camped closer’n you an’ me could spit tobaccy at each other. They don’t get their blankets and kettles, beads and paint for their women … what do you think this many warriors gonna start doin’?”
“Hell if I don’t already know what they’ll start doin’,” Fitzpatrick complained. “And, to tell the truth, I hope they start with Mitchell and his bunch!”
“I’ll drink to that!” Bridger cheered. “Where’s some whiskey, Tom?”
“We ain’t got any of that either,” the agent groaned. “Mitchell didn’t want any likker in camp—seein’ how it’s contraband out here in Injun country.”
Bass made a sour face and looked over at Bridger. “You got any whiskey wuth drinkin’ over to your post on Black’s Fork, Gabe?”
“That’s a mighty long way to ride for a drink, Scratch.”
For a moment he thought about his loneliness for Magpie, then realized how safe she was up there in Crow country. She now belonged to another man. Reassured, Titus burst out laughing. “I wasn’t talkin’ ’bout tonight, you idjit! I just figgered I could foller you back to your post when these important folk got their peace talks all wrapped up here.”
“C-come to visit?”
With a shrug, Scratch said, “You an’ me got four years of catchin’ up to do, Gabe. An’ we can do a lot o’ palaver with some whiskey to wet our gullets.”
Bridger slapped Titus on the knee exuberantly. “My new wife gonna be tickled as a hen what’s just laid her first egg!”
“You got a new wife?” he asked.
“She’s my third,” Bridger confessed to his old friends.
Titus grinned. “I didn’t even know ’bout what happed to your second wife.”
“Ute gal,” he said, staring into the fire. “Married back in forty-eight. But she died givin’ birth to my li’l Virginia Rosalie, that next summer of forty-nine.”
“A Flathead gal, an’ a Utah gal too,” Titus recounted. “If you ain’t the marryin’ fool! So who’s your third wife?”
“Li’l Fawn. She’s a Snake, daughter of Washakie his own self. But I call her Mary,” Bridger boasted a little behind a big smile. “Still, there’s time she gets hungry for woman talk so she takes off to see her kin over at some camp. But if your wife comes over for a visit to the fort, she’s gonna be just the poultice to put on Mary’s case of the lonelies! Tell me true now, you’ll really come visit for the fall when we turn back for the Green?”
“I damn well couldn’t think of a better place to be than visitin’ with ol’ friends till our tongues get tired!”
* Thirty-six miles down the North Platte.
*
* September 10, 1851.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Those nights during the great peace council in the valley of the North Platte were given over to feasting and dancing. One hell of a feast and a lot of nonstop dancing.
Because no buffalo roamed anywhere close to that great overland road by the end of a busy, bustling emigrant season, the tribal bands had depleted their supplies of fresh meat days ago. In fact, to Titus Bass’s way of thinking, it stood to reason that this sad business with the great buffalo herd having been split in two by the white tide sweeping west to the shining sea had to be the sorest spot for these nomadic Indians of the plains. Not only did the shaggy beasts refuse to wander close to the Oregon and Mormon trails, but most of the abundant game in the region had either been killed off or driven away, miles and miles to the north or the south of this great migration highway. Too, there wasn’t much for the ponies of those wandering bands of brown-skinned hunters to graze on either—not after the oxen, mules, and horses of the white sojourners had cropped every edible shoot right down to the ground, starting with the first train through in early spring and running right on through until the last wagons had rattled through late in the summer.
For white and red alike, a glorious era had come and gone by that autumn of 1851. There were now, and forever would be, two great buffalo herds. But even put together their numbers came nowhere near the infinite black multitude that had once blanketed this endless and incomprehensible buffalo palace.
It wasn’t long before the bands ran out of their supply of dried meat and they took to making a dent in the dog population. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho all had long favored the canine—the younger the pup, the better. So too was dog a delicacy with the Crow delegates. But not among the Shoshone. They did not eat dog. Instead, Washakie’s Snake representatives sacrificed one of their fine young ponies each day. With tens of thousands of horses grazing the bottomland and hillsides, no one was about to go hungry as the Laramie peace council crawled toward a final agreement.
Just as each day’s parley had begun, that final morning Superintendent D. D. Mitchell had the cannon fired promptly at 9:00 a.m., his signal for the delegates to assemble at the treaty grounds. Again the Sioux made a grand and showy entrance when they crossed the river. In the lead rode an ancient warrior. Tied to a long staff carried above his head fluttered a faded and worn American flag.
“That ol’ fella claims he got that flag from the redheaded chief, Clark,” Thomas Fitzpatrick explained to Scratch.
“St. Louie’s William Clark?” Titus asked.
“Him and Lewis took the Corps of Discovery all the way to the Pacific Ocean back in 1804, thereabouts.”
That had shaken loose a little memory for him. “I ’member him from St. Louie. Injun agent for some time after his outfit come back from the far salt ocean—agent while I lived there.”
While each delegation approached the site in a grand procession, the proud horsemen—who had tied up the manes and tails of their ponies, coloring the animals with earth paints and dyes—all pounded on handheld drums and sang their noisiest national songs, doing their best to outsing every other throat. Every delegate wore his finest, draping himself with all the colorful trappings he owned. But none of the delegates who entered the treaty grounds could bring a weapon. Superintendent Mitchell held fast to his edict that no man would be allowed a role in the peace talks if he carried a means of making war. Following the horsemen came the great throngs of women and children on foot, streaming across the river and up the banks, all of them painted fiercely and wearing their showiest ceremonial clothing for these auspicious talks of peace on the High Plains. At the end of each day, many of the government officials and reporters, who had come west for this treaty council, remarked on their surprise at the courteous and peaceful conduct of the children throughout the lengthy speeches and formal ceremonies in the late- summer heat.
Since Mitchell himself was an old beaver man, he knew how important was the giving of presents to these red delegates. So every evening he hosted a dinner at his camp, during which the superintendent handed out little packets of vermilion and twists of tobacco, until he had no more to give. In every village the young men paraded about, expecting to be noticed by the young women. But those girls did their very best to attract the warriors: greasing their hair, coloring the part with vermilion, draping themselves with the gaudiest bead- or quillwork, wrapping their arms and wrists with coils of brass wire, looping every finger with a bright ring, all to catch the eye of a particular young man.
But when Mitchell had called the council to order each morning, the clamoring hubbub fell silent and an air of solemn dignity descended upon the valley of Horse Creek that September of 1851. Only the chiefs and their important counselors moved forward to sit in the council arena itself. Since the Sioux were the most numerous tribe present for the talks, their headmen filled both the north and west sides of the treaty ground. The Cheyenne were assigned to sit next to them on the south side of the circle, while the Arapaho were situated beside them. The enemy peoples, both Shoshone and Crow, completed the eastern side of the great open circle.
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
