Capt. W. F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts, As Pilot to Emigrant and Government Trains, Across the Plains of the Wild West of Fifty Years AgoDrannan, William F.
History
Capt. W. F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts, As Pilot to Emigrant and Government Trains, Across the Plains of the Wild West of Fifty Years Ago
Drannan, William F.
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.)
We began to bury the dead, and the four men commenced to look after the
teams and wagons.
In a little while they came back driving three teams, and said they had
found them hooked together, feeding along quietly, and they found that
nothing had been touched or carried away from the wagons.
After Uncle Kit had learned the cause of the massacre, I think he was
the most out of humor that I ever saw him. He said, "Such men as the
ones who fired on those Indians deserve to be shot, for they are not fit
to live in any country," and turning to Bridger he said, "Jim, it has
always been such men as they that has made bad Indians and caused most
all the trouble the whites have had with them, and still the Indians are
blamed for it all, and have to suffer for it all. I hope I shall live to
see the day when these things will be changed in this respect, and the
Indians will have more justice shown them."
But I am very sorry to say that Uncle Kit did not live to see this
accomplished. It was fifty years ago that Kit Carson expressed that wish
in regard to the Indians, but it has never been gratified, for in all
that time the Indians have been driven from one place to another and not
allowed to rest anywhere long at a time, and in my opinion certainly
have not had justice done them by the white race, and I will say this
from my own experience, that when an Indian professes to be a friend he
is a friend indeed, in storm as well as sunshine.
I will tell an instance that occurred four years ago when I was in
Indian Territory. I was sitting on the street in one of the towns when
an old Kiawah Indian came along, and looked at me quite sharply and
walked on a few steps, then turned and looked at me again, and then he
came back to me and slapped me on the shoulder and said, "A-Po-Lilly,"
which meant "Long time ago me know you." I looked at him and said, "No,
you are mistaken, I do not know you," and then he told me where he
had met me and what I had done for him, and as he recounted what had
happened I remembered the incident.
The time I had first met him I was out hunting and met him in the
forest. It was in the Territory of Wyoming, and he had had a fight with
the Sioux, and they had shot his horse, and he was hungry and tired and
footsore. I took him to my camp and fed him and kept him all night, and
the next morning I gave him a horse so he could ride back to his tribe
in more comfort, and I had not seen him since that morning, and this
happened forty years before I saw him again, and he remembered me. He
shook hands with me, which is a custom the Indians have not outgrown,
and left me, but in a few minutes he returned with at least forty of his
tribe with him, and I had to shake hands with every one of them. Some of
them could speak good English, and they told me the story he had told
them about my being kind to him, and they all called me their friend.
This incident shows that the Indian appreciates kindness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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