Collection of Nebraska Pioneer ReminiscencesDaughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska
History
Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences
Daughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska
Frontier and pioneer life -- Nebraska; Nebraska -- History
in his individual excursion of which he proudly boasted, crawled during
the middle of the night in among the ponies and was about to slip a
lariat on the bell-mare without her stirring, when she gave a little
jump, and the bell on her neck rang out pretty loudly. Then he laid down
in the center of the herd and kept still, very still, while the horses
walked over him and tramped upon him until he found it very unpleasant.
But very soon he saw and heard some of the Cheyennes come out and look
and walk about to see if anything was wrong. Then he said he had to stay
still and silent under the horses' hoofs and make no noise, or die and
surely be scalped. At last, however, the Cheyennes, one after another,
all went back into their wigwams to sleep, and then he very slowly and
without a sound took the bell off from the mare, put his lariat on her
neck quietly, led her out and all the herd of Cheyenne ponies followed.
He never stopped until he was safe up north of the Platte river and had
all his equine spoils safe in the valley of the Loup fork going towards
the Pawnee village where Genoa now stands.
The Fox was an "expansionist" and an annexationist out of sympathy for
the oppressed ponies of the Cheyennes.
"The Fox" declared that the number of horses he made requisition for at
that time on the stables of the Cheyennes was three hundred. At this
statement some incredulity was shown by Mr. Heth, myself, and some
others present. Immediately "The Fox" threw back his woolen blanket
which was ornamented on the inside with more than two hundred small
decorative designs of horses. Among the Pawnees, and likewise, if I
remember rightly, among the Otoes and Omahas, robes and blankets were
thus embellished and so made to pass current as real certificates of a
choice brand of character for their wearers. Each horse depicted on the
robe was notice that the owner and wearer had stolen such horse.
Finally, after expressions of friendship and good will, the expedition
in charge of "The Fox" bade us adieu and briskly walked southward on
their mission for getting horses away from their traditional enemies.
It is perhaps worth while to mention that, it being in the autumn of the
year, all these Indians were carefully and deftly arrayed in
autumn-colored costumes. Their blankets, head-gear and everything else
were the color of dead and dried prairie grass. This disguise was for
the purpose of making themselves as nearly indistinguishable as possible
on the brown surface of the far-stretching plains. For then the weeds
and grasses had all been bleached by the fall frosts. We were given an
exhibition of the nearly perfect invisibleness of "The Fox" by his
taking a position near a badger hole around which a lot of tall weeds
had grown upon the prairie, and really the almost exact similitude of
coloring which he had cunningly reproduced in his raiment made him even
at a short distance indistinguishable among the faded weeds and grasses
by which he was surrounded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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