The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-29

apprentice printers, and Edward Vim, ] employe of the mailroom. have enlisted
 in the navy since the call from Secre- 1 watched the squaws and the rest we both noticed that I was being looked at rath- CT hard by an old Indian who with a younger one, was standing by one of the ralhngs. l looked this old fellow over in return and, as I did so a thrill went right through me for I remembered very distinctly that, the last time that I had seen him, he was after my scalp! Forth Wltn, l crossed over and entered into con- Versatlon with the pair, using the O1ib- way dialect which I used to speak pret- l ty well. Sure enough, it was old Red 1 Shirt one of the leaders in the Minne- sota massacre, and he gruntingly ad- ! mitted that he had spotted me at once. As l left I raised my hat so that he could see my bald crown, and said to him, My scalp wouldn't do you much good now, Red Shirt, which left him with as near an approach to a grin as an Indian ever gets.
 Tt was in '76, just before the opening of the massacre in Minnesota Mr. Humphrey went on, that I first met Red Shirt. Shortly before starting off on buffalo hunt in the southern part of the state, I visited a big reservation where couple of thousand or so of Oga- lala Sioux were quartered and, while there, had talk. through an interpreter, with this afterward famous chief, wno was one of the leaders in the massacre At that time no one so much as thought of an Indian rising but, only a few days later, the Sioux left their reser- vation and started on their career of butchery. Our hunting party consisted of friend and myself and three local men, The first intimation we got of the be- ginning of the massacre was when we struck the emigrant trail going south and came on the remains of caravan that had been wiped out by the Indians The women and children evidently had been carried off and the ground was covered with the terribly mutilated bodies of the men. Some of the men, too had been tied to the wagon wheels and shock I ingly tortured
 | Tt was evident that every white per- | son in that district was in danger" went | on MT. Humphrey, with a reflective pull | at his big cigar and we lost no time in starting to make ourselves scarce. There was a military post two days hard rid ing away, and we proceeded to shed everything that was not of vital impor- | tance and set off for it. We rode all aft ernoon without seeing any Indians. About the middle of the following day, however, we suddenly heard war-whoops and the sound of horses hoofs behind us and soon discovered that we were being pur- sued by party of in the neighborhood of 250 savage Sioux. Of this party learned afterwards, Red Shirt was a member. As quickly as the thing could be done, we changed horses and turned the spare ones adrift (though as a mat ter of fact they kept with us right to 1 the end), and rode for our lives.
 Then followed running fight which l lasted until the late afternoon. We were we'll armed with breech-loading rifles while the Indians had only smooth bores, and we managed to pick off good many | of them as we rode. One of our men had his horse shot under him, but he jumped ! on one of the spare horses that were following us, and rode, thereafter, with | out either saddle or bridle We had settled that as soon as one of our horses gave out we would all dismount and 1 fight for it, and I, for one, had decided
 had no idea of undergoing the fate of
 the poor devils whose bodies we had found tied to the wheels.
 1 Just when our horses were almost done, however, one of our men suddenly burst out, I see soldiers!' second aft erwards a voice that seemed to come right out of the prairie shouted Ride like l
 bet we did so There, hidding from sight, we found a company of the Second United States cavalry, who, as soon as we were safe. let fly volley into the oncoming Indians. This cut them up badly and they scattered forthwith. It appeared that couple of officers from the near by post had been out hunting and had heard the firing. They knew at once what was up and flashing back to the ad or q
 with it in the gully, and lucky it was for us that they did so!
 Mr. Humphrey has a whole album full I of wonderful, if quaint. old photographs
 which illustrate the 20-odd years that
 he spent in opening up and developing
 one of the biggest of the timber busi
 nesses of those times (the years between
 1866 and 1S86) on the Ottawa river, ant
 in mining on his own account in Onta rio and the Chaudiere country. It is
 wonderful to hear him tell of his worl
 and experiences in that then wild re
 zion where he knew, he says "every
 rock in the rapids for distance of 2O
 miles down the Ottawa" Always uset
 to commanding men, he ruled the hun dreds of hard-drinkingl Iroquois Indians
 who worked for him by the sheer pres
 tige of the indomitable white man ant
 emerged from many ticklish situation
 by looking bad man grimly in th'
 eye and making him quail.
 1 MT. Humphrey came to England in thu
 autumn of 18S6 this being the third visi
 he had paid to the old country, intend
 ing to go back for Christmas. But h,
 didn't. and he never has been back since
 He was married 16 years ago and has z
 ycungster of 12 who. he says, he intends
 shall be able to do two things well any
 how-namely, swim and box!
 I should like to have told more abou
 MT Humphreys picturesque hunting aa
 among other things, he nearly got two
 losing him by deliberately wandering of by himself to revel in the two things
 that he says he always has loved best trees and running water should like to have told how. in the riot occasionet
 by the expulsion of Queen Natalie iron 1 Belgrade, he saw the corpse of 8 mar
 shot through the head by rifle bulle
 carried upright for over 50 feet by tho
 sheer density of the fear crazed mob
 but to relate of these and many other
 striking chapters in our 'special's'' won
 derful life is impossible. if this article is to be kept within the limits of any
 thing but a book!
 But I must tell about his experiments
 at the bottom of we'll! Some 15 years
 ago this man of many sides and expe- T riences. who knows. probably, about al there Is to know about hydraulic mining
 desired to conduct some original expert
 ments in hydrostatics. His actual aim