The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1920-10-22

WAOp I'LL AAh6 W ~~~ob
.jsYou know who Indians areF point
, ling to Joseph and Looking Glass.
Il YES / replied. You are Chief
Joseph and Looking Glass. was
among your people in Washington be-
fore / came here; my heart has al
J, ways been good toward your people
IL know you very WE'LL
Joseph seemed rather pleased at
: lmy little speech and then told me ne
wanted me to give them something
} to eat. / told them to go to the big
! pile of freight and take what they
wanted. l went with them down to
!, the freight pile and the squaws took
several sacks of sugar, some hams
hard tack and a lot of other truck
They carried it about half mile W
1.-The river, to a little bench land
where the whole lousy outfit had
feast and pow-wow.
while the sQuaws were carrying
: AWAY the provisions Joseph told me
: his men would not fight US. He said
we are across the river from the old
woman (meaning General Howard)
and / want to get in good country
: where my young men and eur horses
can get plenty to eat
81 told him that around the Little
Rockies and Bear Paw mountains the
country was covered with buffalo
deer, antelope and elk and that grass
was as high as his ponies backs
and that was the truth, too.
"Well, after they had filled up on
government bacon and hard tack the
nun6
1.-THE bench into little basin out OF
lsight of our camp. I did not like the
move and stole up into little ravine
from where / could see what they
were up to. After they had all gone
lover there the bucks sat down in a
circle and began to pass the pipe.
noticed that about one-fourth OF
them passed the pipe along and
would not smoke. 1 felt pretty sure
THAT meant trouble for US, and l went
back and told my comrades that we
were in for it; that the Indians were
going to fight us.
1.-The Dutch corporal laughed at
me and said they won't fight us;
Joseph has given his word
"'All right I replied, you wait
until about shutdown and see If
don't know something about Indians
myself
Sure enough, just about shutdown
as we were all standing around eat
ing hard tack and drinking coffee
there was the whiz-whiz of bullets in
the air, followed by the crack of a
dozen rifles. One of our men was
hit in the palm of the hand. Down
we went into the little breastworks,
every man with his Winchester.
81 don't know how it happened,
but I took command of that little
party, and, while I dare say we did
not fight according to army tactics,
rather think, as the preacher says,
that we made our inf1uenee felt
"There were about 200 Indians
lined up on the hill east of and above
us and the way they dropped lead
into our little circle of breastworks
was simply a terror.
eve Rugged down into the ditch
on the side next to the Indians and
their shots all went over us or land
ed in the dirt bank. Well, after a
few minutes of that sort of thing we
began to get hot about it. l had a
made-to-order Winchester rifle that
was the best gun 1 ever handled. /
noticed that the rest of the boys
seemed to understand their guns
pretty we'll and it was not more than
a few minutes before we had all of
those Indians driven out of sight. All
night long the Indians kept firing at
us. One of the soldiers, "Buck"
Walters, was shot in the shoulder
There was coulee just north of
the pile of freight that led back from
the river and through this coulee the
Indians were able to get at the pile
of freight without us being able to
see them. Working on the side of
the freight pile furthest away from
us they carried away everything they
wanted and set fire to the rest.
believe they intended to carry away
what they wanted and then rush in
and kill us but the fire they started
lit things up SO we'll we could see in
every direction and we soon con-
WINGED them that it was decidedly IN
healthy for an Indian to get out into
the light. There we're $50 sacks of
bacon in the freight pile and when
they began to blaze the flames 1eaped
higher than the surrounding hills.
West of us rolled the turbulent
Missouri, looking, in the light of the
fire, like a river of blood and flame.
East of us rose the bluffs, across the
face of which fitted strange and gro
itesque shadows, called into shape by
the leapfng flames. Ever and anon
we could see flashes of fire, like the
blaze of fire fly, leap out from some
lshadowy place and then would come
the song of bullet over our heads
or near us, followed by the report of
a rifle.
-Four or five times during the
night the Indians tried to rush in
on US but we always met them with
such volley of lead that they would
retreat out of sight. We fired 500
rounds of ammunition that night. ]
believe the fire was what saved us,
though. When daylight came there
was not an Indian In sight. We kept
pretty quiet for awhile fearing they
were laying for us to show ourselves,
but after cautiously getting up for a
few seconds at time without any
thing happening we finally decided
they were gone. Pretty soon after