The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868Howbert, Irving
History
The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868
Howbert, Irving
El Paso County, Colo. -- History; Indians of North America -- Colorado; Sand Creek Massacre, Colo., 1864
Farnham was very much pleased with the South Park, and says of it, after
describing its streams, valleys, and rocky ridges:
This is a bird's-eye view of Bayou Salado, so named from the
circumstance that native rock salt is found in some parts of
it. We were in the central portion of it. To the north and
south and west its isolated plains rise one above another,
always beautiful and covered with verdure during the months of
spring and summer. A sweet spot this, for the romance of the
future as well as of the present and past. The buffalo have for
ages resorted here about the last days of July from the arid
plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and hither the Utes,
Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Black Feet, Crows and Sioux of the
north, have for ages met and hunted and fought and loved, and
when their battles and hunts were interrupted by the chills
and snows of November, they separated for their several winter
resorts.
How wild and beautiful the past, as it comes up fledged with
the rich plumage of the imagination! These vales, studded
with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams, with their
thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I see
the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited
logs, in family groups, whispering the dreams of their rude
love, or gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief
at the hour of midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance
or the whoop of war that is to cast the deadly arrow with the
first gleam of morning light.
Or, may we not see them gathered, a circle of old braves,
around an aged tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies
of half a century's daring deeds. The eldest and richest in
scalps rises from the center of the ring and advances to the
tree. Hear him!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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