CHAPTER II
HISTORIC LAND
"There are some friends of ours," said Hugh, as the stage approached thehotel, and he raised his hand and made the Indian sign to attractattention.
"Yes," said Jack, "I see them. There is Baptiste and there's Joe, too.It's splendid to see them both again." Jack signaled earnestly and madethe sign for shaking hands, to which his two friends responded.
As the stage drew up, Hugh said, "Now, son, you get down into the bootand haul out our bags and throw them to me," and when Hugh had reachedthe ground Jack passed him the bags and then sprang down himself. Therewere hearty handshakes and many questions between the four delightedfriends, and presently Baptiste said, "Casse-tete, let us go now to mycabane, and there we will eat and smoke. I have many things to ask you."
"All right," said Hugh. "Just wait a minute till I see about our beds."
In the meantime Jack and Joe had engaged in a sort of war dance,followed by a wrestling match, to express their joy at meeting again,and then Jack thought of the beds on the coach and ran and unstrappedthe leather apron which covered the baggage rack, and the two boys,loosening the lashings, threw the beds on the ground by the hotel door.
"Hello," said Hugh, "those boys have got our beds off now. We can goon. Just set those beds inside the office, and tell the clerk we'll stopfor them with the wagon when we start. Then come on to Bat's cabin."
Before long Hugh and Jack were seated in the cabin, while Baptiste andJoe were busily engaged in the work of preparing breakfast. Soon allwere seated at the table. The fare was simple, but heartily enjoyed, forall had healthy appetites and contented minds.
"How are you getting on, Bat?" said Hugh. "How do you live? Just aboutas you did a couple of years ago?"
"Yes," said Baptiste; "I live well; I always have lived well since youand these boys came in from the north and made me that fine present ofthe gold that you think I lost many years ago. Every month the bank paysme my money, and then besides I work a little for the company at thefurs, so they pay me something, and I have some money that I can spend.I have bought me two horses, and sometimes I go off on a hunt; sometimesI trap a little. It is not much, but it is pleasant; it brings back tomy mind the old days. Also, my mind is better than it was. I do notforget things as I used to. It was a good thing for me when you threemen came in from the north and found me here, and you would not havefound me except for the charger that Jack picked up on the prairie."
"Doesn't it seem wonderful that the finding of that little piece ofmetal should have changed a man's life as yours has been changed,Baptiste?" said Jack.
"Yes," said Hugh; "we, none of us, can ever tell what influence thesmallest thing we do will have on other people. Now, Joe," he went on,"have you got a team here, and are you ready to take us out to the camp,as Mr. Sturgis wrote you?"
"Yes," said Joe, "the team's here and the wagon, and I reckon we canmake the agency in three or four days and we can start just whenever youare ready. I've got a mess outfit and some coffee and sugar and baconand flour, and if you need anything more we can get it here. I'm readyto start as soon as you are."
"Well," said Hugh, "the sooner we get off the better, I expect. What doyou say, son?"
"Why," replied Jack, "you can't start too soon for me. I'm anxious toget to the camp, and then into the mountains. I always feel as if Ididn't have much time out here anyhow, and I want to make the most ofwhat I have."
"Well, then," said Hugh, as they pushed back their chairs from thetable, "let's sit down and smoke a pipe and talk for a little while, andthen you and Jack can go and get the team, and Bat and I will sit hereand chew the rag about old times until you come for us. Get the beds andthe bags when you come by the hotel, and then we can pull right out. Ireckon Joe has grub enough and we won't have to buy anything herewithout it is a piece of fresh meat. We might get beef enough for two orthree meals, but the weather is kind o' hot now, and likely there'll bea chance to get meat at some of the ranches we pass if we need it."
For a time Hugh and Baptiste sat together talking about the old trappingdays, bringing up one after another the names of men whom they hadknown, and relating incidents of hunting, trapping, buffalo chasing,and Indian fighting. Jack thought it was good to listen to, but atlength Hugh turned to the boys and said, "Well, go on now and get yourwagon and we'll pull out. It's a long ways from here to the agency, andevery hour we lose on this end we've got to make up on the other."
The boys started off for the team, leaving the old men to sit in the sunand talk about the past. A little later the wagon drew up to the door,and Hugh, after glancing through its contents and tightening one of theropes that lashed on the load, said, "Well, we may as well be going.Good-by, Bat; we're likely to get back here about two months hence, andwe'll meet then. I reckon up in the camp we'll see all the Monroes andold man Choquette, but those are all the old-timers we're likely tomeet. So long," and he climbed into the wagon.
"Good-by, Baptiste," said Jack, as he shook hands, and Joe, reachingdown from the driver's seat, pressed the old man's hand without a word.
"Good-by, my friends, good-by," said Baptiste. "It has been good to seeyou. Always your coming brings joy to my heart. I shall look for you tocome again."
Joe gathered up the reins, spoke to the horses, and in a moment theywere rattling along the street headed for the road leading up the TetonRiver.
It was a beautiful day. The air was cool and pleasant, yet the sun shonewarm. The prairie and the distant hills were still green, and beautifulflowers dotted the plain. From the top of almost every sage brush camethe sweet, mellow whistle of the meadow lark. In the air all aboutbirds were rising from the ground, singing as though their throats wouldburst, and then after reaching a certain height, slowly floating downagain on outspread wings, the song ending just as they reached theground.
After they had gone a short distance away from the town the countryseemed as lonely as the wildest prairie. Far off, here and there, grazeda few cattle or horses. Ahead of them the white, level road wound aboutamong the bushes of the sage. To Jack it was all very delightful. Thechange from the crowded city was absolute, and as he looked about himand enjoyed his surroundings his heart seemed to swell within hisbreast, and he felt as though he could hardly speak.
Presently Joe said to Hugh, "Have you plenty of room, White Bull? I gotthis extra wide seat before I started because I thought we'd all want tosit on one seat, but I don't know whether it gives you room enough."
"Oh, yes," said Hugh, "there's lots of room for all of us."
"Yes," said Jack, "we could pretty nearly put another man here."
"Now, Joe," said Hugh a little later, "I want to ask you something aboutthe people. I heard that two years ago, and maybe last year also, theystarved, and that many of them died. I heard, too, that even up here thebuffalo have all gone."
"Yes," said Joe, "that is true. Two years ago and also last year thepeople starved, but it was two years ago that the most of them died,that is, one winter back from this winter that has just passed. OldFour Bears kept a kind of count on a stick, cutting a notch for everyperson that died, and they say that nearly six hundred of the peoplestarved to death. There was no food. The buffalo had not been seen fortwo winters. The people had hunted and sometimes killed an elk or a deeror a few antelope, but at last these had all been killed, and there wasleft nothing but rabbits and such birds as we could shoot or snare. Itwas a hard time; everybody was hungry. Everybody got poor. Even peoplethat had once been heavy and had much fat on their bodies grew lean andthin. When you looked at the old people, the women and the children, youcould see their bones sticking out against the skin. The little childrenand the old people were the ones that died. The men and the women werevery hungry and got weak, but they did not die. White Calf, who is nowthe chief, asked the agent to give us what food there was in thestorehouse and let us have one good meal and then die, but the agentwould not do it. He told us to go out and kill food for ourselves. Youknow Father Prando?" Hugh
nodded.
"Well, he had seen for a long time what was coming and he had written topeople back East, asking that food might be sent out to us, and tellingthem that unless it was sent we should all starve to death. Besidesthat, he wrote to the commanding officer at Fort Shaw, and during thewinter an officer was sent up to the agency to see how the people weregetting on. This officer came and went around through the camp, andasked the people to tell him the truth. He didn't have to ask manyquestions; he had eyes and could see for himself. They tell me that insome of the lodges that officer sat and cried; that the tears ran downhis face as they do down the face of a woman whose child has just died.
"After a while he went away, and we heard nothing more, but presentlythe news came that wagons loaded with food were coming from Fort Shaw,and then a little while after that came a government inspector who askedmany questions and removed the agent and stopped here. This inspectorwas a good man, I think. He kept sending messages to Fort Shaw andtrying to hurry the food along, and they say that he sent telegrams toWashington. Anyhow, about the end of the winter wagons began to comeloaded with flour and bacon, and this was given out to the people, andthen the suffering stopped, and the people stopped dying. After a littlewhile, too, we got a new agent, a good man, who seems to be trying tohelp the people. He taught them how to plow the ground and to put seedinto it. Maybe that is good. The seed grew, but it did not get ripe. Wehad plenty of oat straw, but no oats; but ever since the food began tocome a year ago last winter we have been doing better."
"Well, well, that's a hard story," said Hugh. "How did it come thatthere was not food enough in the warehouses to help the people along?"
"I heard two of the white men that have married into the tribe talking,"said Joe, "and they said that the agent had been writing to Washingtonthat the Indians were doing well and were growing crops and becomingcivilized. They said that he wrote those things so that the people atWashington would think that he was a great man and was helping theIndians along. Of course the people never grew any crops; they didn'tknow how. They lived well enough as long as there were buffalo, but whenthe buffalo went away, then the people had nothing to depend on."
"You say nearly six hundred died?" asked Hugh.
"That is what they told me," replied Joe.
"Good Lord," said Hugh, "that was about one-fourth of the people. Idon't suppose there was more than twenty-five hundred or three thousandPiegans at best."
"I don't know," said Joe, "how many there were, but I know that manydied. You can see their bodies in all the trees along the creeks."
"But, Hugh," said Jack, "how is it possible that such a thing shouldoccur? Why didn't the people back East know about this suffering andsend food out to relieve it?"
"Well, son," said Hugh, "you know it's an awful long way from here backEast, and then it's hard always to get at the truth about any of thesestories. An Indian reservation is a great place for getting up kicks andcomplaints, and I suppose that maybe those people in Washington are soused to hearing complaints that they don't pay much attention to them."
"But just think," said Jack, "of six hundred people being starved todeath. It's almost impossible to believe it."
"I reckon," said Hugh, "that we'll find a good many of our old friendsdead when we get to the camp."
"Yes," said Joe, "a good many."
All day long the horses trotted briskly up the level road along theTeton River. The sun was hot, but a cool breeze blew down from themountains to the west and the whole country was fresh, green, andcharming. About three o'clock they camped on the river at the edge of agrove of cottonwood trees, and unhitching the horses, Joe and Jackpicketed them on the fresh green grass. Hugh, meanwhile, had broughtsome wood and built the campfire, and before long supper was ready.
As they sat about after eating, Hugh smoking his pipe, the boys loungingin the warm sunshine, and all watching the sun as it sank toward thewest, and the shadows of the cottonwoods grow longer minute by minute,Hugh said to Jack, "We were talking this morning, son, about the hardtimes the Piegans have had this winter, and that brought to my mindanother hard time that they had a good many years ago."
"What was that, Hugh?" said Jack, sitting up to listen, while Joe, whohad been lying on his back with his eyes shut, rolled over so that hefaced the old man.
"Did you ever hear of the Baker massacre?" asked Hugh.
"No," said Jack, "I never did."
"I did," said Joe. "My father was killed that time. I don't rememberanything about it. I was too little. Only I remember my mother, how shecried."
"Yes," said Hugh, "lots of people cried that time."
"Tell us about it," said Jack.
"Well," said Hugh, "it's quite a long story and it made quite a fuss inits time, not so much among the white folks out here as among theIndians and, as I've heard, among white people back East. It certainlywas a bad killing. You read in the books about the way Indians massacrewhite women and children when they're on the warpath, but I reckonIndians never did anything worse than this killing at the Bakermassacre. The way the white men killed and cut up the Cheyenne andArapahoe women and children at Sand Creek down in Colorado, and the waythey killed women and children up here on the Marias, no Indians couldever beat."
Hugh paused, and looked around for a twig with which to push down thefire in his pipe.
"I've heard about the Sand Creek massacre, Hugh," said Jack, "though Inever heard the whole story. Some day I'm going to get you to tell methat; but what was the Baker massacre?"
"Well," said Hugh, "along in '66-'67, and from that time up to 1870,this country up here in Montana was run over by a whole lot of differentIndian tribes. Of course it was Piegan country, and with the Pieganswere the Blackfeet and Bloods, and a part of the time the Gros Ventresof the prairie. They were all on good terms with each other after theGros Ventres made peace with the Piegans along about 1868. Besidesthese, there were the Crows, who were hostile to the Blackfeet, andevery now and then the Kootenays would come over the mountains and havea scrap, and the Crees would come down from the north and steal Pieganhorses, and Assinaboines and other Sioux would come up from the east andthey'd tackle the Blackfeet. Pretty nearly any of these Indians, if theysaw a chance to run off some stock or to kill a lone white man would doit, but the Piegans, being close at home and always within reach, gotthe credit of most of the deviltry that was done. As a matter of fact,I reckon it was the Sioux and Assinaboines that did most of it. Anyhow,the trappers and traders and freighters in the country, and there werequite a number of them, got to thinking that the Piegans made all thetrouble. I reckon that the Bloods from the north, and sometimes a bandof Blackfeet coming down to visit the Piegans, did considerable horsestealing, and maybe they killed a few white men.
"Along about that time, too, Malcolm Clark took it into his head topound up a young Piegan and gave him a terrible beating, and this youngPiegan, who was a brother of Clark's wife, went off and got a party ofhis friends and went back and killed Clark. Meantime all the Pieganswere camping in their country as usual and were passing back and forth,going into Benton and not looking for any trouble at all; but some ofthe toughs in Benton, whose names I won't mention, because you may meetsome of them, took an old Piegan, a beaver trapper and a good old man,and killed him and threw him into the river; and another man took out ayoung boy, considerably younger than you are, and just shot him down inthe street. A lot of false reports were sent back East about what theIndians had been doing, and the result was that Colonel Baker wasordered to march against a certain village of Indians who were campingup here on the Marias, north of where we are now and about forty milesfrom Benton. The troops were guided by two men who are now living on thePiegan reservation, each of them married to an Indian woman. The ordersgiven to Colonel Baker were to strike Mountain Chief's band of Piegans,because from some information they had it was supposed that these peoplehad been plundering and perhaps killing white people. As a matter offact, the village found by the troops was that of Red Horn and Be
arChief. The camp consisted of less than forty lodges, and probably had init a little more than two hundred people. The troops got up close to thevillage in the gray of the morning, without being seen, and their orderswere to shoot to kill when they fired. There were but few peoplestirring when the first volley was fired. They were all killed, and thenthe people began to stream out of the lodges. At once they saw that theywere being attacked by troops, and thought that it was a mistake. BearChief, unarmed, rushed toward the soldiers holding up a paper given himby some white man, but before he got to the soldiers he fell, with halfa dozen bullets through him. The women and children were killed just asthe men were, and of all the village only about forty-five got away, andsome of these were off hunting and were not there when the attack wasmade. There were a hundred and seventy-six Indians killed, thirty-sevenof them men, ninety women, and about fifty children.
"There was no pretense of a defense by the Indians. They didn't fight atall. They were just shot down until the troops got tired of shooting.The Indians have told me that most of the thirty-seven men that werekilled were old men and young boys. As if to make it a little rougher onthe Indians, there was smallpox in the camp at the time.
"You'll see old Almost-a-Dog up at the agency, and if you shake handswith him you'll notice that his hand is crooked. He got that wound atthe Baker massacre."
"Why, Hugh, that's one of the most terrible things I ever heard of,"said Jack. "A hundred and seventy-six killed, and out of that a hundredand forty women and little children!"
"Yes," said Hugh, "it always seemed to me pretty bad. Of course, whenmen go to war or try to steal horses or do anything of that kind theytake all the chances that there are. It's all right to kill them if youcan, but how anybody that's got any sense can shoot down women andchildren the way that man Baker did gets away with me.
"Well," he went on, "after a while the news of this massacre driftedEast, and I heard that the newspapers took it up and told the truthabout it, and I reckon the army officers most concerned in it got calleda good many names. I've heard that Colonel Baker lost his chance of evergetting very high up in the army on account of this fight, and yet heonly did just what he was ordered to do."
"That certainly was terribly cruel," said Jack, "and I don't see how itcould be excused."
"Joe," said Hugh, turning to the Indian, who had said nothing, but stilllay on the grass with his head resting on his hand, "were you in thatcamp, or were you somewhere else?"
"No," said Joe, "I was not in that camp. My mother was and a littlesister and my father, but I was at Three Sun's Village, stopping with myaunt. I must have been about three or four years old at that time."
"Of the people left alive out of that village," Hugh went on, "therewere nearly forty who were women and little bits of children. They wereturned loose on the prairie--some of them being sick with the smallpox,you will remember--on the twenty-third of January. Anybody who knowswhat winter weather is up here in Montana can tell what that means. It'sa wonder that any of them lived to get to a camp where they were lookedafter."
Hugh's story had taken some time in the telling, and by the time he hadfinished it was quite dark. Jack and Joe got up and went out to wherethe horses were and changed them to fresh grass, and on their way backbrought the beds from the wagon and threw them down close to the fire.Hugh meanwhile had put fresh wood on it and the cheerful blaze lit upthe white trunks of the cottonwoods and was reflected on the leavesabove. It was a beautiful night, and the three spread their beds nearthe fire and were soon asleep.