第42章

THE WAR PARTIES

The summer of 1846 was a season of much warlike excitement among all the western bands of the Dakota.In 1845 they encountered great reverses.Many war parties had been sent out; some of them had been totally cut off, and others had returned broken and disheartened, so that the whole nation was in mourning.Among the rest, ten warriors had gone to the Snake country, led by the son of a prominent Ogallalla chief, called The Whirlwind.In passing over Laramie Plains they encountered a superior number of their enemies, were surrounded, and killed to a man.Having performed this exploit the Snakes became alarmed, dreading the resentment of the Dakota, and they hastened therefore to signify their wish for peace by sending the scalp of the slain partisan, together with a small parcel of tobacco attached, to his tribesmen and relations.They had employed old Vaskiss, the trader, as their messenger, and the scalp was the same that hung in our room at the fort.But The Whirlwind proved inexorable.Though his character hardly corresponds with his name, he is nevertheless an Indian, and hates the Snakes with his whole soul.Long before the scalp arrived he had made his preparations for revenge.He sent messengers with presents and tobacco to all the Dakota within three hundred miles, proposing a grand combination to chastise the Snakes, and naming a place and time of rendezvous.The plan was readily adopted and at this moment many villages, probably embracing in the whole five or six thousand souls, were slowly creeping over the prairies and tending towards the common center at La Bonte's Camp, on the Platte.Here their war-like rites were to be celebrated with more than ordinary solemnity, and a thousand warriors, as it was said, were to set out for the enemy country.The characteristic result of this preparation will appear in the sequel.

I was greatly rejoiced to hear of it.I had come into the country almost exclusively with a view of observing the Indian character.

Having from childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and having failed completely to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have recourse to observation.I wished to satisfy myself with regard to the position of the Indians among the races of men; the vices and the virtues that have sprung from their innate character and from their modes of life, their government, their superstitions, and their domestic situation.To accomplish my purpose it was necessary to live in the midst of them, and become, as it were, one of them.Iproposed to join a village and make myself an inmate of one of their lodges; and henceforward this narrative, so far as I am concerned, will be chiefly a record of the progress of this design apparently so easy of accomplishment, and the unexpected impediments that opposed it.

We resolved on no account to miss the rendezvous at La Bonte's Camp.

Our plan was to leave Delorier at the fort, in charge of our equipage and the better part of our horses, while we took with us nothing but our weapons and the worst animals we had.In all probability jealousies and quarrels would arise among so many hordes of fierce impulsive savages, congregated together under no common head, and many of them strangers, from remote prairies and mountains.We were bound in common prudence to be cautious how we excited any feeling of cupidity.This was our plan, but unhappily we were not destined to visit La Bonte's Camp in this manner; for one morning a young Indian came to the fort and brought us evil tidings.The newcomer was a dandy of the first water.His ugly face was painted with vermilion;on his head fluttered the tail of a prairie cock (a large species of pheasant, not found, as I have heard, eastward of the Rocky Mountains); in his ears were hung pendants of shell, and a flaming red blanket was wrapped around him.He carried a dragoon sword in his hand, solely for display, since the knife, the arrow, and the rifle are the arbiters of every prairie fight; but no one in this country goes abroad unarmed, the dandy carried a bow and arrows in an otter-skin quiver at his back.In this guise, and bestriding his yellow horse with an air of extreme dignity, The Horse, for that was his name, rode in at the gate, turning neither to the right nor the left, but casting glances askance at the groups of squaws who, with their mongrel progeny, were sitting in the sun before their doors.

The evil tidings brought by The Horse were of the following import:

The squaw of Henry Chatillon, a woman with whom he had been connected for years by the strongest ties which in that country exist between the sexes, was dangerously ill.She and her children were in the village of The Whirlwind, at the distance of a few days' journey.

Henry was anxious to see the woman before she died, and provide for the safety and support of his children, of whom he was extremely fond.To have refused him this would have been gross inhumanity.We abandoned our plan of joining Smoke's village, and of proceeding with it to the rendezvous, and determined to meet The Whirlwind, and go in his company.