Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  The morning after Robert Meldrum arrived with his Crow, September 11, the ceremonies were largely consumed with welcoming these thirty-eight delegates from the north. As Chief Pretty On Top and Takes Horse rode up, the last to arrive so they could make a showy entrance, an eastern reporter named B. Gratz Brown found himself so impressed with their grand entrance that he came over to kneel beside Agent Fitzpatrick, who was seated on a robe.

  “That is the finest delegation of Indians we have seen!” Brown gushed his praise to the other white men as the Crow approached and dismounted. “Look at them! They make a most splendid appearance with their beautiful mounts and trappings. From everything I can see, these Crow ride better, hold their seats more gracefully, and are dressed much more lavishly—but with finer taste—than any of these others who are here!”

  That evening of the eleventh, Alexander Culbertson, trader for the American Fur Company and agent at Fort Union on the high Missouri, had arrived with Father Pierre DeSmet and a mixed delegation of thirty-two Assiniboine, Crow, Minnetaree, and Arikara chiefs. The appearance of the much respected black-robe caused quite a stir among the camps, and was warmly welcomed by longtime friends Fitzpatrick, Bridger, and Robert Campbell—now a wealthy St. Louis merchant—three old fur men who had met DeSmet years ago in the heyday of the beaver trade. Starting out from St. Louis immediately after plans for the treaty council had been laid, DeSmet took a steamboat up the Missouri to Fort Union, where he joined Culbertson, who had been given the honorary title of “colonel” on the northern prairies, along with those Indians the trader had chosen to make the journey south with them. Taking a circuitous route on horseback, the party made its way overland almost to Independence Rock before striking the Oregon Trail, then marched east to Fort Laramie.

  With other details of the treaty finally put to rest, September 12 was devoted to intense discussions of tribal boundaries the white man wanted demarcated on those large maps Mitchell unfurled across his tables. Trouble was, as Scratch saw right from the first speeches that Friday morning, every one of these tribes boldly and unashamedly claimed more land than their neighbors wanted to allow. Even worse for the commissioners’ plans, none of these warrior bands cared a whit for fixed boundaries. From ancient times their traditional and nomadic way of life was itself completely antithetical to what the white men were now asking of them. A warrior culture had always wandered in the hunt of buffalo or the taking of horses, captives, and spoils, wherever they dared to go, no matter what tribe might claim that country.

  That same evening of the twelfth, Agent Fitzpatrick and his wife, Margaret, presented their half-breed infant son, Andrew Jackson Fitzpatrick, to Father DeSmet for baptism by firelight. And the rest of that night proved to be no different from any other during the great council: Scratch found it hard to fall asleep, and if he did, to stay asleep, what with the drums and singing, yelps and shrieks coming from every camp. On the thirteenth followed another day of heated debate on the matter of tribal boundaries, but all matters of business were suspended for September 14—a “powerful medicine day,” as the white men explained to the Indians. DeSmet made use of the vacated council arbor that Sunday, calling to him all those who wished to attend a special religious service he conducted at midday. At the end of the mass, eight more half-breed children were brought forward for baptism, along with five adults who also wished to receive this holiest of blessings from the renowned black-robe.

  For another two days those territorial debates raged on, until three of the old fur men stepped in to prove their worth in this weighty process. In their youth they had crossed most every river and stream, mountain range and pass, in those trackless regions claimed by one tribe or another. Fitzpatrick, Bridger, and Robert Campbell too talked and wheedled and argued their position nonstop, until by the evening of the sixteenth the tribes had relented and Superintendent Mitchell could finally ink the lines across his great maps, tribal divisions and territories that the mighty warrior bands had agreed to. The following morning, the seventeenth, the delegates gathered to watch Mitchell, then Fitzpatrick, sign the historic document. That done, they began the most solemn process of all, as the chiefs and headmen of each band came forward in small groups to affix their marks, each one a crude cross, inscribed beside their names printed on the white man’s treaty. When all the Indians had completed the ceremony, the remaining government officials gathered to add their signatures as witnesses to the compact.

  “I reckon you ought’n sign too,” Fitzpatrick whispered to Bass as Robert Meldrum got to his feet and joined the other white dignitaries at the table.

  Shaking his head, Titus declared, “Been so long, I don’t know if I’d ’member how to write my name, Tom. ’Sides that, this here’s a day for others to shine. I ain’t done nothin’ to make this treaty, not the way you an’ Bridger worked. It’s your day to stand in the sun, Tom Fitzpatrick!”

  “We still got one matter to attend to,” the white-haired agent announced as the last of the witnesses stepped back from the table.

  Mitchell inquired, “What’s that, Major Fitzpatrick?”

  “This business between the Cheyennes and the Snakes.”

  Staring down at his treaty for a long moment, the superintendent asked, “Do those killings really matter now that both tribes have signed this document?”

  Fitzpatrick leaned on the table with both hands, glaring at Mitchell, and said with firmness, “That there paper ain’t worth spit … if these tribes don’t make things right in their hearts for one another.”

  After a long sigh, Mitchell asked, “How do you suggest we call for a reconciliation between them after the Cheyennes wantonly killed two of Washakie’s delegates?”

  “It’s all up to the Cheyennes,” the agent explained. “So I figger John Smith has to be the one to convince them Cheyennes they’ve got to cover the bodies.”

  “C-cover the bodies?” Mitchell repeated. “What do you mean by that?”

  “That’s Injun term for the killers making gifts to the relations of the ones they killed,” Fitzpatrick explained as he waved the Cheyenne squaw-man over to his side. “John, you think you can get them chiefs to understand what they got to do to make things right with the Snakes?”

  Smith gnawed on the inside of his cheek a moment, then nodded. “I’ll give it my best try, Fitz.”

  By late that afternoon, Smith had convinced the Cheyenne delegates that their best interests lay in settling this grave matter of taking those two Shoshone scalps. Four riders accompanied the white squaw-man to visit Bridger and Washakie in the Snake camp, bringing their invitation to attend a feast. Knowing that the Shoshone did not eat dog, the Cheyenne roasted a pair of young ponies that evening, along with some boiled and crushed corn. On into the night the speeches were made by both tribes, then the pipe was lit and passed around the fire as more than a hundred of the headmen of both bands smoked to their reconciliation. Only then could the presents be brought forth. Cheyenne women were called forward, carrying blankets for the relatives of the two dead Shoshone in way of apology. By accepting the blankets, the Shoshone acknowledged that they accepted this personal expression of regret. And the matter was buried.

  All that remained for the more than ten thousand visitors to do on the morning of the eighteenth was to await the long-overdue wagon train that was bringing what Mitchell had promised was a mountain of gifts.

  For as far as the eye could see, the grassy hillsides had been cropped all the way down to the prairie. Every step of a hoof or moccasin, every little gust of wind, stirred up clouds of dust. After two weeks in this same location, the human refuse, pony droppings, and offal from all those butchered dogs and ponies made for an unimaginable stench. The first to go were Major Chilton and his soldiers, who struck their tents and moved their camp two miles on down the North Platte to a sweeter-smelling locale. Yet Mitchell and his commissioners held fast.

  “We will stay with these Indians,” Mitchell vowed. “We have asked them to believe our word that the
presents are coming. The least we can do is to stay here with them till the annuities arrive.”

  So the warrior bands waited out the eighteenth, then the long, hot nineteenth, feasting both nights, since the camps still boasted plenty of dogs. Then on September 20 the long wait was over! With Chilton’s dragoons posted on either side of the long train, the freight wagons finally rumbled into the valley, down to Mitchell’s arbor, and squared themselves into a large corral as some ten thousand Indians cheered, sang, and shouted, all of them eagerly pressing forward, expecting the flow of presents to begin. But the superintendent had his interpreters explain to their wards that he would not be presenting the gifts until the following morning because he had to go through the annuities and separate the goods.

  At long last the great day arrived. Again Mitchell had the cannon fired, and the chiefs advanced on the brushy arbor. The crowd waited breathlessly while the most important men in each band were presented with army uniforms. Dealing with rank among the plains and mountain tribes was always an extremely sensitive and touchy affair, something that would have been horribly botched if it weren’t for men like Fitzpatrick and Bridger firmly establishing the order in which the chiefs and their subalterns were called forward for their individual ceremony. To each Mitchell presented a wool coat dripping with braid and ribbon, along with a pair of wool army britches. To the most important of the delegates, Mitchell also presented a sword and a peace medal suspended on a bright blue ribbon.

  One after another the chiefs put on their coats, patting the shiny brass epaulettes on their shoulders, running their tawny hands over the gold braid and glittering buttons, strutting before their people with unabashed self-importance. When Pretty On Top and the other headmen returned to the circle with their gifts, britches draped over their arms, Scratch leaned over and whispered to his wife.

  “What you figger our chiefs gonna do with them pants?”

  “Pants?” she echoed the English word.

  He patted his leggings, then pulled up the hem of his cloth shirt and tugged at his belt. “Pants.”

  With a grin she said, “They cut off.”

  “Cut off?” he asked.

  “See how Flat Mouth does now,” she said, pointing at the war chief.

  The war leader had dropped to his knees, pulled out his belt knife, and begun cutting both the crotch and the seat out of the light blue army britches until he had a pair of wool leggings. Quickly untying his buckskin leggings from his belt, he cut some pieces of fringe from them and threaded it through the belt loop that remained at the top of each wool tube. Then he stuffed one of his bare appendages down the pants leg and tied it to the outside of his belt. In a few easy steps Flat Mouth had made himself a new pair of fancy leggings, warm for the coming winter.

  “I’ll be gusseted for a hog!” Titus exclaimed in a whisper. “If that don’t beat all. I figgered for sure them fellers was gonna throw those white-man pants in the first fire they come to!”

  Now the murmurs of the crowd grew to become bedlam as Mitchell called the chiefs forward again, this time to assist in passing out more than $50,000 worth of blankets and beads, kettles and bolts of cloth, along with all the rest of the shiny new trade goods to their respective peoples. Each band impatiently waited their turn through the rest of the morning, into the afternoon, and on till sunset, when Mitchell suspended the presentation of the annuities. But at 9:00 a.m. the following morning, the ceremonies continued. It wasn’t until early afternoon of the twenty-second that everything had been distributed. Rather than waiting until the next morning, some of the bands began tearing down their lodges, gathering their herds, and starting away for the fall hunt.

  At sunrise the following day, Robert Meldrum waited with the Crow while Scratch went to fetch Fitzpatrick for some final words before the trader started Pretty On Top’s delegation back for the north country.

  “When do you reckon I’ll see your face up near my post again?” Meldrum asked as they watched the white-headed agent shaking hands with each of the three dozen Crow delegates.

  Titus shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. Late in the season as it is now, we’re likely to lay over the winter with Bridger. Maybeso see what comes next summer when them emigrants start rolling through.”

  “It’s for sure Jim can use your help about his place, busy as I hear he is with them folks bound for Oregon.”

  Titus gazed at Meldrum, held out his arm to the trader. “Don’t know when I’ll find myself on your doorstep again.”

  “Been a long, long time since you ever had to be anywhere.” And Meldrum grabbed Scratch’s arm, shaking it vigorously.

  “Onliest place I ever had to be was ronnyvoo!” he said. “I’ll see you again one of these seasons,” Titus promised. “Leastways, that’s what Real Bird promised me.”

  “Real Bird? The old seer?”

  “That ol’ rattle-shaker said I was gonna leave the Crow two more times, but no more after that,” he explained. By then the Crow were mounting up all around them. “So I figger I still got some travelin’ to get outta my mokersons afore my bones go white and groan in the wind.”

  “Stop by the fort when you come back to the Yellowstone, Titus Bass,” Meldrum said with melancholy as he started for his horse. “We’ll share us a drink of that special brandy you don’t like at all, the stuff you still guzzle down like a thirsty man stumblin’ in off the desert!”

  He smiled at the trader and tugged down the wide brim of his floppy hat. “Watch your back trail, friend.”

  “You watch what you got left of your topknot, Titus.” Meldrum reined his horse around, then suddenly brought it around in a half circle again to stop beside Scratch for one last word as the_ Crow delegates set off. “I like your company, Titus Bass. I like your company a lot. I sure hope the First Maker sees to it we have more time to share together.”

  That sentiment brought the hot sting of tears to his eyes. “Me too, Robert Meldrum. I pray you an’ me got a lot more time to share together too.”

  While the Crow slogged their ponies through the shallow, muddy waters of the North Platte, Bridger rode up and dismounted. Together with Fitzpatrick, the two old mountain men came over to stand with Bass and his family.

  When Titus turned at last to look at the Indian agent, he got tickled looking at the wide grin carved on Fitzpatrick’s face. “Shit, Tom—you look like the barn cat what just ate a nest of swallows!”

  “I s’pose it’s bound to show.”

  Bridger held out his hand and shook with Fitzpatrick. “You done good here, Tom. You done real good.”

  “If this peace holds—I will feel like I done some good,” the agent responded. “All of us tried to make a go of the fur trade, but the big money ripped the beaver out from under little fellas like us. I’ve tried my hand at this and that for the last ten years … so everything I’ve set my mind to now is resting on this treaty.”

  “By Jehoshaphat, you done it, Tom!” Bass cheered.

  “I sure as hell hope so,” Fitzpatrick replied. “Maybeso, we can count that treaty paper as the promise of a lasting peace here on the High Plains.”

  “What’s your plans now, Fitz?” Bridger asked. “Can you come over to the post with us for a visit, maybe do some huntin’ like the old days?”

  “You ’member when we cut our way right into Blackfoot country, that brigade you an’ me was leadin’?” Tom replied. “I’d like to do that sometime, come over to your place and have us a good talk about the old days.”

  “Ain’t no better time’n now,” Scratch advised.

  Fitzpatrick shook his head. “Official duties, fellas. We’re lighting out this morning for Washington.”

  “W-Washington?” Scratch echoed. “You an’ who?”

  “We’re going east with Mitchell,” Fitzpatrick explained. “Now he’s gotta sell Congress on the treaty terms we wheedled outta these chiefs.”

  “Just you an’ him?” Bridger asked.

  “No—we convinced eleven chiefs to go with
us.”

  “All the way east to Washington,” Titus enthused. “That’s a piece of travelin’, Tom.”

  “Sioux, Cheyenne, an’ some Arapaho too,” he said, then looked at the ground a moment. “I sure hope them government fellas can hold the promise of what we guaranteed these Injuns over the last few days.”

  Bridger laid his hand on Fitzpatrick’s shoulder. “Soon as you get back to the mountains, come on over to Black’s Fork.”

  “That’s right,” Bass said, holding out his arm to clasp the agent’s wrist. “No matter what them gussied-up, stuffed-shirt folks do to you an’ your treaty back in Washington … count on me an’ Jim bein’ there to share a jug with you—either to celebrate your treaty, or to cry in mis’ry with you, that too.”

  The two of them threw their arms around one another, then Fitzpatrick embraced Bridger. Without another word, the whitehead turned and trudged away for the council grounds.

  “Damn,” Titus grumbled in a whisper after the Indian agent was out of earshot.

  Quietly Bridger said, “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “What’s that, Gabe?”

  “Fitzpatrick’s treaty don’t stand a ghost of a chance, does it?”

  “Nothin’s gonna change, Jim.” He turned to look at his old friend. “Those white men back east ain’t gonna keep givin’ a few presents to these tribes out here … but these warriors ain’t gonna give up their fightin’ for a few beads and blankets. The tribes been makin’ war on each other for longer’n there’s been white men out here to the mountains.”

  “No piece of paper ever gonna change that,” Bridger agreed.

  Scratch looked at his family gathered nearby, busily rolling up their bedding, as he said, “Only thing what might change one day is them tribes gonna stop makin’ war on each other … an’ they’ll start makin’ bloody war on them white, gussied-up folks made all them tomfool promises to ’em way back when.”

  Bigger than life, Shadrach Sweete himself was standing with Bridger’s longtime partner, Louis Vasquez, outside the stockade walls of Fort Bridger, both of them watching the return of the Shoshone delegation. On up the valley from the post stood more than five dozen lodges, pony herds dotting the meadows. Down in the creek bottoms the cottonwood blazed with a golden fire, touched by the late-autumn sun. For the old man known as Titus Bass, this place and this moment had the feel of homecoming.