interested in his description of Indian manners and his adventures among them, until it got to be along about one o'clock in the morning. And Mr. Bordeaux again got off onto the subject of his visit to ' La Belle France,' and he seemed to be very much pleased with the bitters he had and the attention with which I listened to his story. He was a much older man than I, and I was, indeed, very much delighted to hear him talk. All at once he disappeared through the floor, by turning up a plank or puncheon, and the first thing I knew he came back from down below somewhere with two large, musty quart bottles of champagne, and sticking one down in front of me said, 'We will drink to La Belle France. ' I was as much surprised as if the man had dug up a statue of Daniel Webster. The idea of a quart bottle of champagne in that dry, arid, heathen country almost paralyzed me, but I finally said to him that a quart bottle was more than my size, and that I would drink half of one of the bottles with him. I suggested that we split, and each drink half of the same bottle. Thereupon he got two tin cups, and with a hatchet knocked off the head. There in the stillness of night in that country we drank to the health of ' La Belle France. ' I have never seen Mr. Bordeaux since then, but have retained a delicious memory of him and the occasion. In the morning we were up early, and at eight o'clock were back at Fort Laramie.
My duties as Post Adjutant were very light, I had to superintend guard-mount at nine o'clock in the morning, and act in dress parade every evening at six. The old regular army traditions of the post had been kept up, and everything was done exactly as it had been done before the war. Every little matter of detail had been handed down, and was perpetuated with nicety and zest. The post sutler was a man by the name of Ward. His manager was named Bullock, the most courteous old-school gentleman I ever saw. He was as dignified as a Major-General. Ward gave no personal attention to the sutler store, but he was making a great deal of money out of it. He had an enormous stock of goods, and as he had no competitors and as his prices were fixed by the post administration, he got the price, and sold enormous quantities. Bullock told stories of all the generals of the war. One afternoon he took about an hour and a half in explaining to me, and instructing me in making a whisky toddy. It was with him a work of art. I never could see anything about his toddies that was anything more than normal, but somehow he had a reputation that none might hope to equal. In addition to this he had a mint-bed in a secluded place which was carefully watered every day, and more attention given to it than almost anything else around the post.
Off on one side in a low piece of land in a sheltered place, where the refuse of the cavalry stables had been hauled for years, a garden had been organized, and from a little irrigation-ditch water could be drawn with buckets, and the vegetables watered. The place, which I would say was a hundred feet wide and maybe three hundred feet long, had some vegetation on it.
Up above the fort about a mile among the bushes was what was called the 'Squaw Camp.' It was a place where Indians during peaceful times could come, and pitch their tents, and trade. There were always a number of squaws there in their tents, and a lot of half-white Indian papooses running around. Once in a while an Indian would come in with some beaver-skins and furs, and trade, and go out again; and old pioneers and trappers had their Indian wives there. And all together it was a jolly, careless, laughing, shouting lot of Indians, of whom nobody seemed to have much knowledge. It was said hostile Indians would occasionally run in, and secrete themselves there, and get all the knowledge they could as spies, and go back again.
While we were there a flight of grasshoppers came, such as in after years on several occasions devastated the vegetation of the Western States. During August the air became filled with these insects, and they took the little garden of which I spoke and ate it up almost instantly. One of the officers of the Eleventh Ohio came to me to go out with him and take a look at that garden. The grasshoppers were bunched together in swarms like bees. I remember seeing upon a handle of a spade a bunch of interwoven grasshoppers as big as a man's hat. The Indian women at the squaw camp were catching these grasshoppers, roasting them, drying them, and pounding them up into meal to make bread of during the winter. The Indians seemed to be anxious to utilize all the grasshoppers they could catch, and they made up a great many hundred pounds of them. There was also a berry which grew on the bushes along the broken lands which was called the 'buffalo-berry,' not unlike a cherry; these the Indian women usually gathered, and put into parfleches. These berries had a sort of tart flavor something like a cranberry. The Indian women gathered these berries and put them away for winter by the thousand pounds, and it was said that the berries were taken out as good as when they were put in. They did not become dry. I was told that they also mixed with them in the parfleches the fat from deer, antelope and buffalo, and ate the combined fat and berries during the winter. A parfleche was a half-tanned hide of some animal, with the hair all taken off and the inside scoured or scraped down smooth.
There was also at the Post, all the time I was there, Major Bridger, the celebrated scout and guide; also a hunter, trapper and guide named Jules Coffey. At least, that is the way they pronounced his name, although I imagine it might have been the French name of Ecoffe, because I heard one of them pronounce it Acoffay. He seemed to be very prosperous, and to have a great deal of money, and he loved to play poker wonderfully. He had, as all of those who fall into Indian life have, strange and intense superstitions. One of his superstitions was that 'jacks' in playing cards was his good luck, and he always bet his hand for more than it was worth when he had jacks in it. It was a matter of much ridicule among those at the post, where there were poker games going from morning to night. There was also a celebrated pioneer and guide by the name of Charles Elston. Elston said that he was a Virginian, but he had been out forty years then among the Sioux. He knew the Sioux language, and the Sioux country, and Indian manners and customs by heart. He knew them with even more intelligence than an Indian knew them. As a white man is smarter than an Indian in civilization, so he is smarter than an Indian when it comes to competing in Indian matters and things. Elston was a most charming man. It was said that he had two Indian wives among the Sioux, and one among the Cheyennes, but he was a sort of high-toned fellow, and his wives were never seen at the squaw camp near the fort. He seemed to like pioneering and the frontier, and told many stories of his adventures. On one occasion he told a strange story of trying to take a load of furs down the Platte river in a bull- boat, that is, in a boat made of bull-hide, with wooden ribs. He lost everything he had, and barely escaped with his life, while trying to navigate a Platte river freshet.
Another of these guides and pioneers was Leo Palladie. He was a pure Frenchman, but of the blue-eyed type. He had curly hair, and the happiest disposition of any frontiersman. He was a reader of books and newspapers, and yet he was a thoroughgoing mountaineer. He spoke all the Indian languages in the neighborhood, was an adept at their sign language, was always good-natured, telling stories and having fun. He was sunny-hearted from morning until night He told me a funny event about when the post commander up at Fort Benton, on the Missouri river, heard that the Indians were plotting to destroy the frontier and had mapped out among other things, a campaign against Fort Laramie. That was perhaps about 1861 or 1862. The post commander of Fort Benton determined to send a messenger across the country during the winter for the purpose of notifying the commanding officers at Fort Laramie, because he thought the latter post could not stand in the dead of winter a heavy siege from the combined Indian nations. The mountaineer who was selected to go wanted a companion; a half-breed Indian was sent with him. This white courier was sent off with a letter which started out by saying: 'I send you Mr. So-and-so, accompanied by a halfbreed, So-and-so, to convey you the following important information.' The letter was presented to Fort Laramie by the courier to the post commander, and he, after reading the opening portion of it, said, 'Where is your comrade?' and the courier said, 'I eat him.' They had floundered through the snow and the mountains, and the mountaineer had to eat the other man in order to carry the message through in safety. Leo Palladie would tell this story, and laugh and shriek every time he told it. It always seemed new and interesting to him. I never could find anybody who ever heard the name of the messenger that was sent, and I often used to think Palladie was telling the story of one of his own personal experiences.
Of all these guides, Bridger was the most interesting. We left Fort Laramie on the 31st of August, and it is probably better to speak of Bridger once for all as of the time that we were there. Every night he was out in front of the sutler store sitting on the benches, and telling stories of his adventures. He was quite talkative, readily responded to questions, and would talk as long as he was talked with. I heard a funny story about Bridger soon after I arrived in camp. The largest building in camp was called Bedlam. It was the two-story large hospital building fronting on the parade-ground, and the upper part of it was used for theatricals at times. There were always some soldiers who were good at private theatricals, and occasionally there was one who had been an actor. So, during the long and tiresome winter evenings there were theatrical entertainments frequently. They were generally of some light, witty, flashy kind, with an occasional heavy piece from Shakespeare. Bridger had seen a couple of Shakespeare's pieces well played at the post, and concluded he would like to have somebody read Shakespeare to him. So, he had the sutler, Mr. Ward, send and get him a copy of Shakespeare, and Bridger got a man, a soldier, to start reading it to him. One evening while sitting in front of the adobe fireplace reading Shakespeare the soldier got to reading in the play where the eyes of the two boy princes were put out. After it had been read Bridger says, 'Did
