by Eugeine Ware
Dillon had been playing in Denver, and was on the way to the States, and we organized him a house, fifty cents admission. We had no chairs nor anything to sit on, so the front row sat down on the floor, and formed a semi-circle about five feet from Dillon, all around in front of him. Then the next row sat on cracker-boxes, flat side down, and the next row sat on cracker-boxes on edge, and the balance stood up. The entrance was through a window. Dillon was about two-thirds "full," and had a little monologue play to start on, in which he had some real drinking out of a real Hostetter bottle, and he kept the thing up for about three hours, to the amusement and delight of us all. We were packed like herrings in a box, and if John Dillon hadn't been one of the greatest comedians in the United States we could not have been kept there under those circumstances. When the show was over he came over to our quarters, and we all played poker until breakfast.
During April a vacancy as Second Lieutenant took place at Fort Kearney, in Company A. The First Sergeant, Tom Potter, and I had been friends, and I had been working to help him get into the vacancy, and during April I was very much grieved to hear that he had failed in being commissioned. This Tom Potter finally became an officer of the company. Our relations were exceedingly friendly, but at this time he had no money, few friends, and no relatives. There was nobody to help him. He was alone in the world, and promotions did not always go upon their merits. Our friendship lasted for many years, until his death. He afterwards became president of the Union Pacific Railroad at Fifty Thousand Dollars a year, and worked himself to death. But in the very height of his powers in the army, he was unable to become Second Lieutenant, owing to the petty little rivalries and dishonest instincts of his superiors, until long afterwards.
On April 9th we were visited by Captain Logan of the First Colorado Cavalry. Captain Logan was making the tour down the Platte from Denver to ascertain the condition of things, and the probabilities of an Indian war. He stayed with us a couple of days. He had talked with the ranchmen and settlers along the line. He told us that unless we could win the Sioux over at the approaching convention, we would have all kinds of Indian trouble. He said that be had been detailed to send out half-breed Indians as runners, and to assist in making complete the convention which was to meet at our post the middle of the month. We afterwards met most of the First Colorado Cavalry. They were a good regiment, and had saved New Mexico from going into the Confederacy. There is no more interesting regimental history than that which a young man named Hollister, who belonged to the regiment, has written of it. The regiment was a regiment of pioneers who were inured to the open air, and life on horseback; and as for being fighters, there were none superior, and we Iowa boys always liked them. Before we went out onto the plains, there had been part of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry regiment sent to Fort Laramie, which was about two hundred and
seventy-five miles northwest of us, on the Salt Lake trail. Once in a while we saw one of the officers or men of that regiment going down to Fort Kearney to get supplies.
On April 13, 1864, Harry Dall reached our post, and, being tired of staging, thought he would stay over a day and rest. I ran across him shortly after he got out of the stage, and he told me his story. Secretary Seward had sent him from Washington to go to Alaska, and he was going to go and report upon the botany, biology and climate of Alaska. I never saw him before or since. He was one of the most companionable men I ever met. We went out with our greyhounds, and caught an antelope and gave Dall a good time. It is impossible for me to say what he afterwards did, except that he made a long and interesting report upon Alaska, which was widely published; and he was about the first of the Americans who knew anything of the land which Secretary Seward purchased from Russia. Those who in those days opposed the purchase, called it "our national ice-house." He was with us at the same time that a Mr. S. F. Burtch, of Omaha, was with us. Burtch was one of those breezy young men of the Western country, who had business all over it, got acquainted with everybody, and liked everybody and everybody liked him. Burtch and Dall came together accidentally at our place; they made a great team.
One day a discussion grew up as to the amount of travel on the plains. Those who had lived on the plains for some time said that the travel from January 1st to April lst, 1864, had been the heaviest ever on the plains, for that season of the year; and that the probability was that the year of 1864 would show more travel by far than ever before. Various persons began to tell about the trains which they had seen. Many persons told of trains that were from ten to fifteen miles long, being aggregations of several independent trains. They told of eight hundred ox teams passing their ranches in a single day. Mrs. MacDonald, the wife of the ranchman at our post, said she had many times kept account of the number of wagons which went by, and that one day they went up to nine hundred, counting those going both ways, That may sound like a very large story, and it is a large one, but is entirely credible. These ox teams would pass a store in their slow gait about one in a minute and a half or two minutes, after they had begun to start by. But that would only make from three to four hundred in ten hours; but when trains were going both ways as they were, it is not incredible by any means that nine hundred wagons passed a ranch in one day. I have stood on the "Sioux Lookout" with my field-glass, and have seen a train as long as I could definitely distinguish it with my glass, and it would stretch out until it would become so fine that it was impossible to fairly scan it. As the wind was generally blowing either from the north or the south, the teams had a vast prism of dust rising either to the north or south, and the dust would be in the air mile after mile until the dust and teams both reached the vanishing-point on the horizon. Fully three-fourths of this traffic was with oxen. The wagons were large, cumbersome wagons which I have heretofore described. And in addition to the description I will say that they had wooden axles, and were of what they called the thimble-skein variety. On the end of the heavy wooden axle was the iron thimble which revolved in another iron thimble in the hub, which was called the skein; the axle was held on by a linch-pin made by a blacksmith. The thimble-skein was lubricated with tar, and the tar-bucket hung on the rear axle. At every ranch were lift-jacks, so that these wheels could be raised, taken off, and the axles lubricated. The wind and the whirling sand and dust made it necessary for this to be frequently done.
The drivers were called "bull-whackers," which was abbreviated down to "Whackers." They had long gads, and a long lash with whang-leather tip; this they could make pop like a rifle. And they could hit a steer on any part, with the whang tip as it cracked, and it could nip the hide out just like a knife. They generally drove walking along the left side of the team, but when the dust was heavy they walked on the clear side, whether right or left. The wagon-master was boss, he was king, and generally the most dangerous man in the lot. He carried a revolver or two, and his altercations with the whackers were very frequent. The wagons were piled full and the curtains drawn, so that it was not very easy to steal anything. One time Jack Morrow was at the post and was inebriated as usual, and he confided to me how he got his start. He said: "I came from Missouri, and got to whacking bulls across the plains; after a while I got onto a Government train loaded with ammunition. I unscrewed the boxes, took out the ammunition and sold it to the ranchmen, filled the boxes with sand, and screwed them down. Then before we got to Laramie I had a rumpus with the wagon-master and he pulled a pistol and I skinned out for somewhere else and nobody got onto it." He said, "I never heard a word from it ever afterwards, but I sold a big lot of ammunition." This statement might have been true, or not, but it was nevertheless the fact that in the commerce of the prairie, a great difficulty lay in guarding against theft in transit, and this was one of the main duties of the wagon-master in conducting his train.
It is perfectly safe to say that for several months during the summer there poured into Denver no less than a thousand tons of merchandise a day, and this seems almost incredible when we consider the hardship and privations which made it possible. But there w
as a class of people in the West, Missouri and Iowa, that liked fun, enjoyed freedom, despised luxury, and took no note of danger or privation; and they were not of the dumb and stupid class of society. Many were educated, some of them were gifted. They were full of fun, wanted to see the world, and tried to shoot each other up whenever they came in angry contact. I remember one of them standing up and reciting for ten minutes from memory one of the bucolics of Virgil. He had it in the original from end to end, and said he came from St. Genevieve, Missouri. As I now look back, the prominent, noticeable, rollicking dare-devils seemed to come principally from Missouri.
Chapter XI.
April 16, 1864 – O-way-see'-cha Comes – General Mitchell Arrives – Indians Come In – The Great Council – "Snell" – Shan-tag-a-lisk – The Big Mandan – Indian Peculiarities – Ogallallah – Indian Speeches – The Debate – The Bluff and Counter-bluff – The Niobrara – The Postponement – The Dog Feast
UPON April 16th an old Indian came in, and hunted me up, and with him was a man who could talk Indian. This old Indian was the vanguard coming up to the council. When I saw him I recognized him as the one who had appeared in camp some time before, and to whom I fed the molasses and crackers. He came up and was very profuse with me in his hearty handshake and "How-cola?" (Cola means friend.) I was very much surprised. The interpreter told me that the Indian's name was O-way-see'-cha, accent on the third syllable. This word means in the Sioux dialect "bad wound," "see-cha" meaning bad. The Sioux, like the French, put their adjectives after the noun. Wah-see-cha means "medicine bad," i. e., white-man. I was told that be acquired his name from a fight with the Pawnee Indians down north of Fort Kearney several years before; that he was so badly wounded that they carried him off on an Indian litter between two ponies; and he finally recovered to be as well as ever; and then, Indian fashion, he took a new name. He greeted me with an expression which the interpreter said meant that I was "his long-knife son." I asked him if he was hungry, and be said "No." Then I went to Ben Gallagher's sutler store with him and bought him a plug of chewing tobacco, which in the manner of that time, and the trade, was a foot long, three inches wide, and an inch thick, and for which I paid a dollar. This I gave to O-way-see'-cha and he patted me on the back, and bade me an affectionate good-by. He was camped upon the Platte valley two or three miles above the post. Nobody saw him come there, and it was supposed that he came down there stealthily, got himself all fixed at night, and made his appearance at the post the next morning. During the day we heard that Sioux Indians were coming in from every side; we had an inspection of arms, and put ourselves in such condition that we could fall in, and begin business at a moment's notice. The men were ordered to stay around the barracks, to wear their revolvers, sleep in their uniforms, and be ready, because we did not know what tricks might be played upon us. We also had the cannon loaded with shrapnel cut one second, set a post guard, and put pickets all around a halfmile from the post.
On April 16, 1864, General Mitchell and Lieutenant Williams, coming from Fort Kearney, arrived at the post. This was Brigadier-General Robert B. Mitchell. He was born in Ohio; came to Kansas as a pro-slavery Democrat. The conduct of the Missourians, and the early Kansas troubles, made him an anti-slavery Democrat. When the war broke out he was for fighting, and became immediately the Colonel of the Second Kansas. He was in the Lyon campaign in Missouri, and was badly shot up at the battle of Wilson's Creek. I was in that campaign as a soldier in the First Iowa Infantry, and our regiment was brigaded with the Second Kansas for a while, and I remembered Colonel Mitchell very well, and when he was said to have been shot, and taken from the field. After he recovered be was made a Brigadier-General, and sent with the army to Kentucky, and was in command of a brigade of cavalry. He was in the battle of Perryville, where he said he lost seven hundred men in seven minutes. He was in a very great number of fights and skirmishes, and used to say that up to date, he was in two more battles in number than any Brigadier in the service. His two biggest battles were Wilson Creek and Perryville, and it so happened that I was in the Wilson Creek battle and Captain O'Brien was in the Perryville battle. So, when he arrived at our post, we introduced selves to him and he took a great fancy to our company, and nearly ignored the other officers of the post. Lieutenant Williams, who was with him as A. D. C., was a little Kentucky cavalry First Lieutenant who had distinguished himself in Perryville by charging and cutting through a regiment of Confederate infantry, and then forming in the rear and cutting back through a battery of artillery. On the evening of the 16th Captain O'Brien and I had a fine visit with the General. In the meantime the Indians were coming in, and camping together near the river outside of the two miles limit. We had all of our men fully armed, and everything ready to prevent a surprise of our post. The Indians were ordered not come within two miles of the post except that they might send a delegation in of one hundred, to accompany their speakers to the place of rendezvous. Our sutler, Ben Gallagher, had started in to build a large sutler store, twenty-five feet square. Holes for the doors and windows had been sawed from the logs, and most of the roof was on. But it had no floor nor any furnishing. It had a large doorhole in the north and one in the south; the opening on the south side faced our camp. With great pomp the Indians to the number of about one hundred, all fully armed and finely mounted, came down towards our camp about nine o'clock. Then seventeen chiefs threw off their weapons, leaving them behind with their escort, and came forward to the new sutler-house with great pomp and ceremony. Then all of the officers of the post, coming up to within about fifty feet of the building, took off their sabres and revolvers and left them in a pile with a guard. We had three interpreters, the principal one of whom was named Watts. He had been with the Indians and traded with them for many years. His usual name was "Snell," which was an abbreviation of his Indian name, which was Wah-see-cha-es-snel-la (The "lonesome white man"). There were two other interpreters besides Watts. Among the Indians there was an Indian who, it was said, readily understood English. The Indians formed a semicircle, in the building, sitting down on the ground, and we formed one, sitting on crackerboxes opposite them, except that General Mitchell sat in a large camp-chair. He looked like a king. He was an exceedingly handsome man, with a full, dark-brown curly beard and mustache. Major George M. O'Brien sat on his right, also a fine-looking man, standing six feet one inch. He afterwards practiced law in Omaha, and on his death was buried there.
On the left of the General sat Captain O'Brien, six feet high. I was six feet, and we tapered off at both sides, making a pretty good showing, in full uniforms, with our red silk sashes on, which hadn't seen the light for several months. Back of the General was a man whom the General had brought along with him, and from whom he appeared to take advice as to preliminaries and procedure. I didn't find who he was. To the left front of the General, and immediately in front of Captain O'Brien, on a cracker-box, sat the interpreter, Watts. The Indians all through this matter seemed to be unusually important, and punctilious. They all had their blankets on, and although they had ostensibly left their arms behind, every one had probably a sharp butcher-knife in the folds of his blanket. At least, Watts said so. As a sort of stand-off, we, who had left our arms behind us, each had a pistol in his hip pocket so as not to be taken unawares. Nothing was said for several minutes, and we all sat in silence. Every once in a while an Indian made a sort of sign or signal, and it would go around like penitents crossing. It was some kind of a slight significant sign made instantly and simply, which would be taken up and gone through with as if it were a signal of some kind, or an invocation of some kind. Directly opposite General Mitchell was Shan-tag-a-lisk, which is translated as "Spotted Tail." He was the greatest warrior in the Sioux nation, said to be the greatest either past or present. He was said to be able to count twenty-six "cooz." He belonged to the Brulй Sioux. On his right was my friend, "Bad Wound." On the left were "Two Strike," and "Two Crows," and the "Big Mandan." On the opposite side were "Prickly Pear" and "Eagle Twice." T
hese are all the names I have preserved. "Two Strike" was said to have killed two Pawnees with one bullet. These Indians represented the four tribes of the Sioux that were nearest to us. Those south of the river were the "Ogallallah," of whom "Bad Wound" was chief. Northwest were the "Brulйs," of whom "Shan-tag-a-lisk" was chief. North of us and east of the Brulйs were what were called the "Minne-kaw'-zhouz." The latter word signified shallow water. The "shallow water" Sioux lived upon the streams which through a great scope of country were all shallow. "Two Strike" was said to be their chief. East of them on the Missouri river were a lot of Indians represented by the Big Mandan. The word Brulй, which is a French word, means "sun-burnt"; it was derived from the Indian name which in the Indian tongue meant "burnt-thighs." Their thighs exposed to the sun were sunburned in their constant riding on horseback. The words meant more than at first appeared; for, Indians who walked on the ground did not get their thighs burned more than other parts, especially as the Indians went practically naked when the sun was hot. Hence the words "burnt-thighs" meant that the Brulй Indians were riders; that they belonged to the cavalry, that is, the Chivalry; in other words, they were of the equestrian class. The words constituted a boast that they were better than others and were the Rough-Riders of the plains. Such was the tradition of the name. Peace or war upon the plains, as to us, depended largely upon our satisfying all these Indians.
Strange as it may appear, all of the Indians had extremely feminine faces, except the Big Mandan. Spotted Tail looked exactly like a woman; and in short, as I had already observed, and often afterwards observed, the Indian men seemed to have a feminine look and the women to have a rather masculine look, which increased as they grew older. An old Indian woman had a much more dangerous-looking face than an old Indian man. So much has been written about the noble looks and appearance of the red man, and his fine physique, and all that kind of stuff, that it seems strange to contradict it; but as a matter of fact, the