The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-07-06
Former President, IN Chapter. Of Possible Autobios
raphy," Writes Of the Western Spnit-Experience
with "Rustlers' and "Stranglers"

When went West. the last great In
dian wars had just come to an end, but
there were still sporadic outbreaks here
and there, and occasionally bands OF
marauding young braves were a menace
to outlying and lonely settlements. Many
of the white men were themselves law
less and brutal, and prone to commit
outrages on the Indians. Unfortunately,
each race tended to hold all the menu
bers of the other race responsible for
the misdeeds of a few, SO that crime OF
the miscreant, red or white, who COM
mitted the original outrage too often
invited retaliation upon entirely innocent
people, and this action would in It's turn
arouse bitter feeling which found vent
in still more indiscriminate retaliation.
The first year l was on the Little Mis-
souri, some Sioux bucks ran off all the
horses of a buffalo hunters outfit. One
of the buffalo hunters tried to get even
by stealing the horses of a Cheyenne
hunting party. and when pursued made
for a COW camp with, as a result,
long-range skirmish between the cow
boys and the Cheyennes. One of the lat
ter was wounded; but this particular
wounded man seemed to have more sense
than the other participants in the chain
of wrong doing, and Disseminated among
the whites. He came into our camp and
had his wound dressed.
Road Ranch on Dcadwood Trail.
A year later 1 was at a desolate little
mud road ranch on the Deadwood trail
1t was kept by a very capable and very
forceful woman, with sound ideas of jus
t!ce and abundantly well able to hold
her own. Her husband was a worthless
devil. who finally got drunk on some
whisky he obtained from an outfit OF
Missouri bull-whackers-that is. freight
ers. driving OK wagons Under the
stimulus of the whisky he picked a quar-
rel with his wife and attempted to beat
her.
She knocked him down with stove-lid
litter and the admiring bullwhackers
bore him off, leaving the lady in full pos
session of the ranch. When / visited her
she had a man named Crow Joe working
for her, a slab-sd shifty-eyed person
who later. as / heard my foreman ex-
plain. skipped the country with bunch
of horses The mistress of the ranch
made first-class buckskin shirts of great
durability. The one she made for me, and
which ! used for years. was used by one
of my sons in Arizona a couple of winters
ago.
had ridden down into the country
after some lost horses. and visited the
ranch to get her to make me the buckskin
shirt in question. There were, at the
moment, three Indians there. Sioux, well
behaved and sclf-respecting. and she ex-
planned to ne that they had been resting
there waiting for dinner. and that a
white man had come along and tried to
run off their horses. The Indians were
on the lookout. however, and, running
cut, they caught the man; but. after re-
taking their horses and depriving him of
his gun, they let him go.
Il don't see why they let him CO." ex-
claimed my hostess Il don't believe in
stealing Indians horses any more than
white folks: SO I told EN- they could go
along and hang him-Td never cheep.
Anyhow. I won't charge them anything
for their dinner" concluded my hostess.
She was in advance of the usual morality
of the time and place, which drew a sharp
line between stealing citizens horses and
stealing horses from the government or
the Indians.
A fairly decent citizen. Jap Hunt who
long ago met violent death. exem-
plifed this attitude toward Indians in
some remarks l once heard him make.
He had started a horse ranch and had
quite honestly purchased a number of
broken-down horses of different brands,
with the view of doctoring them and
selling them again. About this time
there had been much horse stealing and
cattle killing in our territory and in
Montana, and under the direction of