When the whites fired at all they fired at a man,whether moving,or motionless,whom they could clearly see,while the Indians could only shoot at the smoke,which imperfectly marked the position of their unseen foes.In consequence the assailants speedily found that it was a task of hopeless danger to try in such a manner to close in on three plains veterans,men of iron nerve and skilled in the use of the rifle.Yet some of the more daring crept up very close to the patch of brush,and one actually got inside it,and was killed among the bedding that lay by the smouldering camp-fire.The wounded and such of the dead as did not lie in too exposed positions were promptly taken away by their comrades;but seven bodies fell into the hands of the three hunters.I asked Woody how many he himself had killed.He said he could only be sure of two that he got;one he shot in the head as he peeped over a bush,and the other he shot through the smoke as he attempted to rush in."My,how that Indian did yell,"said Woody,retrospectively,"/he/was no great of a Stoic."After two or three hours of this deadly skirmishing,which resulted in nothing more serious to the whites than in two of them being slightly wounded,the Sioux became disheartened by the loss they were suffering and withdrew,confining themselves thereafter to a long range and harmless fusillade.When it was dark the three men crept out to the river bed,and taking advantage of the pitchy night broke through the circle of their foes;they managed to reach the settlements without further molestation,having lost everything except their rifles.
For many years one of the most important of the wilderness dwellers was the West Point officer,and no man has played a greater part than he in the wild warfare which opened the regions beyond the Mississippi to white settlement.Since 1879,there has been but little regular Indian fighting in the North,though there have been one or two very tedious and wearisome campaigns waged against the Apaches in the South.Even in the North,however,there have been occasional uprisings which had to be quelled by the regular troops.
After my elk hunt in September,1891,I came out through the Yellowstone Park,as I have elsewhere related,riding in company with a surveyor of the Burlington and Quincy railroad,who was just coming in from his summer's work.It was the first of October.There had been a heavy snow-storm and the snow was still falling.Riding a stout pony each,and leading another packed with our bedding,etc.,we broke our way from the upper to the middle geyser basin.Here we found a troop of the 1st Cavalry camped,under the command of old friends of mine,Captain Frank Edwards and Lieutenant (now Captain)John Pitcher.They gave us hay for our horses and insisted upon our stopping to lunch,with the ready hospitality always shown by army officers.After lunch we began exchanging stories.My travelling companion,the surveyor,had that spring performed a feat of note,going through one of the canyons of the Big Horn for the first time.He went with an old mining inspector,the two of them dragging a cottonwood sledge over the ice.
The walls of the canyon are so sheer and the water so rough that it can be descended only when the stream is frozen.However,after six days'labor and hardship the descent was accomplished;and the surveyor,in concluding,described his experience in going through the Crow Reservation.
This turned the conversation upon Indians,and it appeared that both of our hosts had been actors in Indian scrapes which had attracted my attention at the time they occurred,as they took place among tribes that I knew and in a country which I had sometime visited,either when hunting or when purchasing horses for the ranch.The first,which occurred to Captain Edwards,happened late in 1886,at the time when the crow Medicine Chief,Sword-Bearer,announced himself as the Messiah of the Indian race,during one of the usual epidemics of ghost dancing.Sword-Bearer derived his name from always wearing a medicine sword--that is,a sabre painted red.He claimed to possess magic power,and,thanks to the performance of many dexterous feats of juggling,and the lucky outcome of certain prophecies,he deeply stirred the Indians,arousing the young warriors in particular to the highest pitch of excitement.They became sullen,began to paint and armed themselves;and the agent and the settlers nearby grew so apprehensive that the troops were ordered to go to the reservation.Abody of cavalry,including Captain Edwards'troop,was accordingly marched thither,and found the Crow warriors,mounted on their war ponies and dressed in their striking battle-garb,waiting on a hill.
