were bound to run into, and although we started with a mountain howitzer we soon sent it back because it couldn't keep up with the procession.
The Indians held together, and kept going steadily north. We chased them all night, but they had plenty of relays of horses, and each Injun could catch up a fresh horse from time to time. Although we went at as fast pace as our animals could endure, we did not seem to overtake them. We rode until morning, but during the night we could only follow a trail. We could not see the Indians. The next day we still kept after them, as the trail was plain. The next night the Indians scattered, and went every-which-way. The trail pronged out so that we could only follow part of the Indians. We had to keep together, as we feared ambuscade, and didn't know but a large body of Indians might at any time appear. We followed the trail all night again. In the morning as the sun rose we came down into one of the most beautiful valleys I ever saw. We rode down through it in the rising sun. We had been floundering among the mountains all night. We had been doing our best to see what we could find. About a dozen of the captured horses were recovered, having been found along the trail, but they were all bunged up, and not worth bothering with. Some had been killed with arrows; others had just simply been abandoned because they were worn out, and ruined. Our own horses were about at the end of their usefulness. The beautiful valley lay in front of us, made charming by the rising sun. No Indian was in sight. There was only a light trail where perhaps a half-dozen had passed. It was useless, and practically impossible, for us to go farther. We camped and grazed our horses in the beautiful valley, each man holding on to his horse's halter lest some Indian should rise up out of the grass and stampede the herd. We were so tired and sleepy that we could hardly graze our horses. We had been up two days and two nights, and the last night had been very hard on us. We rested and let our horses graze until about noon. They got a good feed of grass; they had eaten up every grain of corn we had. Slowly and sorrowfully we wended our way back by another route.
Our guide and scout had been Charles Elston. He seemed to know the country fairly well, but we were out of the usual Indian routes, and were in a country just as it had come from the primeval hand of nature. There was always something beautiful in the Rocky Mountain country when we got into those places where no ax had ever been. We had ridden about one hundred miles. Going back, the boys went slowly, slept on their horses some of the time, and walked and led their horses some of the time, so as to lighten their load and diminish their pain, for they were all suffering from the trip. In addition, we sort of explored the country, and made rough sketches or maps as we went. When we got back it was nearly a week from the time we started. All of the horses which the Indians drove off that were of any value, were lost, and the episode was freely commented on as showing how difficult it was to know whether or not there were any Indians around the post. It put the post upon the guard to keep a steady lookout, night and day, and was an additional illustration of the fact that it was cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them.
Major Underhill had said to General Mitchell, who was telling about how the Pawnee scouts acted on our trip up Lodgepole: 'They were afraid because they knew the danger they were in, – you did not; there were enough hostile Indians always around you, though not in sight, to have eaten you all up blood-raw.' At this time while we were in Fort Laramie, immigration had entirely stopped. No stages had been running up past Laramie for months; and no trains were passing. The road from Julesburg to Laramie had practically been sealed up, There was a telegraph line which was kept running, from repairs constantly made by details of soldiers.
A very strange thing happened one evening at the sutler quarters. Along about sundown several squaws very finely dressed in mackinaw blankets came up to the sutler store with an old gentleman whose hair, long, white and curly, hung down over his shoulders, and down his back. He had a very venerable white beard and moustache. His beard bad been trimmed with scissors so that it was rather long, but pointed, Van Dyke fashion, below the chin. He was dressed thoroughly as an Indian. He wore nothing on his head, and had on a pair of beaded moccasins. He sat on one of the benches in front of the sutler store, having in his hand a cane, staff fashion, about six feet long. Some of the officers were discussing Grant's Vicksburg campaign, and about the dangerous character of his trip around and below Vicksburg, and they were analyzing it as a military feat. After listening a little while this old fellow got up, and got out several feet in front of the talkers, and said: 'Grant did just what Napoleon did.' Then, taking his staff, he began marking in the sand, and said, 'At Borodino, Napoleon started out from here, and he marched around to here,' and so on. The old gentleman went all through the Napoleonic campaign and then went through the Grant campaign, with all of us looking on silently and listening. He finished the demonstration at great length, talked very sensibly, and everybody, whether they knew him or not, paid attention to what he said. After a while the party broke up, and I asked several present who the person was; they said they didn't know. Finally I met a man who told me that this man belonged to a very fine Eastern family. That he was educated in West Point, had been a Major in the regular army, and made up his mind years before to become an Indian, and live with the Sioux. That his name was Major Twiss; was married into the Sioux tribe; came down to Fort Laramie occasionally, and went back up into the unexplored Indian country, nobody knew where. The next day I inquired about him further, because I wanted to see him again, but he had gone out to the squaw camp, and from there he and his squaws disappeared to the north.
It now appeared that the condition of the country as to Indian troubles was that the Indians as tribes would not participate in the war, and that the whole Indian strength was not in the war; but that a large amount of trouble was made by individual young bucks who were bent on mischief, and on having what they considered fun; which was, the scalping of white men and women, and the getting of horses and plunder.
General Mitchell had sent out for the chiefs to come in, and have a conference at Fort Laramie. Sometime in the latter part of the month there suddenly appeared a number of Indians, and their squaws, perhaps about thirty Indians and twenty squaws. They came into camp in the daytime, and were told to camp out at the squaw camp. The convention was a failure. There did not enough appear to make it of any force, and those who did come, very few of them, were of much importance. Shan-tag-a-lisk was said to be near the post, but was doubtful as to whether he should come in or not.
General Mitchell ordered an issuance of rations to these visible Indians, and directed me to superintend the issue. He told me what stuff was to be issued – so many sacks of flour, so many pounds of bacon, and other things. The Indian women of the squaw camp intruded themselves in on the party, so that about fifty Indian women sat around in a ring to get rations as distributed. The men stood off with great dignity, and would have nothing to do with it, because it was woman's work. I had the stuff brought inside of the ring. There was one young Indian woman who did not get into the ring, and I ordered her in, but she stood up on the outside. All of the other Indian women were sitting in a ring around the rations, which in boxes and barrels stood in the center. Finally I told that woman to get into the ring and told the interpreter to tell her that if she didn't get into the ring she wouldn't get any of the rations. She talked back, and upon my inquiring of the interpreter she said: 'I am the daughter of Shan-tag- a-lisk. I have plenty to eat.' Elsewhere I will speak more fully of this young lady; she was the one who wanted to marry a 'Capitan.' I wrote her up and published her story under the title of 'The Daughter of Shan-tag-a-lisk' in a Kansas magazine, now defunct. I insert the story herein as an appendix. Shan-tag-a-lisk was afterwards killed, Aug. 1881, by a chief named 'Crow Dog,' over a woman.
The Indians slipped in stealthily, until the first thing we knew the squaw camp was largely populated. At night new tepees were put up, and the post commander one afternoon sent me up to look them over, count them, and see how many bucks I could see loafing around. I have forgotten how many I reported, but I would say, lying around in the sun, were about twenty lazy Sioux 'Injuns' smoking and taking their ease. All this occasioned some apprehension, and the guards around the post were doubled. We were in a peculiar position. We did not want to make any enemies among the Indians, because we were trying to make peace, and we were afraid all the time that they would run in some bad Indians on us, and make us a lot of trouble; so everything was well looked after. In fact, a picket-guard was stuck up near the squaw camp, to keep an eye upon the camp at night, but the Indians were not painted up, and made no war demonstrations. General Mitchell ordered that they should leave the reservation, and go away before the next full moon.
I discovered in the course of my observation that two of the officers of the Ohio regiment had bought Indian wives, and had them stationed at the squaw camp. The Sioux were exceedingly technical in regard to the marriage relations. A marriage had to be preceded by the gift of a horse to the parent. This was an absolute requisite, and the acceptance of the horse by the parent was equivalent to consent to the marriage. If a parent did not want a certain young buck for a son-in-law, the young buck might come and keep offering horses until he had tied a dozen before the wished-for father-in-law's tepee, but the father-in-law would not receive them, while if some other buck tied one horse there he would get the girl. Two officers of our command bought squaws, but in one case the father ran off with the horse and the young squaw disappeared, and the officer was out his horse. The matter was well
