Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1903-05-23

gulue ny lnStllct, we should have been
in need OF rescue ourselves. AS it was
we craWled good bit of time
More than once in trying to walk
was picked off my feet, and thrown
against the frozen earth of the hank
with whack that would have broken
by bones but for my heavy clothing
Louis led the way to a point of hluff
opposite Strikes-the -Ree's village and
then we crawled on hands and knees
across half mile of rough, wind-swept
ice-a slow and mighty cold and tire
some business.
when we reached the opposite
bluffs, mountains of snow were all the
landmarks we could find. In spite of
Louis keen sense of locality, we were
lost when we had toiled up the heights
of these packed drifts. We couldn't
keep our feet for second at their tops.
The hard, driven snow cut our faces
like knife edges. We couldn't hold
them up against the wind for five sec
onds.
well, we crawled around on the
LUpo VI tAAOoC oAO" LIOuuldluS 1OT nall
an hour or more. We were discouraged
and half frozen, when the edge of a
high drift broke and plunged us into
the bottom .of coulee
Il used to love coasting among the
Alleghanies, but l reckon I never took
such slide on my own hook as / got
then. 1t was like dropping off the
edge of the moon.
''At the bottom, with our luggage, we
were buried many feet deep in soft
snow. When we had erawled out we
found ourselves at the bottom or
coulee, with rain of fine snow Sitting
down upon us. We waded down this
ravine until we came to the river ice,
and then by certain cottonwood tree
that we ran against, Louis knew where
we were.
eve now went up the coulee, and in
a grove of small frs and willows we
found our Indians, seventeen of them,
still alive, but in pitiable and perish
ing condition. They had crawled out
from the wrecks of their tepees, fetch
ing such blankets, robes and things as
they could burrow in the snow with;
and when they got into the outer world
the fine snow of the slide had filed
their moleholes, so that they could go
back for nothing else. There wasn't a
match in the crowd!
"The women had scooped large
hole in the snow, and they lay huddled
together like parcel of quail. The
children were up in the centre of the
heap, and so were tho warmest of the
lot; but all of them were so nearly
dead that they could with difficulty be
made to realize that help, of a sort,
was at hand.
eve had to jerk them to their feet
and pull and hustle them around, one
at a time; and we pounded and
whacked some of them in a way that
would have caused a flourish of knives
and hatchets if they had been much
alive. Louis did most of this work
while I cut small slices of bacon and
the fact that had to make the Indians
eat shows how nearly dead these peo-
pie were. Into each slice of bacon
folded a dose of Cayenne pepper that
would have warmed buffalo bull.
eff the spot they lay in had not been
sheltered from the wind, we could not
have saved one of them. After halt
an hour or so the Cayenne pepper and
the forced exercise began to show their
effect. While the older ones ate bacon
onI I worked with
the children.
eve got these FREQ up with pepper
and fed them loaf sugar in way
which must have surprised them
good deal. All in all, too, we fed the
crowd red-hot pepper enough to have
burned the insides out of common
people.
LAS the older ones got warmed up
they'd had no food for two days
they wrapped their blankets ABOUT
the younger, and set to work. They
knew what to do now, and while Louis
and l were so nearly exhausted and
frozen we could hardly keep our feet
you see we'd spent most Of the time
indoors for years-those women went
to work.
There were seven stout Hunkapapa
women-the stoutest of all the tribes
of Sioux-and they'd managed to
fetch their hatchets out OF their
snow-pile. With these and their
knives they set to work to make
'travvy' drags to carry their children
on, and in the course of an hour, dur
ing which 1 grew so stupid and sleepy
I could hardly keep my feet, each wo-
man was harnessed to a set of poles.
There was one weak old man and
eight children,-all small,-and these
the women divided among them. They
tied all these to their travvy seats
with strings they cut from the fringes
of buffalo-robes.
"When we started for the river l
hardly knew what I was doing. MY
feet stumbled and dragged. And nm
ally, close to the river | fell full
Yoicht we'll