding with something personally offensive about volunteering in general, would have been its sole result in the "fast-anchored isle"—was most courteously received by the Hon. John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, who provided me with introductory letters addressed to the officers commanding various "departments"— "divisions," as they would ​be called by Englishmen—in the West. The first tidings that saluted my ears on arrival at Fort Kearney acted as a quietus: an Indian action had been fought, which signified that there would be no more fighting for some time. Captain Sturgis, of the 1st Cavalry, U. S., had just attacked, near the Republican Fork of Kansas River, a little south of the fort, with six companies (about 350 men) and a few Delawares, a considerable body of the enemy, Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes, who apparently had forgotten the severe lesson administered to them by Colonel—now Brigadier General—Edwin V. Sumner, 1st Cavalry, in 1857, and killed twenty-five with only two or three of his own men wounded. According to details gathered at Fort Kearney, the Indians had advanced under a black flag, lost courage, as wild men mostly will, when they heard the pas de charge, and, after making a running fight, being well mounted as well as armed, had carried off their "cripples" lashed to their horses. I had no time to call upon Captain Sully, who remained in command at Kearney with two troops (here called companies) of dragoons, or heavy cavalry, and one of infantry; the mail-wagon would halt there but a few minutes. I therefore hurriedly chose the alternative of advancing, with the hope of seeing "independent service" on the road. Intelligence of the fight had made even the conductor look grave; fifty or sixty miles is a flea-bite to a mounted war-party, and disappointed Indians upon the war-path are especially dangerous—even the most friendly can not be trusted when they have lost, or have not succeeded in taking, a few scalps. We subsequently heard that they had crossed our path, but whether the tale was true or not is an essentially doubtful matter. If this chance failed, remained the excitement of the buffalo and the Mormon; both were likely to show better sport than could be found in riding wildly about the country after runaway braves.
We all prepared for the "gravity of the situation" by discharging and reloading our weapons, and bade adieu, about 9 30 A.M., to Fort Kearney. Before dismissing the subject of forts, I am disposed to make some invidious remarks upon the army system of outposts in America.
The War Department of the United States has maintained the same system which the British, much to their loss—I need scarcely trouble the reader with a list of evils done to the soldier by outpost duty—adopted and pertinaciously kept up for so long a time in India; nay, even maintain to the present day, despite the imminent danger of mutiny. With the Anglo-Scandinavian race, the hate of centralization in civil policy extends to military ​organization, of which it should be the vital principle. The French, gifted with instinct for war, and being troubled with scant prejudice against concentration, civil as well as military, soon abandoned, when they found its futility, the idea of defending their Algerian frontier by extended lines, block-houses, and feeble intrenched posts. They wisely established, at the centres of action, depots, magazines, and all the requisites for supporting large bodies of men, making them pivots for expeditionary columns, which by good military roads could be thrown in overwhelming numbers, in the best health and in the highest discipline, wherever an attack or an insurrectionary movement required crushing.
The necessity of so doing has long occurred to the American government, in whose service at present "a regiment is stationed to-day on the borders of tropical Mexico; to-morrow, the war-whoop, borne on a gale from the northwest, compels its presence to the frozen latitudes of Puget's Sound." The objections to altering their present highly objectionable system are two: the first is a civil consideration, the second a military one.
As I have remarked about the centralization of troops, so it is with their relation to civilians; the Anglo-Scandinavian blood shows similar manifestations in the Old and in the New Country. The French, a purely military nation, pet their army, raise it to the highest pitch, send it in for glory, and when it fails are to its faults a little blind. The English and Anglo-Americans, essentially a commercial and naval people, dislike the red coat; they look upon, and from the first they looked upon, a standing army as a necessary nuisance; they ever listen open-eared to projects for cutting and curtailing army expenditure; and when they have weakened their forces by a manner of atrophy, they expect them to do more than their duty, and if they can not command success, abuse them. With a commissariat, transport, and hospitals—delicate pieces of machinery, which can not run smoothly when roughly and hurriedly put together—unaccustomed to and unprepared for service, they land an army 3000 miles from home, and then make the world ring with their disappointment, and their complainings anent fearful losses in men and money. The fact is that, though no soldiers in the world fight with more bravery and determination, the Anglo-Scandinavian race, with their present institutions, are inferior to their inferiors in other points, as regards the art of military organization. Their fatal wants are order and economy, combined with the will and the means of selecting the best men—these belong to the emperor, not to the constitutional king or the president—and most of all, the habit of implicit subjection to the commands of an absolute dictator. The end of this long preamble is that the American government apparently thinks less of the efficiency of its troops than of using them as escorts to squatters, as police of the highway. Withal they fail; emigrants will not be escorted; women and children will struggle when they ​please, even in an Indian country, and every season has its dreadful tales of violence and starvation, massacre and cannibalism. In France the emigrants would be ordered to collect in bodies at certain seasons, to report their readiness for the road to the officers commanding stations, to receive an escort, as he should deem proper, and to disobey at their peril.
The other motive of the American outpost system is military, but also of civilian origin. Concentration would necessarily be unpalatable to a number of senior officers, who now draw what in England would be called command allowances at the several stations. One of the principles of a republic is to pay a man only while he works; pensions, like sinecures, are left to governments less disinterested. The American army—it would hardly be believed—has no pensions, sale of commissions, off-reckonings, nor retiring list. A man hopelessly invalided, or in his second childhood, must hang on by means of furloughs and medical certificates to the end. The colonels are mostly upon the sick-list—one died lately aged ninety-three, and dating from the days of Louis XVI.—and I heard of an officer who, though practicing medicine for years, was still retained upon the cadre of his regiment. Of course, the necessity of changing such an anomaly has frequently been mooted by the Legislature; the scandalous failure, however, of an attempt at introducing a pension-list into the United States Navy so shocked the public that no one will hear of the experiment being renewed, even in corpore vili, the army.
To conclude the subject of outpost system. If the change be advisable in the United States, it is positively necessary to the British in India. The peninsula presents three main points, not to mention the detached heights that are found in every province, as the great pivots of action, the Himalayas, the Deccan, and the Nilgherry Hills, where, until wanted, the Sepoy and his officer, as well as the white soldier—the latter worth £100 a head—can be kept in health, drilled, disciplined, and taught the hundred arts which render an "old salt" the most handy of men. A few years ago the English soldier was fond of Indian service; hardly a regiment returned home without leaving hundreds behind it. Now, long, fatiguing marches, scant fare, the worst accommodation, and the various results of similar hardships, make him look upon the land as a Golgotha; it is with difficulty that he can be prevented from showing his disgust. Both in India and America, this will be the great benefit of extensive railroads: they will do away with single stations, and enable the authorities to carry out a system of concentration most beneficial to the country and to the service, ​which, after many years of sore drudgery, may at last discern the good time coming.
In the United States, two other measures appear called for by circumstances. The Indian race is becoming desperate, wild-beast like, hemmed in by its enemies that have flanked it on the east and west, and are gradually closing in upon it. The tribes can no longer shift ground without inroads into territories already occupied by neighbors, who are, of course, hostile; they are, therefore, being brought to final bay.
The first is a camel corps. At present, when disturbances on a large scale occur in the Far West—the spring of 1862 will probably see them—a force of cavalry must be sent from the East, perhaps also infantry. "The horses, after a march of 500 or 600 miles, are expected to act with success"—I quote the sensible remarks of a "late captain of infantry" (Captain Patterson, U. S. Army)—"against scattered bands of mounted hunters, with the speed of a horse and the watchfulness of a wolf or antelope, whose faculties are sharpened by their necessities; who, when they get short of provisions, separate and look for something to eat, and find it in the water, in the ground, or on the surface; whose bill of fare ranges from grass-seed, nuts, roots, grasshoppers, lizards, and rattlesnakes, up to the antelope, deer, elk, bear, and buffalo, and who, having a continent to roam over, will neither be surprised, caught, conquered, overawed, or reduced to famine by a rumbling, bugle-blowing, drum-beating town passing through their country on wheels, at the speed of a loaded wagon." But the camel would in these latitudes easily march sixty miles per diem for a week or ten days, amply sufficient to tire out the sturdiest Indian pony; it requires water only after every fifty hours, and the worst soil would supply it with ample forage in the shape of wild sage, rabbit-bush, and thorns. Each animal would carry two men, with their arms and ammunition, rations for the time required, bedding and regimental necessaries, with material to make up a tente d'abri if judged necessary. The organization should be that of the Sindh Camel Corps, which, under Sir Charles Napier, was found so efficient against the frontier Beloch. The best men for this kind of fighting would be the Mountaineers, or Western Men, of the caste called "Pikes;" properly speaking, Missourians, but popularly any "rough" between St. Louis and California. After a sound flogging, for the purpose of preparing their minds to admit the fact that all men are not equal, they might be used by sea or land, whenever hard, downright fighting is required. It is understood that hitherto the camel, despite the careful selection by Mr. De Leon, the excellent Consul General of the United States in Egypt, and the valuable instructions of Hekekyan Bey, has proved a failure in the Western world. If so, want of patience has been the sole cause; the animal must be acclimatized by slow degrees before heavy loading to test its pow​ers of strength and speed. Some may deem this amount of delay impossible. I confess my belief that the Anglo-Americans can, within any but the extremest limits, accomplish any thing they please—except unity.
The other necessity will be the raising of native regiments. The French in Africa have their Spahis, the Russians their Cossacks, and the English their Sepoys. The American government has often been compelled, as in the case of the Creek battalion, which did good service during the Seminole campaign, indirectly to use their wild aborigines; but the public sentiment, or rather prejudice, which fathers upon the modern Pawnee the burning and torturing tastes of the ancient Mohawk, is strongly opposed to pitting Indian against Indian in battle. Surely this is a false as well as a mistaken philanthropy. If war must be, it is better that Indian instead of white blood should be shed. And invariably the effect of enlisting savages and barbarians, subjecting them to discipline, and placing them directly under the eye of the civilized man, has been found to diminish their ferocity. The Bashi Buzuk, left to himself, roasted the unhappy Russian; in the British service he brought his prisoner alive into camp with a view to a present or promotion. When talking over the subject with the officers of the United States regular army, they have invariably concurred with me in the possibility of the scheme, provided that the public animus could be turned pro instead of con; and I have no doubt but that they will prove as leaders of Irregulars—it would be invidious to quote names—equal to the best of the Anglo-Indians, Skinner, Beatson, and Jacob. The men would receive about ten dollars per man, and each corps number 300. They would be better mounted and better armed than their wild brethren, and they might be kept, when not required for active service, in a buffalo country, their favorite quarters, and their finest field for soldierlike exercises. The main point to be avoided is the mistake committed by the British in India, that of appointing too many officers to their Sepoy corps.
We left Kearney at 9 30 A.M., following the road which runs forty miles up the valley of the Platte. It is a broad prairie, plentifully supplied with water in wells two to four feet deep; the fluid is cool and clear, but it is said not to be wholesome. Where the soil is clayey pools abound; the sandy portions are of course dry. Along the southern bank near Kearney are few elevations; on the opposite or northern side appear high and wooded bluffs. The road was rough with pitch-holes, and for the first time I remarked a peculiar gap in the ground like an East Indian sun-crack—in these latitudes you see none of the deep fissures which scar the face of mother earth in tropical lands—the effect of rain-streams and snow-water acting upon the clay. Each succeeding winter lengthens the head and deepens the sole of this deeply-gashed water-cut till it destroys the road. A curious mi​rage appeared, doubling to four the strata of river and vegetation on the banks. The sight and song of birds once more charmed us after a desert where animal life is as rare as upon the plains of Brazil. After fifteen miles of tossing and tumbling, we made "Seventeen-mile Station," and halted there to change mules. About twenty miles above the fort the southern bank began to rise into mounds of tenacious clay, which, worn away into perpendicular and precipitous sections, composes the columnar formation called O'Fallon's Bluffs. At 1 15 P.M. we reached Plum Creek, after being obliged to leave behind one of the conductors, who had become delirious with the "shakes." The establishment, though new, was already divided into three; the little landlady, though she worked so manfully, was, as she expressed it, "enjoying bad health;" in other words, suffering from a "dumb chill." I may observe that the Prairie Traveler's opinions concerning the power of encamping with impunity upon the banks of the streams in this country must not be applied to the Platte. The whole line becomes with early autumn a hotbed of febrile disease. And generally throughout this season the stranger should not consider himself safe on any grounds save those defended from the southern trade-wind, which, sweeping directly from the Gulf of Mexico, bears with it noxious exhalations.
About Plum Ranch the soil is rich, clayey, and dotted with swamps and "slews," by which the English traveler will understand sloughs. The dryer portions were a Gulistan of bright red, blue, and white flowers, the purple aster, and the mallow, with its parsnip-like root, eaten by the Indians, the gaudy yellow helianthus—we remarked at least three varieties—the snowy mimulus, the graceful flax, sometimes four feet high, and a delicate little euphorbia, while in the damper ground appeared the polar plant, that prairie compass, the plane of whose leaf ever turns toward the magnetic meridian. This is the "weed-prairie," one of the many divisions of the great natural meadows; grass prairie, rolling prairie, motte prairie, salt prairie, and soda prairie. It deserves a more poetical name, for
"These are the gardens of the desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name."
Buffalo herds were behind the hills, but we were too full of sleep to follow them. The plain was dotted with blanched skulls and bones, which would have made a splendid bonfire. Apparently the expert voyageur has not learned that they form good fuel; at any rate, he has preferred to them the "chips" of which it is said that a steak cooked with them requires no pepper.
We dined at Plum Creek on buffalo, probably bull beef, the ​worst and dryest meat, save elk, that I have ever tasted; indeed, without the assistance of pork fat, we found it hard to swallow. As every one knows, however, the two-year old cow is the best eating, and at this season the herds are ever in the worst condition. The animals calve in May and June, consequently they are in August completely out of flesh. They are fattest about Christmas, when they find it difficult to run. All agree in declaring that there is no better meat than that of the young buffalo: the assertion, however, must be taken cum grano salis. Wild flesh was never known to be equal to tame, and that monarch did at least one wise thing who made the loin of beef Sir Loin. The voyageurs and travelers who cry up the buffalo as so delicious, have been living for weeks on rusty bacon and lean antelope; a rich hump with its proper menstruum, a cup of café noir as strong as possible, must truly be a "tit-bit." They boast that the fat does not disagree with the eater; neither do three pounds of heavy pork with the English plow-boy, who has probably taken less exercise than the Canadian hunter. Before long, buffalo flesh will reach New York, where I predict it will be held as inferior to butcher's meat as is the antelope to park-fed venison. While hunting, Indians cut off the tail to test the quality of the game, and they have acquired by habit a power of judging on the run between fat and lean.
Resuming our weary ride, we watered at "Willow Island Ranch," and then at "Cold Water Ranch"—drinking-shops all—five miles from Midway Station, which we reached at 8 P.M. Here, while changing mules, we attempted with sweet speech and smiles to persuade the landlady, who showed symptoms of approaching maternity, into giving us supper. This she sturdily refused to do, for the reason that she had not received due warning. We had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the employés of the line making themselves thoroughly comfortable with bread and buttermilk. Into the horrid wagon again, and "a rollin:" lazily enough the cold and hungry night passed on.
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 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, 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 300,000 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 3000 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 charivari, 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 calf-skins form their apishamores, or saddle-blankets; the sinews make their bow-strings, thread, and finer cord; every part of the flesh, including the fœtus 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 "parflèche," 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 $10. 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-mémoire, 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 peculiar 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 $30 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 brilliant 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 p———n of 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, 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 manège, 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 parflèche, 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 neck​laces of plates like those worn in the hair. The body dress was a 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 is 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, 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 parflèche 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 packhorses 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 mère 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," 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, 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.
12th August. We cross the Platte.
Boreal aurora glared brighter than a sunset in Syria. The long streamers were intercepted and mysteriously confused by a massive stratum of dark cloud, through whose narrow rifts and jagged chinks the splendors poured in floods of magic fire. Near the horizon the tint was an opaline white—a broad band of calm, steady light, supporting a tender rose-color, which flushed to crimson as it scaled the upper firmament. The mobility of the spectacle was its chiefest charm. The streamers either shot out or shrank from full to half length; now they flared up, widening till they filled the space between Lucifer rising in the east and Aries setting in the west; then they narrowed to the size of a span; now they stood like a red arch with steadfast legs and oscillating summit; then, broadening at the apex, they apparently ​revolved with immense rapidity; at times the stars shone undimmed through the veil of light, then they were immersed in its exceeding brilliancy. After a full hour of changeful beauty, paling in one place and blushing in another, the northern lights slowly faded away with a blush which made the sunrise look colder than its wont. It is no wonder that the imaginative Indian, looking with love upon these beauties, connects them with the ghosts of his ancestors.
Cramped with cold and inaction—at 6 A.M. the thermometer showed only 56° F. in the sun—hungry, thirsty, and by no means in the mildest of humors, we hear with a gush of joy, at 3 15 A.M., the savage Yep! yep! yep! with which the driver announces our approach. The plank lodgings soon appear; we spring out of the ambulance; a qualm comes over us; all is dark and silent as the grave; nothing is prepared for us; the wretches are all asleep. A heavy kick opens the door of the soon-found restaurant, when a pheesy, drowsy voice from an inner room asks us, in German-English—so strong is the causality, the crapulousness of why and wherefore in this "divided, erudite race"—"And how ze komen in?" Without attempting to gratify his intellectual cravings, we ordered him out of bed, and began to talk of supper, refreshment, and repose. But the "critter" had waxed surly after securing for himself a compound epithet, of which "hunds—" is the first syllable, and his every negative answer concluded with a faint murmur of "petampt." I tried to get his bed for Mrs. Dana, who was suffering severely from fatigue. He grumbled out that his "lady and bebbé" were occupying it. At length I hit upon the plan of placing the cushions and cloaks upon the table, when the door opened for a second dog-Teuton, who objected to that article of furniture being used otherwise than for his morning meal. Excédés, and mastering with pain our desire to give these villain "sausage-eaters" "particular fits," we sat down, stared at the fire, and awaited the vile food. For a breakfast cooked in the usual manner, coffee boiled down to tannin (ever the first operation), meat subjected to half sod, half stew, and, lastly, bread raised with sour milk corrected with soda, and so baked that the taste of the flour is ever prominent, we paid these German rascals 75 cents, a little dearer than at the Trois Frères.
At the Upper Crossing of the South Fork there are usually tender adieux, the wenders toward Mormonland bidding farewell to those bound for the perilous gold regions of Denver City and Pike's Peak. If "fresh," they take leave of one another with sincere commiseration for one another's dooms, each deeming, of course, his own the brighter. The wagons were unloaded, thus giving us the opportunity of procuring changes of raiment and fresh caps—our felts had long disappeared under the influence of sleeping on the perch. By some means we retained our old am​bulance, which, after five days and nights, we had learned to look upon as a home; the Judiciary, however, had to exchange theirs for one much lighter and far less comfortable. Presently those bound to Denver City set out upon their journey. Conspicuous among them was a fair woman who had made her first appearance at Cotton-wood Creek—fit place for the lune de mélasse—with an individual, apparently a well-to-do drover, whom she called "Tom" and "husband." She had forgotten her "fixins," which, according to a mischievous and scandalous driver, consisted of a reticule containing a "bishop," a comb, and a pomatum-pot, a pinchbeck watch, and a flask of "Bawme"—not of Meccah. Being a fine young person of Scotch descent, she had, till dire suspicions presented themselves, attracted the attentions of her fellow-travelers, who pronounced her to be "all sorts of a gal." But virtue is rabid in these lands, and the purity of the ermine must not be soiled. It was fortunate for Mr. and Mrs. Mann—the names were noms de voyage—that they left us so soon. In a certain Southern city I heard of a high official who, during a trip upon one of the floating palaces of the Mississippi, had to repeat "deprendi miserum est;" the fond, frail pair was summarily ejected with bag and baggage to furnish itself with a down-stream passage on board a lumber raft.
We crossed the "Padouca" at 6 30 A.M., having placed our luggage and the mails for security in an ox cart. The South Fork is here 600 to 700 yards broad; the current is swift, but the deepest water not exceeding 250 feet, the teams are not compelled to cross diagonally. The channel was broken with sand-banks and islets; the bed was dark and gravelly; the water, though dark as hotel coffee, was clear, not, as described by Captain Stansbury, "perfectly opaque with thick yellow mud," and the earth-banks, which rise to five feet, are never inundated. The half-broken mules often halted, and seemed inclined to lie down; a youth waded on the lower side of the team, shouting and swinging his arms to keep them from turning their heads down stream; the instinct of animals to find an easy ford ended with a few desperate struggles up the black oozy mire. Having reloaded on the left bank, and cast one last look of hatred upon the scene of our late disappointment, we set out at 7 A.M. to cross the divide separating the Northern and Southern Forks of the Platte.
We had now entered upon the outskirts of the American wilderness, which has not one feature in common with the deserts of the Old World. In Arabia and Africa there is majesty in its monotony: those awful wastes so brightly sunburnished that the air above them appears by contrast black; one vast and burning floor, variegated only by the mirage-reek, with nothing below the firmament to relieve or correct the eye. Here it is a brown smooth space, insensibly curving out of sight, wholly wanting "second distance," and scarcely suggesting the idea of immensi​ty; we seem, in fact, to be traveling for twenty miles over a convex, treeless hill-top. The air became sultry, white clouds shut in the sky, and presently arose the high south wind, which at this season blows a gale between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. The ground, bleached where sandy, was thinly scattered here and there with wiry grass, dun and withered, and with coarse and sunburnt shrubs, among which the "leadplant" (Amorphe canescens) was the characteristic. A dwarf aloetic vegetation became abundant; vegetation was fast going the way of all grass; after rain, however, it is doubtless fresh and copious. The buffalo grass sought the shade of the wild sage. A small euphorbia, the cotton-weed, a thistle haunted by the Cynthia cardua, that butterfly common to the eastern and western hemispheres, and a bright putoria, mingled with mushrooms like huge bulbs. The cactus was of two kinds: the flat-leaved species is used by white men to filter water, and by the savages, who peel and toast it, as provaunt: there is another globular variety (an echinocactus) lying stalkless, like a half melon, with its brilliant flowers guarded by a panoply of spines. We pursued a sandy tract, broken by beds of nullahs and fiumaras, between two ridges of hillocks, draining to the right into a low bottom denoted by a lively green, with bays and bends of lush, reed-like grass. This is the well-known Lodge-Pole Creek or Fork, a mere ditch, the longest and narrowest of its kind, rising from a mountain lakelet near the "New Bayou" or "Park," in the Black Hills, and falling into the South Fork of the Platte, about seventy miles west of the bifurcation. By following up this water along the Cherokee trail to its head in the Cheyenne Pass of the Rocky Mountains, instead of describing the arc viâ Fort Laramie, the mail would gain 61 miles; emigrants, indeed, often prefer the short cut. Moreover, from the Cheyenne Pass to Great Salt Lake City, there is, according to accounts, a practicable road south of the present line, which, as it would also save time and labor, has been preferred for the mail line.
In the American Sahara animal life began to appear. The coyote turned and stared at us as though we were trespassing upon his property. This is the jackal of the Western world, the small prairie-wolf, the Canis latrans, and the old Mexican coyotl, best depicted by the old traveler, Abbé Clavigero, in these words: "It is a wild beast, voracious like the wolf, cunning like the fox, in form like the dog, and in some qualities like the jackal." The ​animal has so often been described that there is little new to say about it. The mountain men are all agreed upon one thing, namely, that the meat is by no means bad; most of them have tried "wolf-mutton" in hard times, and may expect to do so again. The civilizee shudders at the idea of eating wolf from a food-prejudice, whose consideration forms a curious chapter in human history. It is not very easy, says Dr. Johnson, to fix the principles upon which mankind have agreed to eat some animals and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, so it is not uniform. Originally invented for hygienic purposes, dietetic laws soon became tenets of religion, and passed far beyond their original intention: thus pork, for instance, injurious in Syria, would not be eaten by a Jew in Russia. An extreme arbitrariness marks the modern systems of civilized people: the Englishman, for instance, eats oysters, periwinkles, shrimps, and frogs, while he is nauseated by the snails, robins, and crows which the Frenchman uses; the Italian will devour a hawk, while he considers a rabbit impure, and has refused to touch potatoes even in a famine; and all delight in that foul feeder, the duck, while they reject the meat of the cleanly ass. The Mosaic law seems still to influence the European world, causing men to throw away much valuable provision because unaccustomed to eat it or to hear of its being eaten. The systems of China and Japan are far more sensible for densely populated countries, and the hippophagists have shown, at least, that one animal has been greatly wasted. The terrible famines, followed by the equally fearful pestilences, which have scourged mankind, are mainly owing to the prevalence of these food-prejudices, which, as might be expected, are the most deeply rooted in the poorer classes, who can least afford them.
I saw to-day, for the first time, a prairie-dog village. The little beast, hardly as large as a Guinea-pig, belongs to the family of squirrels and the group of marmots—in point of manner it somewhat resembles the monkey. "Wish-ton-Wish"—an Indian onomatoplasm—was at home, sitting posted like a sentinel upon the roof, and sunning himself in the midday glow. It is not easy to shoot him; he is out of doors all day; but, timid and alert, at the least suspicion of danger he plunges with a jerking of the tail, and a somersault, quicker than a shy young rabbit's, into the nearest hole, peeping from the ground, and keeping up a feeble little cry (wish! ton! wish!), more like the note of a bird than a bark. If not killed outright, he will manage to wriggle into his home. The villages are generally on the brow of a hill, near a creek or pond, thus securing water without danger of drowning. The earth burrowed out while making the habitations is thrown up in heaps, which serve as sitting-places in the wet season, and give ​a look-out upon the adjacent country; it is more dangerous to ride over them than to charge a field of East Indian "T'hur," and many a broken leg and collar-bone have been the result. The holes, which descend in a spiral form, must be deep, and they are connected by long galleries, with sharp angles, ascents and descents, to puzzle the pursuer. Lieutenant Pike had 140 kettles of water poured into one without dislodging the occupant. The village is always cleared of grass, probably by the necessities of the tenants, who, though they enjoy insects, are mainly graminivorous, and rarely venture half a mile from home. The limits are sometimes three miles square, and the population must be dense, as a burrow will occur every few paces. The Cynomys Ludovicianus prepares for winter by stopping the mouth of its burrow, and constructing a deeper cell, in which it hibernates till spring appears. It is a graceful little animal, dark brown above and white below, with teeth and nails, head and tail somewhat like the gray sciurus of the States. The Indians and trappers eat this American marmot, declaring its flesh to be fatter and better than that of the squirrel. Some travelers advise exposing the meat for a night or two to the frost, by which means the rankness of subterranean flavor is corrected. It is undoubted that the rattlesnake—both of the yellow and black species—and the small white burrowing-owl (Strix cunicularia) are often found in the same warren with this rodent, a curious happy family of reptile, bird, and beast, and in some places he has been seen to associate with tortoises, rattlesnakes, and horned frogs (Phrynosoma). According to some naturalists, however, the fraternal harmony is not so perfect as it might be: the owl is accused of occasionally gratifying his carnivorous lusts by laying open the skull of Wish-ton-Wish with a smart stroke of the beak. We sighted, not far from the prairie-dog village, an animal which I took to be a lynx; but the driver, who had often seen the beast in Minnesota and Old "Ouisconsinc," declared that they are not to be found here.
At 12 45 P.M., traveling over the uneven barren, and in a burning sirocco, we reached Lodge-Pole Station, where we made our "noonin." The hovel fronting the creek was built like an Irish shanty, or a Beloch hut, against a hill side, to save one wall, and it presented a fresh phase of squalor and wretchedness. The mud walls were partly papered with "Harper's Magazine," "Frank Leslie," and the "New York Illustrated News;" the ceiling was a fine festoon-work of soot, and the floor was much like the ground outside, only not nearly so clean. In a corner stood the usual "bunk," a mass of mingled rags and buffalo ​robes; the centre of the room was occupied by a rickety table, and boxes, turned up on their long sides, acted as chairs. The unescapable stove was there, filling the interior with the aroma of meat. As usual, the materials for ablution, a "dipper" or cup, a dingy tin skillet of scanty size, a bit of coarse gritty soap, and a public towel, like a rag of gunny bag, were deposited upon a rickety settle outside.
There being no "lady" at the station on Lodge-Pole Creek, milk was unprocurable. Here, however, began a course of antelope venison, which soon told upon us with damaging effect. I well knew the consequences of this heating and bilious diet in Asia and Africa; but thinking it safe to do at Rome as the Romans do, I followed in the wake of my companions, and suffered with them. Like other wild meats, bear, deer, elk, and even buffalo, antelope will disagree with a stranger; it is, however, juicy, fat, and well-flavored, especially when compared with the hard, dry, stringy stuff which the East affords; and the hunter and trapper, like the Indian, are loud in its praise.
The habitat of the prong-horn antelope (Antelocapra Americana, called "le cabris" by the Canadian, and "the goat" by the unpoetic mountain man) extends from the plains west of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean; it is also abundant on Minnesota and on the banks of the Red River; its southern limit is Northern Mexico, whence it ranges to 53° N. lat. on the Saskatchewan. It is about the size of a small deer, the male weighing 65 lbs. in good condition. The coat is coarse and wiry, yellow dun on the back, with dull white under the belly, and the tanned skin is worth three dollars. It is at once the fleetest and the wariest animal on the prairies, and its sense of hearing as acute as its power of smell. The best time for "still hunting" (i. e., stalking) is at early dawn, when the little herds of four or five are busy grazing. They disappear during the midday heats of summer, and in the evening, as in India and Arabia, they are wild and wary. They assemble in larger bodies near the Rocky Mountains, where pasturage—not sage, which taints the meat—abounds, and the Indian savages kill them by surrounds, especially in winter, when the flesh is fattest. White men usually stalk them. During the migration season few are seen near the road; at other times they are often sighted. They are gifted, like the hippopotamus, with a truly feminine curiosity; they will stand for minutes to stare at a red wagon-bed, and, despite their extreme wariness, they will often approach, within shot, a scarlet kerchief tied to a stick, or any similar decoy. In manner they much resemble the Eastern gazelle. When the herd is disturbed, the most timid moves off first, followed by the rest; the walk gradually increases from a slow trot to a bounding gallop. At times they halt, one by one, and turn to gaze, but they presently resume flight, till they reach some prominent place where their keen vision can ​command the surrounding country. When well roused, they are thoroughly on the alert; the hunter will often find that, though he has moved toward them silently, up the wind and under cover, they have suspected sinister intentions and have shifted ground.
Besides the antelope, there are three species of deer in the regions east of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps the most common is the red deer of the Eastern States (Cervus Virginianus; le chevreuil): it extends almost throughout the length of the continent, and is seemingly independent of altitude as of latitude. The venison is not considered equal to that of the antelope; travelers, however, kill off the deer to save butchers' bills, so that it is now seldom "glimpsed" from the line of route. The black-tailed or long-eared deer (Cervus macrotis) is confined to the higher ground; it has similar habits to the red variety, and is hunted in the same way. The long-tailed, or jumping deer (Cervus leucrurus, vulgarly called the roebuck), affects, like the black-tailed, the Rocky Mountains. The elk (Cervus Canadensis) is found in parts of Utah Territory and forty miles north of the mail-road, near the Wind-River Mountains—a perfect paradise for sportsmen. It is noble shooting, but poor eating as the Indian sambar. The moose (Cervus Alces), the giant of the deer kind, sometimes rising seventeen hands high, and weighing 1200 lbs., is an inhabitant of higher latitudes—Nova Scotia, Canada, Maine, and other parts of New England.
At Lodge-Pole Station, the mules, as might be expected from animals allowed to run wild every day in the week except one, were like newly-caught mustangs. The herdsman—each station boasts of this official—mounted a nag barebacked, and, jingling a bell, drove the cattle into the corral, a square of twenty yards, formed by a wall of loose stones, four to five feet high. He wasted three quarters of an hour in this operation, which a well-trained shepherd's dog would have performed in a few minutes. Then two men entering with lassos or lariats, thongs of flexible plaited or twisted hide, and provided with an iron ring at one end to form the noose—the best are made of hemp, Russian, not Manilla—proceeded, in a great "muss" on a small scale, to secure their victims. The lasso in their hands was by no means the ​"unerring necklace" which the Mexican vaquéro has taught it to be: they often missed their aim, or caught the wrong animal. The effect, however, was magical: a single haul at the noose made the most stiff-necked mule tame as a costermonger's ass. The team took, as usual, a good hour to trap and hitch up: the latter was a delicate operation, for the beasts were comically clever with their hoofs.
At 3 P.M., after a preliminary ringing, intended to soothe the fears of Madame, we set out au grand galop, with a team that had never worked together before. They dashed down the cahues with a violence that tossed us as in a blanket, and nothing could induce them, while fresh, to keep the path. The yawing of the vehicle was ominous: fortunately, however, the road, though self-made, was excellent; the sides were smooth, and the whole country fit to be driven over. At first the view was sadly monotonous. It was a fair specimen of the rolling prairie, in nowise differing from any other land except in the absence of trees. According to some travelers, there is in several places an apparently progressive decay of the timber, showing that formerly it was more extensive than it is now. Others attribute the phenomenon to the destruction of forests in a former era by fires or by the aborigines. It is more satisfactory to account for it by a complication of causes—a want of proper constituents, an insufficiency of rain, the depth of the water below the surface, the severity of the eight months of winter snow, the fierce winds—the hardiest growths that present their heads above the level of the prairies have dead tops—the shortness of the summers, and last, but not least, the clouds of grasshoppers. According to Lieutenant Warren, whose graphic description is here borrowed, these insects are "nearly the same as the locusts of Egypt; and no one who has not traveled on the prairie, and seen for himself, can appreciate the magnitude of the swarms. Often they fill the air for many miles of extent, so that an inexperienced eye can scarcely distinguish their appearance from that of a shower of rain or the smoke of a prairie fire. The height of their flight may be somewhat appreciated, as Mr. E. James saw them above his head, as far as their size would render them visible, while standing on the top of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, 8500 feet above the plain, and an elevation of 14,500 above that of the sea, in the region where the snow lies all the year. To a person standing in one of these swarms as they pass over and around him, the air becomes sensibly darkened, and the sound produced by their wings resembles that of the passage of a train of cars on a railroad when standing two or three hundred yards from the track. The Mormon settlements have suffered more from the ravages of these insects than ​probably all other causes combined. They destroyed nearly all the vegetables cultivated last year at Fort Randall, and extended their ravages east as far as Iowa."
As we advanced, the horizon, every where within musket-shot—a wearying sight!—widened out, and the face of the country notably changed. A scrap of blue distance and high hills—the "Court-house" and others—appeared to the northwest. The long, curved lines, the gentle slopes, and the broad hollows of the divide facing the South Fork changed into an abrupt and precipitous descent, "gullied" like the broken ground of sub-ranges attached to a mountain chain. Deep ravines were parted by long narrow ridges, sharp-crested and water-washed, exposing ribs and backbones of sandstone and silicious lime, like the vertebrae of some huge saurian: scatters of kunker, with a detritus of quartz and granite, clothed the ground, and, after passing Lodge-Pole Creek, which bears away to the west, the rocky steps required the perpetual application of the brake. Presently we saw a dwarf cliff inclosing in an elliptical sweep a green amphitheatre, the valley of our old friend the Platte. On the far bank of its northern fork lay a forty-mile stretch of sandy, barren, glaring, heat-reeking ground, not unlike that which the overland traveler looking southward from Suez sees. We left far to the right a noted spot, Ash Hollow, situated at the mouth of the creek of the same prenomen. It is described as a pretty bit in a barren land, about twenty acres, surrounded by high bluffs, well timbered with ash and cedar, and rich in clematis and other wild flowers. Here, in 1855, the doughty General Harney, with 700 to 800 men, "gave Jessie" to a large war-party of Brûlé Sioux under their chief Little Thunder, of whom more anon, killing 150, and capturing 60 squaws and children, with but seven or eight casualties in his own force.
Descending into the bed of a broad "arroyo," at this season bone dry, we reached, at 5 45 P.M., Mud-Spring Station, which takes its name from a little run of clear water in a black miry hollow. A kind of cress grows in it abundantly, and the banks are bright with the "morning-glory" or convolvulus. The station-house was not unlike an Egyptian fellah's hut. The material was sod, half peat with vegetable matter; it is taken up in large flakes after being furrowed with the plow, and is cut to proper lengths with a short-handled spade. Cedar timber, brought from the neighboring hills, formed the roof. The only accommodation was an open shed, with a sort of doorless dormitory by its side. ​We dined in the shed, and amused ourselves with feeding the little brown-speckled swamp-blackbirds that hopped about us tame and "peert" as wrens, and when night drew near we sought shelter from the furious southern gale, and heard tales of Mormon suffering which made us think lightly of our little hardships. Dreading the dormitory—if it be true that the sultan of fleas inhabits Jaffa and his vizier Grand Cairo, it is certain that his vermin officials have settled pro tem. on Emigration Road—I cast about for a quieter retreat. Fortune favored me by pointing out the body of a dismantled wagon, an article—like the Tyrian keels which suggested the magalia—often used as a habitation in the Far West, and not unfrequently honored by being converted into a bridal-chamber after the short and sharp courtship of the "Perraries." The host, who was a kind, intelligent, and civil man, lent me a "buffalo" by way of bedding; the water-proof completed my outfit, provided with which I bade adieu for a while to this weary world. The thermometer sank before dawn to 62° (F.). After five nights more or less in the cramping wagon, it might be supposed that we should have enjoyed the unusual rest; on the contrary, we had become inured to the exercise; we could have kept it up for a month, and we now grumbled only at the loss of time.
Past the Court-house and Scott's Bluff's. August 13th
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. ​The latter is a pretty bubbling stream, running over sand and stones washed down from the Court-house Ridge; it bifurcates above the ford, runs to the northeast through a prairie four to five miles broad, and swells the waters of old Father Platte: it derives its name from a Frenchman slaughtered by the Indians, murder being here, as in Central Africa, ever the principal source of nomenclature. The heads of both streams afford quantities of currants, red, black, and yellow, and cherry-sticks which are used for spears and pipe-stems.
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 limit 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." The formation is the pliocene and miocene tertiary, uncommonly rich in vertebrate remains: the mauvaises terres are composed of nearly horizontal strata, and "though diversified by the effects of denuding agencies, and presenting in different portions striking characteristics, yet they are, as a whole, a great uniform surface, gradually rising toward the mountains, at the base of which they attain an elevation varying between 3000 and 5500 feet above the level of the sea."
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 powwow, 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. The material is a rough conglomerate of hard marl; the mass is apparently the flank or shoulder of a range forming the southern buttress of the Platte, and which, being composed of softer stuff, has gradually ​melted away, leaving this remnant to rise in solitary grandeur above the plain. In books it is described as resembling a gigantic ruin, with a huge rotunda in front, windows in the sides, and remains of roofs and stages in its flanks: verily potent is the eye of imagination! To me it appeared in the shape of an irregular pyramid, whose courses were inclined at an ascendable angle of 35°, with a detached outwork composed of a perpendicular mass based upon a slope of 45°; in fact, it resembled the rugged earthworks of Sakkara, only it was far more rugged. According to the driver, the summit is a plane upon which a wagon can turn. My military companion remarked that it would make a fine natural fortress against Indians, and perhaps, in the old days of romance and Colonel Bonneville, it has served as a refuge for the harried fur-hunter. I saw it when set off by weather to advantage. A blazing sun rained fire upon its cream-colored surface—at 11 A.M. the glass showed 95° in the wagon—and it stood boldly out against a purple-black nimbus which overspread the southern skies, growling distant thunders, and flashing red threads of "chained lightning."
I had finished a hasty sketch, when suddenly appeared to us a most interesting sight—a neat ambulance, followed by a four-gon and mounted soldiers, from which issued an officer in uniform, who advanced to greet Lieutenant Dana. The traveler was Captain, or rather Major Marcy, who was proceeding westward on leave of absence. After introduction, he remembered that his vehicle contained a compatriot of mine. The compatriot, whose length of facial hair at once told his race—for
"The larger the whisker, the greater the Tory"—
was a Mr. A——, British vice-consul at ***'s, Minnesota. Having lately tried his maiden hand upon buffalo, he naturally concluded that I could have no other but the same object. Pleasant estimate, forsooth, of a man's brain, that it can find nothing in America worthy of its notice but bison-shooting! However, the supposition had a couleur locale. Every week the New York papers convey to the New World the interesting information that some distinguished Britisher has crossed the Atlantic and half crossed the States to enjoy the society of the "monarch of our prairies." Americans consequently have learned to look upon this Albionic eccentricity as "the thing." That unruly member the tongue was upon the point of putting in a something about ​the earnest, settled purpose of shooting a prairie-dog, when the reflection that it was hardly fair so far from home to "chaff" a compatriot evidently big with the paternity of a great exploit, with bit and bridle curbed it fast.
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 simoom 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. The name is not, as is that of the Court-house, a misnomer: one might almost expect to see smoke or steam jetting from the summit. Like most of these queer malformations, it was once the knuckle-end of the main chain which bounded the Platte Valley; the softer Chimney Rock.adjacent strata of marl and earthy limestone were disintegrated by wind and weather, and the harder material, better resisting the action of air and water, has gradually assumed its present form. Chimney Rock lies two and a half miles from the south bank of the Platte. It is composed of a friable yellowish marl, yielding readily to the knife. The shape is a thin shaft, perpendicular and quasi conical. Viewed from the southeast it is not unlike a giant jack-boot based upon a high pyramidal mound, which, disposed in the natural slope, rests upon the plain. The neck of sandstone connecting it with the adjacent hills has been distributed by the floods around the base, leaving an ever-widening gap between. This "Pharos of the prairie sea" towered in former days 150 to 200 feet above the apex of its foundation, and was a landmark ​visible for 40 to 50 miles: it is now barely 35 feet in height. It has often been struck by lightning; imber edax has gnawed much away, and the beginning of the end is already at hand. It is easy to ascend the pyramid; but, while Pompey's Pillar, Peter Botte, and Ararat have all felt the Anglo-Scandinavian foot, no venturous scion of the race has yet trampled upon the top of Chimney Rock. Around the waist of the base runs a white band which sets off its height and relieves the uniform tint. The old sketches of this curious needle now necessarily appear exaggerated; moreover, those best known represent it as a column rising from a confused heap of boulders, thus conveying a completely false idea. Again the weather served us: nothing could be more picturesque than this lone pillar of pale rock lying against a huge black cloud, with the forked lightning playing over its devoted head.
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 quiver with a multitude of whitey-reds. The driver pointed out the grave of a New Yorker who had vainly visited the prairies in search of a cure for consumption. As we advanced the storm increased to a tornado of north wind, blinding our cattle till it drove them off the road. The gale howled through the pass with all the violence of a khamsin, and it was followed by lightning and a few heavy drops of rain. The threatening weather caused a large party of emigrants to "fort themselves" in a corral near the base of Scott's Bluffs.
The corral, a Spanish and Portuguese word, which, corrupted to "kraal," has found its way through Southern Africa, signifies primarily a square or circular pen for cattle, which may be made of tree-trunks, stones, or any other convenient material. The corral of wagons is thus formed. The two foremost are brought near and parallel to each other, and are followed by the rest, disposed aslant, so that the near fore wheel of the hinder touches the off hind wheel of that preceding it, and vice versâ on the other side. The "tongues," or poles, are turned outward, for convenience of yoking, when an attack is not expected, otherwise they are made to point inward, and the gaps are closed by ropes and yoke and spare chains. Thus a large oval is formed with a single opening fifteen to twenty yards across; some find it more convenient to leave an exit at both ends. In dangerous places the passages are secured at night either by cords or by wheeling round the near wagons; the cattle are driven in before sundown, especially when the area of the oval is large enough to enable them to graze, and the men sleep under their vehicles. In safer travel the tents are pitched outside the corral with their doors outward, and in front of these the camp-fires are lighted. The favorite spots with teamsters for corraling are the re-entering angles of deep streams, especially where these have high and precipitous banks, or the crests of abrupt hills and bluffs—the position for nighting usually chosen by the Australian traveler—where one or more sides of the encampment is safe from attack, and the others can be protected by a cross fire. As a rule Indians avoid attacking strong places; this, however, must not always be relied upon; in 1844 the Utah Indians attacked Uintah Fort, a trading-post belonging to M. A. Robidoux, then at St. Louis, slaughtered the men, and carried off the women. The corral is especially useful for two purposes: it enables the wagoners to yoke up with ease, and it secures them from the prairie traveler's prime dread—the stampede. The Western savages are perfectly acquainted with the habits of animals, and in their marauding expeditions they instinctively adopt the system of the Bedouins, ​the Gallas, and the Somal. Providing themselves with rattles and other implements for making startling noises, they ride stealthily up close to the cattle, and then rush by like the whirlwind with a volley of horrid whoops and screams. When the "cavallard" flies in panic fear, the plunderers divide their party; some drive on the plunder, while the others form a rear-guard to keep off pursuers. The prairie-men provide for the danger by keeping their fleetest horses saddled, bridled, and ready to be mounted at a moment's notice. When the animals have stampeded, the owners follow them, scatter the Indians, and drive, if possible, the madrina, or bell-mare, to the front of the herd, gradually turning her toward the camp, and slacking speed as the familiar objects come in sight. Horses and mules appear peculiarly timorous upon the prairies. A band of buffalo, a wolf, or even a deer, will sometimes stampede them; they run to great distances, and not unfrequently their owners fail to recover them.
"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. From a distance of a day's march it appears in the shape of a large blue mound, distinguished only by its dimensions from the detached fragments of hill around. As you approach within four or five miles, a massive medieval city gradually defines itself, clustering, with a wonderful fullness of detail, round a colossal fortress, and crowned with a royal castle. Buttress and barbican, bastion, demilune, and guard-house, tower, turret, and donjon-keep, all are there: in one place Scott's Bluffs.para​pets and battlements still stand upon the crumbling wall of a fortalice like the giant ruins of Château Gaillard, the "Beautiful Castle on the Rock;" and, that nothing may be wanting to the resemblance, the dashing rains and angry winds have cut the old line of road at its base into a regular moat with a semicircular sweep, which the mirage fills with a mimic river. Quaint figures develop themselves; guards and sentinels in dark armor keep watch and ward upon the slopes, the lion of Bastia crouches unmistakably overlooking the road; and as the shades of an artificial evening, caused by the dust-storm, close in, so weird is its aspect that one might almost expect to see some spectral horseman, with lance and pennant, go his rounds about the deserted streets, ruined buildings, and broken walls. At a nearer aspect again, the quaint illusion vanishes; the lines of masonry become yellow layers of boulder and pebble imbedded in a mass of stiff, tamped, bald marly clay; the curtains and angles change to the gashings of the rains of ages, and the warriors are metamorphosed into dwarf cedars and dense shrubs, scattered singly over the surface. Travelers have compared this glory of the mauvaises terres to Gibraltar, to the Capitol at Washington, to Stirling Castle. I could think of nothing in its presence but the Arabs' "City of Brass," that mysterious abode of bewitched infidels, which often appears at a distance to the wayfarer toiling under the burning sun, but ever eludes his nearer search.
Scott's Bluffs derive their name from an unfortunate fur-trader there put on shore in the olden time by his boat's crew, who had a grudge against him: the wretch, in mortal sickness, crawled up the mound to die. The politer guide-books call them "Capitol Hills:" methinks the first name, with its dark associations, must be better pleasing to the genius loci. They are divided into three distinct masses. The largest, which may be 800 feet high, is on the right, or nearest the river. To its left lies an outwork, a huge, detached cylinder whose capping changes aspect from every direction; and still farther to the left is a second castle, now divided from, but once connected with the others. 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. We dashed down the drains and pitch-holes with a violence which shook the nave-bands from our sturdy wheels. Ascending, the driver showed a place ​where the skeleton of an "elephant" had been lately discovered. On the summit he pointed out, far over many a treeless hill and barren plain, the famous Black Hills and Laramie Peak, which has been compared to Ben Lomond, towering at a distance of eighty miles. The descent was abrupt, with sudden turns round the head of earth-cracks deepened to ravines by snow and rain; and one place showed the remains of a wagon and team which had lately come to grief. 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. I had intended to sketch the Bluffs more carefully from the station, but the western view proved to be disappointingly inferior to the eastern. After the usual hour's delay we resumed our drive through alternate puffs of hot and cold wind, the contrast of which was not easy to explain. The sensation was as if Indians had been firing the prairies—an impossibility at this season, when whatever herbage there is is still green. It may here be mentioned that, although the meteorology of the earlier savans, namely, that the peculiar condition of the atmosphere known as the Indian summer might be produced by the burning of the plain-vegetation, was not thought worthy of comment, their hypothesis is no longer considered trivial. The smoky canopy must produce a sensible effect upon the temperature of the season. "During a still night, when a cloud of this kind is overhead, no dew is produced; the heat which is radiated from the earth is reflected or absorbed, and radiated back again by the particles of soot, and the coating of the earth necessary to prevent the deposition of water in the form of dew or hoar-frost is prevented." According to Professor Henry, of Washington, "it is highly probable that a portion of the smoke or fog-cloud produced by the burning of one of the Western prairies is carried entirely across the eastern portion of the continent to the ocean."
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. The house boasted of the usual squaw, a wrinkled old dame, who at once began to prepare supper, when we discreetly left the room. These hard-working but sorely ill-favored beings are accused of various horrors in cookery, such as grinding their pinole, or parched corn, in the impurest manner, kneading dough upon the floor, using their knives for any purpose whatever, and employing the same pot, unwashed, for boiling tea and tripe. In fact, they are about as clean as those Eastern pariah servants who make the knowing Anglo-Indian hold it an abomination to sit at meat with a new arrival or with an officer of a "home regiment." The daughter was an unusually fascinating half-breed, with a pale face and Franco-American features. How comes it that here, as in Hindostan, the French half-caste is pretty, graceful, amiable, coquettish, while the Anglo-Saxon is plain, coarse, gauche, and ill-tempered? The beauty was married to a long, lean down-Easter, who appeared most jealously attentive to her, occasionally hinting at a return to the curtained bed, where she could escape the admiring glances of strangers. Like her mother, she was able to speak English, but she could not be persuaded to open her mouth. This is a truly Indian prejudice, probably arising from the savage, childish sensitiveness which dreads to excite a laugh; even a squaw married to a white man, after uttering a few words in a moment of épanchement, will hide her face under the blanket.
The half-breed has a bad name in the land. Like the negro, the Indian belongs to a species, sub-species, or variety—whichever the reader pleases—that has diverged widely enough from the Indo-European type to cause degeneracy, physical as well as moral, and often, too, sterility in the offspring. These half-breeds are, therefore, like the mulatto, quasi-mules. The men combine the features of both races; the skin soon becomes coarse and wrinkled, and the eye is black, snaky, and glittering like the Indian's. The mongrels are short-lived, peculiarly subject to infectious diseases, untrustworthy, and disposed to every villainy. The half-breed women, in early youth, are sometimes attractive enough, uniting the figure of the mother to the more delicate American face; a few years, however, deprive them of all litheness, grace, and agility. They are often married by whites, who hold them to be more modest and humble, less capricious and less exacting, than those of the higher type: they make good wives and affectionate mothers, and, like the Quadroons, they are more "ambitious"—that is to say, of warmer temperaments than either of the races from which they are derived. The so-called red is a higher ethnic type than the black man; so, in the United States, ​where all admixture of African blood is deemed impure, the aboriginal American entails no disgrace—some of the noblest of the land are descended from "Indian princesses." The half-breed girls resemble their mothers in point of industry, and they barter their embroidered robes and moccasins, and mats and baskets, made of bark and bulrush, in exchange for blankets, calicoes, glass beads—an indispensable article of dress—mirrors, needles, rings, vermilion, and other luxuries. The children, with their large black eyes, wide mouths, and glittering teeth, flattened heads, and remarkable agility of motion, suggest the idea of little serpents.
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.
To Fort Laramie. 14th August.
M. Reynal had been an Indian trader in his youth. Of this race there were in his day two varieties: the regular trader and the coureur des bois, or unlicensed peddler, who was subject to certain pains and penalties. The former had some regard for his future; he had a permanent interest in the Indians, and looked to the horses, arms, and accoutrements of his protégés, so that hunting might not flag. The bois brûlé peddler, having—like an English advertising firm—no hope of dealing twice with the same person, got all he could for what he could. These men soon sapped the foundation of the Indian's discipline. One of them, for instance, would take protection with the chief, pay presents, and by increasing the wealth, enhance the importance of his protector. Another would place himself under the charge of some ambitious aspirant to power, who was thus raised to a position of direct rivalry. A split would ensue; the weaker would secede with his family and friends, and declare independence; a murder or two would be the result, and a blood-feud would be bequeathed from generation to generation. The licensed traders have ever strenuously opposed the introduction of alcohol, a keg of which will purchase from the Indian every thing that is his, his arms, lodge, horses, children, and wives. In olden times, however, the Maine Liquor Law was not, as now, in force through the territories. The coureur des bois, therefore, entered the country through various avenues, from the United States and from Mexico, without other stock in trade but some kegs of whisky, which he retailed at the modest price of $36 per gallon. He usually mixed one part of fire with five of pure water, and then sold a pint-canful for a buffalo robe. "Indian liquor" became a proverbial term. According to some travelers, a barrel of "pure Cincinnati," even after running the gauntlet of railroad and lake travel, has afforded a ​hundred barrels of "good Indian liquor." A small bucketful is poured into a wash-tub of water; a large quantity of "dog-leg" tobacco and red pepper is then added, next a bitter root common in the country is cut up into it, and finally it is colored with burnt sugar—a nice recipe for a morning's headache! The only drawback to this traffic is its danger. The Indian, when intoxicated, is ready for any outrageous act of violence or cruelty; vinosity brings out the destructiveness and the utter barbarity of his character; it makes him thirst tiger-like for blood. The coureur des bois, therefore, who in those days was highly respected, was placed in the Trader's Lodge, a kind of public house, like the Iwanza of Central Africa, and the village chief took care to station at the door a guard of sober youths, sometimes habited like Europeans, ready to check the unauthorized attempts of ambitious clansmen upon the whisky-vendor's scalp. The Western men, who will frequently be alluded to in these pages, may be divided, like the traders, into two classes. The first is the true mountaineer, whom the platitude and tame monotony of civilized republican life has in early youth driven, often from an honored and wealthy family, to the wilds and wolds, to become the forlorn hope in the march of civilization. The second is the offscouring and refuse of the Eastern cities, compelled by want, fatuity, or crime to exile himself from all he most loves. The former, after passing through the preliminary stage greenhorn, is a man in every sense of the term: to more than Indian bravery and fortitude, he unites the softness of woman, and a child-like simplicity, which is the very essence of a chivalrous character; you can read his nature in his clear blue eyes, his sun-tanned countenance, his merry smile, and his frank, fearless manner. The latter is a knave or a fool; it would make "bad blood," as the Frenchman says, to describe him.
M. Reynal's history had to be received with many grains of salt. The Western man has been worked by climate and its consequences, by the huge magnificence of nature and the violent contrasts of scenery, into a remarkable resemblance to the wild Indian. He hates labor—which poet and divine combine to deify in the settled states—as the dire effect of a primeval curse; "loaf" he must and will; to him one hour out of the twenty-four spent in honest industry is satis superque. His imagination is inflamed by scenery and climate, difficulty and danger; he is as superstitious as an old man-o'-war's-man of the olden school; and he is a transcendental liar, like his prototype the aborigine, who in this point yields nothing to the African negro. I have heard of a man riding eighty miles—forty into camp and forty out—in order to enjoy the sweet delights of a lie. His yarns and stories about the land he lives in have become a proverbial ridicule; he will tell you that the sun rises north of what it did se puero; he has seen mountains of diamonds and gold nuggets scattered like rocks ​over the surface of our general mother. I have been gravely told of a herd of bison which arrested the course of the Platte River, causing its waters, like those of the Red Sea, to stand up, wall fashion, while the animals were crossing. Of this Western order is the well-known account of a ride on a buffalo's horns, delivered for the benefit of a gaping world by a popular author of the yellow-binding category. In this age, however, the Western man has become sensitive to the operation of "smoking." A popular Joe Miller anent him is this: A traveler, informed of what he might educe by "querying," asked an old mountaineer, who shall be nameless, what difference he observed in the country since he had first settled in it.
"Wal, stranger, not much!" was the reply; "only when I fust come here, that 'ere mountain," pointing to the tall Uinta range, "was a hole!"
Disembarrassing M. Reynal's recital of its mask of improbabilities and impossibilities, remained obvious the naked fact that he had led the life of a confirmed coureur des bois. The French Canadian and Creole both, like the true Français de France, is loth to stir beyond the devil-dispelling sound of his chapel-bell; once torn from his chez lui, he apparently cares little to return, and, like the Englishman, to die at home in his own land. The adventurous Canadians—in whom extremes meet—have wandered through the length and breadth of the continent; they have left their mark even upon the rocks in Utah Territory. M. Reynal had quitted St. Louis at an early age as trader, trapper, every thing in short, provided with a little outfit of powder, ball, and whisky. At first he was unfortunate. In a war between the Sioux and the Pawnees, he was taken prisoner by the latter, and with much ado preserved, by the good aid of his squaw, that useful article his scalp. Then fickle fortune turned in his favor. He married several wives, identified himself with the braves, and became a little brother of the tribe, while his whisky brought him in an abundance of furs and peltries. After many years, waxing weary of a wandering life, he settled down into the somewhat prosaic position in which we had the pleasure of finding him. He was garrulous as a veteran soldier upon the subject of his old friends the trappers, that gallant advance guard who, sixty years ago, unconsciously fought the fight of civilization for the pure love of fighting; who battled with the Indian in his own way, surpassing him in tracking, surprising, ambuscading, and shooting, and never failing to raise the enemy's hair. They are well-nigh extinct, those old pioneers, wild, reckless, and brave as the British tar of a century past; they live but in story; their place knows them no longer; it is now filled by the "prospector." Civilization and the silk hat have exterminated them. How many deeds of stern fight and heroic endurance have been ignored by this world, which knows nothing of its greatest men, carent ​quia vate sacro! We talk of Thermopylæ and ignore Texas; we have all thrilled at the account of the Mameluke Bey's leap; but how many of us have heard of Major Macculloch's spring from the cliff?
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. After a twelve-mile stretch the driver pointed out on the right of the road, which here runs between high earth-banks, a spot still infamous in local story. At this place, in 1854, five Indians, concealing themselves in the bed of a dwarf arroyo, fired upon the mail-wagon, killing two drivers and one passenger, and then plundered it of 20,000 dollars. ​"Long-chin," the leader, and the other murderers, when given up by the tribe, were carried to Washington, D. C., where—with the ultra-philanthropy which has of modern days distinguished the "Great Father's" government of his "Poor Children of the Plains"—the villains were liberally rewarded and restored to their homes. To cut off a bend of the Platte we once more left the valley, ascended sundry slopes of sand and clay deeply cut by dry creeks, and from the summit enjoyed a pretty view. A little to the left rose the aerial blue cone of that noble landmark, Laramie Peak, based like a mass of solidified air upon a dark wall, the Black Hills, and lit up with the roseate hues of the morning. The distance was about sixty miles; you would have guessed twenty. On the right lay a broad valley, bounded by brown rocks and a plain-colored distance, with the stream winding through it like a thread of quicksilver; in places it was hidden from sight by thickets of red willow, cypress clumps, and dense cool cotton-woods. All was not still life; close below us rose the white lodges of the Ogalala tribe.
These Indian villages are very picturesque from afar when dimly seen dotting the verdure of the valleys, and when their tall white cones, half hidden by willow clumps, lie against a blue background. The river side is the savages' favorite site; next to it the hill foot, where little groups of three or four tents are often seen from the road, clustering mysteriously near a spring. Almost every prairie-band has its own way of constructing lodges, encamping and building fires, and the experienced mountaineer easily distinguishes them.
The Osages make their lodges in the shape of a wagon-tilt, somewhat like our gipsies' tents, with a frame-work of bent willow rods planted in the ground, and supporting their blankets, skins, or tree-basts.
The Kickapoos build dwarf hay-stack huts, like some tribes of Africans, setting poles in the earth, binding them over and lashing them together at the top; they are generally covered with clothes or bark.
The Witchetaws, Wakoes, Towakamis, and Tonkowas are described by the "Prairie Traveler" as erecting their hunting lodges of sticks put up in the form of the frustrum of a cone, and bushed over like "boweries."
All these tribes leave the frame-work of their lodges standing when they shift ground, and thus the particular band is readily recognized.
​The Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Menomenes build lodges in the form of an ellipse, some of them 30—40 feet long, by 14—15 wide, and large enough to shelter twenty people permanently, and sixty temporarily. The covering is of plaited rush-mats bound to the poles, and a small aperture in the lodge acts as chimney.
The Delawares and Shawnees, Cherokees and Choctaws, prefer the Indian pal, a canvas covering thrown like a tente d'abri over a stick supported by two forked poles.
The Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Utahs, Snakes, Blackfeet, and Kiowas use the Comanche lodge covered with bison skins, which by dressing become flexible as canvas. They are usually of a shining white, save where smoke-stained near the top; the lodges of great chiefs are sometimes decorated with horizontal stripes of alternate black and white, and ornamented with figures human and bestial, crosses, circles, and arabesques. The lodge is made of eight to twenty-four straight peeled poles or saplings of ash, pine, cedar, or other wood, hard and elastic if possible, about 20 feet long; the largest marquees are 30 feet in diameter by 35 feet high, and are comprised of 26—30 buffalo skins; and they are sometimes planted round a "basement" or circular excavation two or three feet deep. When pitching, three poles lashed to one another with a long line, somewhat below the thinner points, are raised perpendicularly, and the thicker ends are spread out in a tripod to the perimeter of the circle which is to form the lodge floor; the rest of the poles are then propped against the three first, and disposed regularly and equidistantly to make a steady and secure conical frame-work. The long line attached to the tripod is then wound several times round the point where the poles touch, and the lower end is made fast to the base of the lodge, thus securing the props in position. The covering of dressed, hairless, and water-proof cow-buffalo hide—traders prefer osnaburg—cut and sewn to fit the frame like an envelope, and sometimes pinned together with skewers, is either raised at first with the tripod, or afterward hoisted with a perch and spread round the complete structure. It is pinned to the ground with wooden pegs, and a narrow space forms a doorway, which may be closed with a blanket suspended from above and spread out with two small sticks. The apex is left open with a triangular wing or flap, like a lateen sail, and is prevented from closing by a pole inserted into a pocket at the end. The aperture points to windward when ventilation is required, and, drawing like a wind-sail, it keeps the interior cool and comfortable; when smoke is to be carried off, it is turned to leeward, thus giving draught to the fire, and making the abode warm in the severest weather; while in lodges of other forms, ​you must lie down on the ground to prevent being asphyxiated. By raising the lower part so as freely to admit the breeze, it is kept perfectly free from musquetoes, which are unable to resist the strong draught. The squaws are always the tent-pitchers, and they equal Orientals in dexterity and judgment. Before the lodge of each warrior stands his light spear, planted Bedouin-fashion in the ground, near or upon a tripod of thin, cleanly-scraped wands, seven to eight feet long, which support his spotless white buffalo-skin targe, sometimes decorated with his "totem"—we translate the word "crest"—and guarded by the usual prophylactic, a buckskin sack containing medicine. Readers of "Ivanhoe"—they are now more numerous in the New than in the Old Country—ever feel "a passing impulse to touch one of these spotless shields with the muzzle of the gun, expecting a grim warrior to start from the lodge and resent the challenge." The fire, as in the old Hebridean huts, is built in the centre of the hard dirt floor; a strong stick planted at the requisite angle supports the kettle, and around the walls are berths divided by matted screens; the extremest uncleanliness, however, is a feature never absent. In a quiet country these villages have a simple and patriarchal appearance. The tents, which number from fifteen to fifty, are disposed round a circular central space, where animals can be tethered. Some have attached to them corrals of wattled canes, and a few boast of fields where corn and pumpkins are raised.
The Comanche lodge is the favorite tenement of the Canadian and Creole voyageurs, on account of its coolness or warmth when wanted, its security against violent winds, and its freedom from musquetoes. While traveling in an Indian country they will use no other. It has been simplified by Major H. H. Sibley, of the United States Army, who has changed the pole frame-work for a single central upright, resting upon an iron tripod, with hooks for suspending cooking utensils over the fire; when folded up, the tripod admits the upright between its legs, thereby reducing the length to one half—a portable size. The "Sibley tent" was the only shelter of the United States Army at Fort Scott, in Utah Territory, during the hard winter of 1857–8, and gave universal satisfaction. The officers still keep to the old wall-tent. This will, however, eventually be superseded by the new form, which can accommodate comfortably twelve, but not seventeen, the usual number allotted to it. Captain Marcy is of opinion that of the tents used in the different armies of Europe, "none in point of convenience, comfort, and economy will compare with the 'Sibley tent' for campaigning in cold weather." In summer, however, it has, like all conical tents, many disadvantages: there is always a loss of room; and for comfortably disposing kit chair, table, and camp couch there is nothing equal to the wall-tent. The price of a "Sibley," when made of good material, is from $40 to $50 (£8—£10), and it can be procured from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
​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."
This instrument is originally the gift of Gitchie Manitou, who, standing on the precipice of the Red Pipe-stone Rock, broke off a fragment and moulded it into a pipe, which, finished with a reed, he smoked over his children to the north, south, east, and west. It is of queer shape, not unlike the clay and steatite articles used by the Abyssinians and the Turi or Sinaitic Bedouins. The length of the stick is 23 inches, of the stem 9·50, and of the bowl 5 inches; the latter stands at a right angle upon the former; both are circular; but the 2·75 inches of stem, which project beyond the bowl, are beveled off so as to form an edge at the end. The peculiarity of the form is in the part where the tobacco is inserted; the hole is not more than half an inch broad, and descends straight without a bulge, while the aperture in the stem is exactly similar. The red color soon mottles and the bowl clogs if smoked with tobacco; in fact, it is fit for nothing but the "kinnikinik" of the Indians. To prepare this hard material with the rude tools of a savage must be a work of time and difficulty; also the bowls are expensive and highly valued: for mine I paid $5, and farther West I could have exchanged it for an Indian pony.
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. "Little 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 English 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 pale-face rivals.
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, ​find grumbled certain Western facetiæ concerning "hearty-chokes and caper sauce."
In these lands the horse-thief is the great enemy of mankind; for him there is no pity, no mercy; Lynch-law is held almost too good for him; to shoot him in flagrante delicto is like slaying a man-eating Bengal royal tiger—it entitles you to the respect and gratitude of your species. I asked our conductor whether dandiness was at the bottom of the "buck's" heavy dress. "'Guess," was the reply, "what keeps cold out, keeps heat out tew!"
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.
The straggling cantonment requires no description: it has the usual big flag, barracks, store-houses, officers' quarters, guardhouses, sutlers' stores, and groceries, which doubtless make a good thing by selling deleterious "strychnine" to passing trains who can afford to pay $6 per gallon.
Fort Laramie, called Fort John in the days of the American Fur Company, was used by them as a store-house for the bear and buffalo skins, which they collected in thousands. The old adobe enceinte, sketched and described by Frémont and Stansbury, soon disappeared after the place was sold to the United States government. Its former rival was Fort Platte, belonging in 1842—when the pale face first opened this road—to Messrs. Sybille, Adams, and Co., and situated immediately on the point of land at the junction of Laramie Fort with the Platte. The climate here is arid and parching in summer, but in winter tolerably mild, considering the altitude—4470 feet and the proximity of the Black Hills; yet it has seen hard frost in September. It is also well defended from the warm, moist, and light winds, which, coming from the Mexican Gulf, cause "calentures" on the lower course of the river. The soil around the settlement is gravelly and sterile, the rocks are sand, lime, and clay, and there is a solitary, desolate look upon every thing but the bright little stream that bubbles from the dark heights. The course is from S.W. to N.E.: about half way it bifurcates, with a right fork to the west and main fork east, and near Laramie it receives its main affluent, the Chugwater.
My companion kindly introduced me to the officer commanding the fort, Colonel B. Alexander, 10th Infantry, and we were at once made at home. The amiable mistress of the house must find charitable work enough to do in providing for the wants of way-worn friends who pass through Laramie from east to west, We rested and dined in the cool comfortable quarters, with only one qualm at heart—we were so soon to leave them. On these occasions the driver seems to know by instinct that you are enjoying yourself, while he, as an outsider, is not. He becomes, ​therefore, unusually impatient to start; perhaps, also, time runs more rapidly than it is wont. At any rate, after a short two hours, we were compelled to shake hands with our kind and considerate hosts, and to return to limbo—the mail-wagon.
From Fort Laramie westward the geological formation changes; the great limestone deposits disappear, and are succeeded by a great variety of sandstones, some red, argillaceous, and compact; others gray or yellow, ferruginous, and coarse. Pudding-stones or conglomerates also abound, and the main chain of the Laramie Mountains is supposed to be chiefly composed of this rock.
Beyond the fort there are two roads. The longer leads to the right, near the Platte River. It was formerly, and perhaps is still, a favorite with emigrants. We preferred the left, which, crossing the edges of the Black Hills, is rough and uneven, but is "some shorter," as the guide-book says, than the other. The weather began to be unusually disagreeable with heat and raindrops from a heavy nimbus, that forced us to curtain up the rattling vehicle; perhaps, too, we were a little cross, contrasting the present with the past—civilized society, a shady bungalow, and wonderfully good butter. At 4 P.M., following the Platte Valley, after two hours' drive we halted to change mules at Ward's Station, alias the "Central Star," where several whites were killed by the Sioux in 1855, among them M. Montalan, a Parisian.
Again we started for another twenty-five miles at 4 P.M. The road was rough, and the driver had a curious proclivity for losing the way. I have often found this to be the case after passing through a station. There was little to remark, except that the country was poor and bad, that there was clear water in a ravine to the right, and that we were very tired and surly. But as sorrow comes to an end as well as joy, so, at 9 30 P.M., we drove in, somewhat consoled, to Horseshoe Station—the old Fer à Cheval—where one of the road agents, Mr. Slade, lived, and where we anticipated superior comfort.
We were entichés by the aspect of the buildings, which were on an extensive scale—in fact, got up regardless of expense. An ominous silence, however, reigned around. At last, by hard knocking, we were admitted into a house with the Floridian style of veranda previously described, and by the pretensions of the room we at once divined our misfortune—we were threatened with a "lady." The "lady" will, alas! follow us to the Pacific; even in hymns we read,
"Now let the Prophet's heart rejoice, His noble lady's too."
Our mishap was really worse than we expected—we were exposed to two "ladies," and of these one was a Bloomer. It is only fair to state that it was the only hermaphrodite of the kind that ever met my eyes in the United States; the great founder of the order has long since subsided into her original obscurity, and ​her acolytes have relapsed into the weakness of petticoats. The Bloomer was an uncouth being; her hair, cut level with her eyes, depended with the graceful curl of a drake's tail around a flat Turanian countenance, whose only expression was sullen insolence. The body-dress, glazed brown calico, fitted her somewhat like a soldier's tunic, developing haunches which would be admired only in venison; and—curious inconséquence of woman's nature!—all this sacrifice of appearance upon the shrine of comfort did not prevent her wearing that kind of crinoline depicted by Mr. Punch upon "our Mary Hanne." The pantalettes of glazed brown calico, like the vest, tunic, blouse, shirt, or whatever they may call it, were in peg-top style, admirably setting off a pair of thin-soled Frenchified patent-leather bottines, with elastic sides, which contained feet large, broad, and flat as a negro's in Unyamwezi. The dear creature had a husband: it was hardly safe to look at her, and as for sketching her, I avoided it, as men are bidden by the poet to avoid the way of Slick of Tennessee. The other "lady," though more decently attired, was like women in this wild part of the world generally—cold and disagreeable in manner, full of "proper pride," with a touch-me-not air, which reminded me of a certain
"Miss Baxter, Who refused a man before he axed her."
Her husband was the renowned Slade:
"Of gougers fierce, the eyes that pierce, the fiercest gouger he."
His was a noted name for "deadly strife;" he had the reputation of having killed his three men; and a few days afterward the grave that concealed one of his murders was pointed out to me. This pleasant individual "for an evening party" wore the revolver and bowie-knife here, there, and every where. He had lately, indeed, had a strong hint not to forget his weapon. One M. Jules, a French trader, after a quarrel which took place at dinner, walked up to him and fired a pistol, wounding him in the breast. As he rose to run away Jules discharged a second, which took effect upon his back, and then, without giving him time to arm, fetched a gun and favored him with a dose of slugs somewhat larger than revolver bullets. The fiery Frenchman had two narrow escapes from Lynch-lawyers: twice he was hung between wagons, and as often he was cut down. At last he disappeared in the farther West, and took to lodge and squaw. The avenger of blood threatens to follow him up, but as yet he has taken no steps.
It at once became evident that the station was conducted upon the principle of the Western hotel-keeper of the last generation, and of Continental Europe about A.D. 1500—the innkeeper of "Anne of Geierstein"—that is to say, for his own convenience; the public there was the last thing thought of. One of our party ​
​who had ventured into the kitchen was fiercely ejected by the "ladies." In asking about dormitories we were informed that "lady travelers" were admitted into the house, but that the ruder sex must sleep where it could—or not sleep at all if it preferred. We found a barn outside: it was hardly fit for a decently brought-up pig; the floor was damp and knotty; there was not even a door to keep out the night breeze, now becoming raw, and several drunken fellows lay in different parts of it. Two were in one bunk, embracing maudlingly, and freely calling for drinks of water. Into this disreputable hole we were all thrust for the night: among us, it must be remembered, was a federal judge, who had officiated for years as minister at a European court. His position, poor man! procured him nothing but a broken-down pallet. It was his first trip to the Far West, and yet, so easily are Americans satisfied, and so accustomed are they to obey the ridiculous jack-in-office who claims to be one of the powers that be, he scarcely uttered a complaint. I, for one, grumbled myself to sleep. May gracious Heaven keep us safe from all "ladies" in future! better a hundred times the squaw, with her uncleanliness and civility.
We are now about to leave the land of that great and dangerous people, the Sioux, and before bidding adieu to them it will be advisable to devote a few pages to their ethnology.
* ↑ The following table shows the lengths, comparative costs, etc., of the several routes explored for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific, as extracted from the Speech of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, on the Pacific Railway Bill in the United States Senate, January, 1859, and quoted by the Hon. Sylvester Maury in the "Geography and Resources of Arizona and Sonora."   Routes. Distance by proposed railroad route. Sum of ascents and descents. Comparative cost of different routes. No. of miles of route through arable lands. No. of miles of route through land generally uncultivable, arable soil being found in small areas. Altitude above the sea of the highest point on the route. Miles. Feet Dollars. Feet. Route near forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels, from St. Paul to Seattle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1955 18,654 135,871,000 535 1490 6,044 Route near forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels, from St. Paul to Vancouver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800 17,645 425,781,000 374 1490 6,044 Route near forty-first and forty-second parallels, from Rock Island, via South Pass, to Benicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2299 29,120* 122,770,000 899 1400 8,373 Route near thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels, from St. Louis, via Coo-che-to-pa and Tah-ee-chay-pah passes to San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2325 49,985† Impracticable. 865 1460 10,032 Route near thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels, from St. Louis, via Coo-chee-to-pa and Madeline Passes, to Benicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2535 56,514‡ Impracticable. 915 1620 10,032 Route near thirty-fifth parallel, from Memphis to San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2366 48,521† 113,000,000 916 1450 7,550 Route near thirty-second parallel, from Memphis to San Pedro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2090 48,862† 99,000,000 690 1400 7,550 Route near thirty-second parallel, near Gaines' Landing, to San Francisco by coast route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2174 38,200§ 94,000,000 984 1190 5,717 Route near thirty-second parallel, from Gaines' Landing to San Pedro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1748 30,181§ 72,000,000 558 1190 5,717 Route near thirty-second parallel, from Gaines' Landing to San Diego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1683 33,454 72,000,000 524 1159 5,717 * The ascents and descents between Rock Island and Council Bluffs are not known, and therefore not included in this sum. † The ascents and descents between St. Louis and Westport are not known, and therefore not included in this sum. ‡ The ascents and descents between Memphis and Fort Smith are not known, and therefore not included in this sum. § The ascents and descents between Gaines' Landing and Fulton are not known, and therefore not included in this sum.
* ↑ Printed by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1859, and Messrs. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., Ludgate Hill, and amply meriting the honors of a second edition.
* ↑ In the American Almanac for 1861 (p. 196), the length of routes in Utah Territory is 1450 miles, 533 of which have no specified mode of transportation, and the remainder, 977, in coaches; the total transportation is thus 170,872 miles, and the total cost $144,638.
* ↑ "Rancho" in Mexico means primarily a rude thatched hut where herdsmen pass the night; the "rancharia" is a sheep-walk or cattle-run, distinguished from a "hacienda," which must contain cultivation. In California it is a large farm with grounds often measured by leagues, and it applies to any dirty hovel in the Mississippian Valley.
* ↑ Often corrupted from the Spanish to muskeet (Algarobia glandulosa), a locust inhabiting Texas, New Mexico, California, etc., bearing, like the carob generally, a long pod full of sweet beans, which, pounded and mixed with flour, are a favorite food with the Southwestern Indians.
* ↑ Some of my informants derived the word from the Greek letter; others make it Hispano-Mexican.
* ↑ St. Louis (Mo.) lies in N. lat. 28° 37' and W. long. (G.) 90° 16': its elevation above tide water is 461 feet: the latest frost is in the first week of March, the earliest is in the middle of November, giving some 115 days of cold. St. Joseph (Mo.) lies about N. lat. 39° 40', and W. long. (G.) 34° 54'.
* ↑ In Canada they call personal luggage butin.
* ↑ A "Drink" is any river: the Big Drink is the Mississippi.
* ↑ And no wonder! "I advise you, one and all, to enter every election district in Kansas and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver. Neither give nor take quarter, as our case demands it." "I tell you, mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted with Free-soilism or Abolitionism, and exterminate him. Neither give nor take quarter from them." (Extracts from Speeches of General Stringfellow—happy name!—in the Kansas Legislature.)
* ↑ The basswood (Tilia Americana) resembles our linden: the trivial name is derived from "bast," its inner bark being used for mats and cordage. From the pliability of the bark and wood, the name of the tree is made synonymous with "doughface" in the following extract from one of Mr. Brigham Young's sermons: "I say, as the Lord lives, we are bound to become a sovereign state in the Union, or an independent nation by ourselves; and let them drive us from this place if they can—they can not do it. I do not throw this out as a banter. You Gentiles, and hickory and basswood Mormons, can write it down, if you please; but write it as I speak it." The above has been extracted from a "Dictionary of Americanisms," by John Russell Bartlett (London, Trubner and Co., 1859), a glossary which the author's art has made amusing as a novel.
* ↑ The word is somewhat indefinite. Hunters apply it generally to the bare lands lying westward of the timbered course of the Mississippi; in fact, to the whole region from the southern Rio Grande to the Great Slave Lake.
* ↑ American authors derive the word from the Canadian chienté, a dog-kennel. It is, however, I believe, originally Irish.
* ↑ In the days of Major Pike, who, in 1805–6–7, explored, by order of the government of the United States, the western territories of North America, the Sacs numbered 700 warriors and 750 women; they had four villages, and hunted on the Mississippi and its confluents from the Illinois to the Iowa River, and on the western plains that bordered on the Missouri. They were at peace with the Sioux, Osages, Potawatomies, Menomenes or Folles Avoines, Iowas, and other Missourian tribes, and were almost consolidated with the Foxes, with whose aid they nearly exterminated the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorians. Their principal enemies were the Ojibwas. They raised a considerable quantity of maize, beans, and melons, and were celebrated for cunning in war rather than for courage.
* ↑ From the same source we learn that the Ottagamies, called by the French Les Renards, numbered 400 warriors and 500 women: they had three villages near the confluence of the Turkey River with the Mississippi, hunted on both sides of the Mississippi from the Iowa stream below the Prairie du Chien to a river of that name above the same village, and annually sold many hundred bushels of maize. Conjointly with the Sacs, the Foxes protected the Iowas, and the three people, since the first treaty of the two former with the United States, claimed the land from the entrance of the Jauflione on the western side of the Mississippi, up the latter river to the Iowa above the Prairie du Chien, and westward to the Missouri. In 1807 they had ceded their lands lying south of the Mississippi to the United States, reserving to themselves, however, the privileges of hunting and residing on them.
* ↑ The Winnebagoes, Winnipegs (turbid water), or Ochangras numbered, in 1807, 450 warriors and 500 women, and had seven villages on the Wisconsin, Rock, and Fox Rivers, and Green Bay: their proximity enabled the tribe to muster in force within four days. They then hunted on the Rock River, and the eastern side of the Mississippi, from Rock River to the Prairie du Chien, on Lake Michigan, on Black River, and in the countries between Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. Lieutenant Pike is convinced, "from a tradition among themselves, and their speaking the same language as the Ottoes of the Platte River," that they are a tribe who about 150 years before his time had fled from the oppression of the Mexican Spaniards, and had become clients of the Sioux. They have ever been distinguished for ferocity and treachery.
* ↑ According to Mormon rule, however, the full team consists of one wagon (12 ft. long, 3 ft. 4 in. wide, and 18 in. deep), two yoke of oxen, and two milch cows. The Saints have ever excelled in arrangements for travel by land and sea.
* ↑ For instance, "whisky is now tested by the distance a man can walk after tasting it. The new liquor called 'Tangle-leg' is said to be made of diluted alcohol, nitric acid, pepper, and tobacco, and will upset a man at a distance of 400 yards from the demijohn."
* ↑ Captain Marcy, in quoting Mr. Andersson's remarks on ox-riding in Southwestern Africa, remarks that "a ring instead of a stick put through the cartilage of the animal's nose would obviate the difficulty of managing it." As in the case of the camel, a ring would soon be torn out by an obstinate beast: a stick resists.
* ↑ The following is the first advertisement: "To San Francisco in eight days, by the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company. "The first courier of the 'Pony Express' will leave the Missouri River on Tuesday, April the 3d, at — o'clock P.M., and will run regularly weekly hereafter, carrying a letter mail only. The point on the Missouri River will be in telegraphic communication with the East, and will be announced in due time. "Telegraphic messages from all parts of the United States and Canada, in connection with the point of departure, will be received up to 5 o'clock P.M. of the day of leaving, and transmitted over the Placerville and St. Joseph Telegraph-wire to San Francisco and intermediate points by the connecting Express in eight days. The letter mail will be delivered in San Francisco in ten days from the departure of the Express. The Express passes through Forts Kearney, Laramie, and Bridger, Great Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Carson City, the Washoe Silver Mines, Placerville, and Sacramento. And letters for Oregon, Washington Territory, British Columbia, the Pacific Mexican Ports, Russian Possessions, Sandwich Islands, China, Japan, and India, will be mailed in San Francisco. "Special messengers, bearers of letters, to connect with the Express of the 3d April, will receive communications for the Courier of that day at No. 481 Tenth Street, Washington City, up to 2 45 P.M. on Friday, March 30th; and in New York, at the office of J.B. Simpson, Room No. 8 Continental Bank Building, Nassau Street, up to 6 50 A.M. of 31st March. "Full particulars can be obtained on application at the above places, and from the Agents of the Company. W. H. Russell, President. "Leavenworth City, Kansas, March, 1860. "Office, New York. J. B. Smipson, Vice-President; Samuel and Allen, Agents, St. Louis, Mo.; H. J. Spaulding, Agent, Chicago."
* ↑ The "Missouri Compromise" is an important event in Anglo-American history; it must be regarded as the great parent of the jangles and heart-burnings which have disunited the United States. The great Jefferson prophesied in these words: "the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what more God only knows. From the battle of Bunker's Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous a question." The origin of the trouble was this. In 1817 the eastern half of the Mississippi Territory became the Territory of Alabama, and—in those days events had wings—the 14th of Dec., 1819, witnessed the birth of Alabama as a free sovereign and independent slave state. The South, strong in wealth and numbers, thereupon moved toward legalizing slavery in the newly-acquired Territory of Missouri, and when Missouri claimed to be admitted as a state, demanded that it should be admitted as a slave state. The Free-soilers, or opposite party, urged two reasons why Missouri should be a free state. Firstly, since the date of the union eight new states had been admitted, four slave and four free. Alabama, the last, was a slave state, therefore it was the turn for a free state. Secondly—and here was the rub—that "slavery ought not to be permitted in any state or territory where it could be prohibited." This very broad principle involved, it is manifest, the ruin of the slave-ocracy. From the days of Mr. Washington to those of Mr. Lincoln, the northern or labor states have ever aimed at the ultimate abolition of servitude by means of non-extension. The contest about Missouri began in 1818, and raged for three years, complicated by a new feature, namely, Maine separating herself from Massachusetts, and balancing the admission of Alabama by becoming a free state. The Lower House several times voted to exclude the "peculiar institution" from the new state, and the conservative Senate—in which the Southern element was ever predominant—as often restored it. Great was the war of words among the rival legislators; at length, after repeated conferences, both Senate and House agreed upon a bill admitting Missouri, after her Constitution should be formed, free of restriction, but prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30'. Missouri acknowledged the boon by adopting a Constitution which denied the rights of citizens even to free negroes. She was not finally admitted until the 10th of August, 1821, when her Legislature had solemnly covenanted to guarantee the rights of citizenship to "the citizens of either of the states." Such is an outline of the far-famed "Missouri Compromise." The influence of the Southern slaveholders caused it to be repealed, as a slip of Texas happened to lie north of the prohibitative latitude, and the late Mr. S. A. Douglas did it to death in 1854. The Free-soilers, of course, fought hard against the "sad repeal," and what they now fight about, forty years afterward, is to run still farther south the original line of limitation. Hinc illæ lachrymæ!
* ↑ The Scalp-hunters, chap. xlii.
* ↑ For an accurate geographical description of this little-known river, the reader is referred to Lieutenant Warren's report, published by the Secretary of War, United States.
* ↑ The following is a list of the military departments into which the United States are divided: Military Commands. Department of the East.—The country east of the Mississippi River; head-quarters at Troy, N. Y. Department of the West.—The country west of the Mississippi River, and east of the Rocky Mountains, except that portion included within the limits of the departments of Texas and New Mexico; head-quarters at St. Louis, Mo. Department of Texas.—The State of Texas, and the territory north of it to the boundaries of New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas, and the Arkansas River, including Fort Smith. Fort Bliss, in Texas, is temporarily attached to the department of New Mexico; head-quarters at San Antonio, Texas. Department of New Mexico.—The Territory of New Mexico; head-quarters at Santa Fé, New Mexico. Department of Utah.—The Territory of Utah, except that portion of it lying west of the 117th degree of west longitude; head-quarters, Camp Floyd, U. T. Department of the Pacific.—The country west of the Rocky Mountains, except those portions of it included within the limits of the departments of Utah and New Mexico, and the district of Oregon; head-quarters at San Francisco, California. District of Oregon.—The Territory of Washington and the State of Oregon, excepting the Rogue River and Umpqua districts in Oregon; head-quarters at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory.
* ↑ The aggregate of the little regular army of the United States in 1860 amounted to 18,093. It was dispersed into eighty military posts, viz., thirteen in the Department of the East, nine in the West, twenty in Texas, twelve in the Department of New Mexico, two in Utah (Fort Bridger and Camp Floyd), eleven in Oregon, and thirteen in the Department of California. They each would have an average of about 225 men.
* ↑ The chip corresponds with the bois de vache of Switzerland, the tezek of Armenia, the arghol of Thibet, and the gobar of India. With all its faults, it is at least superior to that used in Sindh.
* ↑ According to Colonel Frémont, the total amount of buffalo robes purchased by the several companies, American, Hudson's Bay, and others, was an annual total of 90,000 from the eight or ten years preceding 1843. This is repeated by the Abbé Domenech, who adds that the number does not include those slaughtered in the southern regions by the Comanches and other tribes of the Texan frontier, nor those killed between March and November, when the skins are unfit for tanning. In 1847, the town of St. Louis received 110,000 buffalo robes, stags', deer, and other skins, and twenty-five salted tongues.
* ↑ Exploration and Survey, etc., chap. ix.
* ↑ "Prairie bitters"—made of a pint of water and a quarter of a gill of buffalo gall—are considered an elixir vita by old voyageurs.
* ↑ Columbus and Vespucius both died in the conviction that they had only discovered portions of Asia. Indeed, as late as 1533, the astronomer Schöner 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.
* ↑ This Algonquin word is written moccasson or mocasin, and is pronounced moksin.
* ↑ The first is the firefly, the second is the dragon-fly, called in country parts of England "the Devil's needle."
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ There is another kind of cactus called by the whites "whisky-root," and by the Indian "peioke," used like the intoxicating mushroom of Siberia. "It grows in Southern Texas, in the range of sand-hills bordering on the Rio Grande, and in gravelly, sandy soil. The Indians eat it for its exhilarating effect on the system, producing precisely the same excitement as alcoholic drinks. It is sliced as you would a cucumber; the small piece is chewed and swallowed, and in about the same time as comfortably tight cocktails would 'stir the divinity within' you, this indicates itself; only its effects are what I might term a little k-a-v-o-r-t-i-n-g, giving rather a wilder scope to the imagination and actions." (A Correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune, quoted by Mr. Bartlett.)
* ↑ The name will recall to mind one of Mr. Fennimore Cooper's admirable fictions, the "Wept of Wish-ton-Wish," which was, however, a bird, the "Whip-poor-will," or American night-hawk.
* ↑ American writers derive this word from the Anglo-Saxon benc, whence the modern English "bench." It means a wooden case used in country taverns and in offices, and serving alike for a seat during the day and a bed at night. In towns it is applied to the tiers of standing bed peculiar to the lowest class of lodging-houses. In the West, it is a frame-work, in size and shape like a berth on board ship, sometimes single, sometimes double or treble.
* ↑ The elk is being domesticated in the State of New York; it is still, however, doubtful whether the animals will fatten well or supply milk, or serve for other than ornamental purposes.
* ↑ The mustang is the Spanish mesteño. The animal was introduced by the first colonists, and allowed to run at large. Its great variety of coat proves the mustang's degeneracy from the tame horse; according to travelers, cream-color, skewbald, and piebald being not uncommon. "Sparing in diet, a stranger to grain, easily satisfied whether on growing or dead grass, inured to all weathers, and capable of great labor," the mustang-pony is a treasure to the prairie-man.
* ↑ According to Mr. Bartlett, the lasso (Span, "lazo") is synonymous with "lariat" (Span. "lariata"). In common use, however, the first word is confined to the rope with which buffaloes, mustangs, or mules are caught; the second, which in the West is popularly pronounced "lariet," or "lariette," more generally means the article with which animals are picketed. Many authors, however, have made "lariat" the equivalent of "lasso." The Texans use, instead of the hide lasso, a hair rope called "caberes," from the Spanish "cabestro," a halter.
* ↑ According to Lieutenant Warren, the tract called the Sand-hills occupies an area, north of the Platte, not less than 20,000 square miles: from between the Niobrara and White Rivers to the north, probably beyond the Arkansas in the south.
* ↑ The Arabo-Spanish "arroyo," a word almost naturalized by the Anglo-Americans, exactly corresponds with the Italian "fiumara" and the Indian nullah.
* ↑ The word "cedar," in the United States, is applied to various genera of the pine family. The red cedar (J. Virginiana) is a juniper. The "white cedar" of the Southern swamps is a cypress.
* ↑ The Mormon emigrants usually start from Council Bluffs, on the left bank of the Missouri River, in N. lat. 41° 18' 50", opposite Kanesville, otherwise called Winter Quarters. According to the "Overland Guide," Council Bluffs is the natural crossing of the Missouri River, on the route destined by Nature for the great thoroughfare to the Pacific. This was the road selected by "Nature's civil engineers," the buffalo and the elk, for their western travel. The Indians followed them in the same trail; then the travelers; next the settlers came. After ninety-four miles marching, the Mormons are ferried across Loup Fork, a stream thirteen rods wide, full of bars, with banks and a bottom all quicksand. Another 150 miles takes them to the Platte River, where they find good camping-places, with plenty of water, buffalo-chips, and grass. Eighty-two miles beyond that point (a total of 306), they arrive at "Last Timber," a station so called because, for the next 300 miles on the north side of the Platte, the only sign of vegetation is "Lone Tree." Many emigrants avoid this dreary "spell" by crossing the Platte opposite Ash Hollow. Others pass it at Platte-River Ferry, a short distance below the mouth of Laramie River, while others keep the old road to the north.
* ↑ Punkin (i. e., pumpkin) and corn (i. e., zea maize) are, and were from time immemorial, the great staples of native American agriculture.
* ↑ According to Webster, "forks" (in the plural)—the point where a river divides, or rather where two rivers meet and unite in one stream. Each branch is called a "fork." The word might be useful to English travelers.
* ↑ The price of the strong light traveling wagon called an ambulance in the West is about $250; in the East it is much cheaper. With four mules it will vary from $750 to $900; when resold, however, it rarely fetches half that sum. A journey between St. Joseph and Great Salt Lake City can easily be accomplished in an ambulance within forty days. Officers and sportsmen prefer it, because they have their time to themselves, and they can carry stores and necessaries. On the other hand, "strikers"—soldier-helps—or Canadian engagés are necessary; and the pleasure of traveling is by no means enhanced by the nightly fear that the stock will "bolt," not to be recovered for a week, if then.
* ↑ According to M. Preuss, who accompanied Colonel Frémont's expedition, " travelers who visited it some years since placed its height at upward of 500 feet," though in his day (1842) it had diminished to 200 feet above the river.
* ↑ From the St. Joseph (Mo.) Gazette: " Obituary.—Departed this life, at his residence in this city, on Wednesday, the 29th day of August, 1860, after a long illness, Antoine Robidoux, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Mr. Robidoux was born in the city of St. Louis, in the year 1794. He was one of the brothers of Mr. Joseph Robidoux, founder of the city of St. Joseph. He was possessed of a sprightly intellect and a spirit of adventure. When not more than twenty-two years of age he accompanied Gen. Atkinson to the then very wild and distant region of the Yellow Stone. At the age of twenty-eight he went to Mexico, and lived there fifteen years. He then married a very interesting Mexican lady, who returned with him to the States. For many years he traded extensively with the Navajoes and Apaches. In 1840 he came to this city with his family, and has resided here ever since. In 1845 he went out to the mountains on a trading expedition, and was caught by the most terrible storms, which caused the death of one or two hundred of his horses, and stopped his progress. His brother Joseph, the respectable founder of this city, sent to his relief and had him brought in, or he would have perished. He was found in a most deplorable condition, and saved. In 1846 he accompanied Gen. Kearney, as interpreter and guide, to Mexico. In a battle with the Mexicans he was lanced severely in three places, but he survived his wounds, and returned to St. Joseph in 1849. Soon after that he went to California, and remained until 1854. In 1855 he removed to New Mexico with his family, and in 1856 he went to Washington, and remained there a year, arranging some business with the government. He then returned to St. Joseph, and has remained here ever since. Mr. Robidoux was a very remarkable man. Tall, slender, athletic, and agile, he possessed the most graceful and pleasing manners, and an intellect of a superior order. In every company he was affable, graceful, and highly pleasing. His conversation was always interesting and instructive, and he possessed many of those qualities which, if he remained in the States, would have raised him to positions of distinction. He suffered for several years before his death with a terrible soreness of the eyes, which defied the curative skill of the doctors; and for the past ten years he has been afflicted with dropsy. A week or two ago he was taken with a violent hemorrhage of the lungs, which completely prostrated him, and from the effects of which he never recovered. He was attended by the best medical skill, and his wife and many friends were with him to the hour of his dissolution, which occurred on Monday morning, at four o'clock, at his residence in this city. He will be long remembered as a courteous, cultivated, agreeable gentleman, whose life was one of great activity and public usefulness, and whose death will be long lamented."
* ↑ The dry heat of the prairies in summer causes the wood to warp by the percolation of water, which the driver restores by placing the wheels for a night to stand in some stream. Paint or varnish is of little use. Moisture may be drawn out even through a nail-hole, and exhaust the whole interior of the wood-work.
* ↑ These remarks are borrowed from a paper by Professor Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, entitled "Meteorology in its Connection with Agriculture." The Indian summer is synonymous with our St. Martin's or Allhallows summer, so called from the festival held on the 11th of November. "The Indians avail themselves of this delightful time for harvesting their corn; and the tradition is that they were accustomed to say they always had a second summer of nine days before the winter set in. It is a bland and genial time, in which the birds, insects, and plants feel a new creation, and enjoy a short-lived summer ere they shrink finally from the rigor of the winter's blast. The sky, in the mean time, is generally filled with a haze of orange and gold, intercepting the direct rays of the sun, yet possessing enough of light and heat to prevent sensations of gloom or chill, while the nights grow sharp and frosty, and the necessary fires give cheerful forecast of the social winter evenings near at hand."—The National Intelligencer, Nov. 26th, 1857, quoted by Mr.Bartlett.
* ↑ The Western "biscuit" is English roll; "cracker" is English biscuit. The "dough-nut" is, properly speaking, a "small roundish cake, made of flour, eggs, and sugar, moistened with milk and boiled in lard" (Webster). On the prairies, where so many different materials are unprocurable, it is simply a diminutive loaf, like the hot roll of the English passenger steamer.
* ↑ A United States official, fresh from Columbia, informed me that the Indians there think twice before they murder a King George's man (Briton), while they hardly hesitate to kill a Boston man or American citizen. He attributed this peculiarity principally to the over lenity of his own government, and its want of persistency in ferreting out and punishing the criminal. Under these circumstances, it is hardly to be wondered at if the trader and traveler in Indian countries take the law in their own hands. This excessive clemency has acted evilly in "either Ind." We may hope that its day is now gone by.
* ↑ The wigwams, huts, or cabins of the Eastern American tribes were like these, large, solid, and well roofed with skins. The word "lodge" is usually applied to the smaller and less comfortable habitations of the Prairie Indians.
* ↑ "Longknife." The whites have enjoyed this title since 1758, when Captain Gibson cut off with his sabre the head of Little Eagle, the great Mingo or Chief, and won the title of Big-Knife Warrior. Savages in America as well as Africa who ignore the sword always look upon that weapon with horror. The Sioux call the Americans Wasichi, or bad men.