Man's Fork had a width of eighty feet, by two feet deep, with a velocity of three and a half miles an hour. The Indian name for White Man's Fork was Wah-Seecha Wocca-pella. A short distance below where we crossed, a stream came up from the south called Ten-Mile Creek, which was small and impassable. Along the 'White Man' at this point there were high bluffs on the south side, and a short distance down the river below our crossing the rock jutted out of a bluff and the river ran up under it at its base. The name of the stream is from the Sioux language. In that language Wah-Seecha means 'white man.' 'Seecha' means 'bad,' and 'Wah' means medicine; therefore a white man was, in Indian parlance, 'bad medicine.'
We then came in a southerly direction up on top of the plateau from the bed of the stream, and after about five miles of travel came to the head canyon of Ten-Mile Creek bent around to the west. This we crossed, and kept on to the Republican, our course from White Man's Fork being west of south. I give all these names as they were then used by traders and guides. I do not know present names.
In going across the upland upon this march, the advance guard, with which I happened to be marching, right at the highest point came onto a skull. It was the skull of an Indian and was very much decayed. Skulls upon that high, dry, hilly country lasted for a great many years. This one looked very ancient. It might have been a hundred years old. The skull had an iron arrow-point penetrating it from the upper side, the parietal region, entering the skull about an inch and a half. The arrow on the outside was almost rusted away. No other bones were visible. It was probably the relic of an ancient combat. We struck the Republican five miles below the upper end of the 'Big Timbers,' near a stream, and camped one-half mile below. The distance from White Man's Fork to the Republican would be about twenty miles direct, but by our line of march it was twenty-five.
A short distance above where we camped was a most excellent place for a fort; the contour of the country and stream was as follows. I give it from the drawing I then made: Route to the Republican River.
The distance we marched that day, January 19, 1865, was thirty-seven miles, and the line of march was principally on high plateaus. We made splendid time, and it was fine scenery, and everywhere we saw signs of Indians. The trails were running in every direction. They seemed to be coming and going, backwards and forwards over the country, but nevertheless we saw none of the Indians except a few fugitive scouts.
General Mitchell directed me to prepare recommendations for the establishment of a fort at the place just above described. The details were as follows: On the bench of land above where we camped the stream came into the Republican, with a curve from the north. Up along the stream above the junction was a beautiful level table, with bluffs high and rough but well back. The streams were very heavily timbered with cottonwood, and the little one came down through a ravine filled with heavy cottonwood timber as far as we could see. This table was about a quarter of a mile wide, and ran up the river about two miles. The bluffs were about a mile from the edge of the Republican river, and a fort there would be fully thirty feet above high water, and surrounded on three sides with water and difficult, abrupt banks. It was stated by the guides that the 'Big Timbers' at the Republican practically ceased five miles above this place. The big timbers were enormous cottonwood trees that were along the Republican in and around here. Above them there were only scattering trees on the river. These trees finally ran out into nothing, towards the west. Nine miles below this place the big timbers almost entirely ceased, so that this camp was in the very midst of the big timbers. These big timbers were therefore about fourteen miles long, and filled most of the bottom-lands. There were several springs coming in at this place, and on the edge and through the timbers were dense growths of grass. The guides told us that this camp was about thirty-five miles below the 'Ree Fork' (that was the common expression for Arickaree) and thirty miles up from the mouth of 'White Man,' but I think that this estimate of distance by the guides could be only guess-work. Above this camp five miles, and ten miles on the north side and ten miles on the south side, streams came in from the hills. These big timbers were all cottonwood trees averaging and exceeding two feet in diameter, and located on an average of about one to every fifty yards square, without a particle of underbrush, but a dense growth of high bottom-grass. Here was where the buffalo used to live, and here we found Indian signs everywhere prevalent. The location of the Big Timbers was as follows:
Big Timbers on the Upper Republican River, fourteen miles along the stream.
From this camp in the big timbers scouting parties were sent out to see if we could find the Indians. Very great numbers of them had been hibernating through the heavy timbers scattered along the river at this place, and the question was where had they gone.
Joe Jewitt had been brought along, and he was sent out in one direction to guide a party; Charley Elston was sent out in another direction; Leo Palladie was sent out in another.
The latter command consisted of most of my company, and I went with them. We were sent southwest to go across the plateau, and follow a tree line which ran up the south fork of the Republican River, and then go south to the headwaters of the Sappa rivers. There were then the North and South Sappa; now the north one appears on the map as Beaver Creek. Sappa, in Sioux, meant 'black.' These creeks were full of beavers then. We started, and as we came near what is now the Kansas line, Leo Palladie, who was riding with me at the head of the company, looked up and surveyed the landscape, and said: 'We are now in Kansas. We have crossed the line, and we are not very far from the northwest corner.' As we rode up to the plateau he pointed to the west, and said: 'There is Ree Fork. You see where it strikes that other stream? Well, that high ground on the other side is across the line. The northwest comer of Kansas is up near where those two streams come together.' I asked him how he knew, and he said that one time he was going over the country with some Indians and a white man who knew about the survey, and the white man pointed out to him where the northwest corner stake of Kansas was driven. It was not far from the water-bed of Ree Fork.
We went up onto the plateau. The country was as poor and arid as it could be on the upland; there was grass growing on the bottoms. Looking some little distance ahead, I saw a hill which was split down from the top like a Bishop's mitre. I said, 'What hill is that?' and he said, 'That is a sandhill.' As it was in our course we soon reached it, and there I found a large hill of sand, through the middle of the top of which the wind both ways (north and south) had excavated the same, and spread it over at least a half-mile square on the north and south sides of the hill. I asked Palladio how that could happen, and he said: 'Well, it happened like this. Deer are very curious animals, and the old bucks do guard duty for the herd, and give signals of danger. These bucks will go up on the tops of the hills, and will wear out with their sharp hoofs, while stamping off flies, whatever coat of grass happens to be there. Perhaps a single file of buffalo have gone over the top of the hill, as they are prone to do. Then the winds come and get a start, and hollow it out.' This hill was a very large mound, and the excavation which the wind had made was one in which vast quantities of sand had been carried away.
During the whole scout we had seen in the far distance from time to time, single isolated Indians. In one case, off at a distance of perhaps three miles, we saw a pony running with a lodge. The Indians place a lodge-pole on each side of a pony, allowing the ends to drag, and upon these ends place their tent and equipment, and it goes over the ground dragging as fast as the pony can go.
We got down into Kansas at what would now be called Sherman county, went into camp on a little stream, and the next day returned to the Republican river, making about 100 miles in two days. We found nothing in the nature of a large trail. The trails were all small, but very numerous, seeming to indicate that the Indians had scattered every-which-way, each one for himself. The difficulty of this condition of things was that we could not scatter out ourselves, and follow the individual trails. The Indians in all directions had scattered out like a fan. They probably had some place arranged for meeting again, but we could not follow those tactics. We had to keep together, and be ready for them upon all occasions. There was a large migration Indian trail coming from the southwest, but it appeared several months old.
One of the other scouting parties that went west had a different experience from ours. They were up amid a nest of timber, had taken a wagon along with tents, and at night went into camp, but with due precaution they had their horses tied up closely in camp all night. But a body of Indians, not large in number, ran through their camp at night, shooting off firearms, breaking tent-ropes and pulling up pegs, but doing no damage. No soldier was injured nor an Indian hurt, and they went off in the dark night as rapidly as they came. Although the soldiers had guards out, the guards could give no intelligent account of the matter.
Chapter XXXIV.
January 21, 1865 – Back to Republican River – Zero Weather – General Mitchell's Opinion on Indians – A
