The old squaw man was in this big gathering, all dressed up like the
Indians with britch cloth and head-dress with all kinds of feathers in
his bonnet. I recall a rather amusing incident about him. A few years
prior to the time I am writing of, the railroad ended at Miles City, and
the administration at Washington, D.C., had notified the Crow Indian
agent to send several chiefs to Washington to try to make a peace treaty
and give them certain portions of land if they would become civilized.
The agent called this squaw man to the Agency to send him with the
chiefs as an interpreter. Now the old man had never seen a train or
railroad and thought he had to ride horseback all the way to Washington.
He told the agent he thought he could make the trip all right, but would
have to have a new saddle. When he returned from Washington, the Indians
were very anxious to know what he had seen and some of them still
thought they could beat the white men at war. So they asked the old man
how many whites he saw. He picked up both hands full of sand and throwed
it in the air. Said he, “The whites are just like that wherever I went.”
It was said that this demonstration by the old man made it seem useless
to most of the braves to carry the fight any farther.
They also had the scalps of those two Indians they had killed hung on a
tripod and some of the young braves sure put on a real war dance around
the scalps.
Another man and myself went there one night. It sure was some sight. We
put blankets around us like the Indians wore. This man I was with could
talk Indian and they told him they knew we were white men even in the
dark from the way we walked. This man’s name was Herb Dana, and he lived
on Tongue River in Wyoming. If he is alive yet he can verify what I have
told about this incident.
That winter a man by the name of Ed Town and myself started across the
reservation with a freighting outfit, which he owned. He lived at the
foot of the Big Horn Mountains. We had forty head of work cattle (which
was Texas steers) and six wagons (which was two teams, three wagons
hooked together—ten yoke of cattle made a team). It was in the month of
January and the weather turned bitter cold.
We were near froze to death one night. We made camp and unyoked the
steers, turned them loose without any feed except a few willows that
grew on the creek. We finally got the tent up and I was kicking around
in snow up to my knees, trying to find wood enough to build a fire, but
there wasn’t any to be found. About the time I had given up, an old
Indian came up to me and made signs he had a good lodge and no grub and
that we had plenty food and no fire, and invited us to bring our food to
his tepee. We were sure glad to make the trade.
His lodge was about 200 yards from our camp. We took all the bacon and
flour the three of us could carry and went with the Indian. That was as
cold a night as I ever saw and am sure we would both lost our lives if
it wasn’t for that Indian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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