Three Years on the Plains: Observations of Indians, 1867-1870Tuttle, Edmund B. (Edmund Bostwick)
History
Three Years on the Plains: Observations of Indians, 1867-1870
Tuttle, Edmund B. (Edmund Bostwick)
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Indians of North America; Indians of North America -- Great Plains
A squaw had died here, and was buried as usual, by elevating the body
upon upright poles. A stock of food was left with her at night, to eat
on the way to the other country. But lo! in the morning she came down
and ate it all up, saying to her friends, "She wanted to see her aunt
before departing." She lived a week longer, and died, as it was
supposed, again. It is said that her friends got tired of such fooling,
and being determined to end the matter, adopted the white man's mode of
covering her up in the ground! Again she rose up and preferred some new
request; but thinking the old enchantress had stayed long enough this
side the hunting grounds, they forced her down and laid sufficient turf
upon her to keep her quiet for a long last sleep.
Among the Pawnees at Columbus, on the reservation near the railroad, an
Indian trader makes a good thing out of the poor fellows in this way:
For instance, the Indian Bureau pays off the tribe twice a year. In the
spring, blankets, etc.; these are worth at least three dollars each.
The Indians sell these blankets for a double handful of coffee and
sugar. Then they buy them back in the fall with money and buffalo meat,
which they sell to the trader at six cents the pound. He then cures the
meat and sells it back to them for twenty-five cents the pound; thus
making nine per cent. on it. Some one, it is said, complained to the
government about it, and they sent a new agent to them; but the Pawnees
had confidence in the old agent or trader named Platt, and they stoutly
refused to trade with the new man!
ACROSS THE PLAINS.
When Vice-President Colfax and Horace Greeley, and Governor Bross of
Illinois, made the journey overland to California, about twelve years
since, they went all the way by stage from the Missouri River to
Denver, Colorado, to Salt Lake, etc., through the mountains of the
Sierra Nevada. It took them about thirty days to go. Mr. Greeley said
he "could think of these plains (called in your maps the 'Great
American Desert') as fit for nothing but to fill up between commercial
cities!" But he was partly mistaken, as his friends are now planting a
colony (named Greeley) of intelligent settlers on the Cach-le-pow-dre
Creek, south of Cheyenne, fifty-five miles toward Denver, where ninety
thousand acres of land have been secured for tillage, and where
saw-mills and stores and dwellings are to be erected. The success of
this enterprise has led to another one. The railroad _has projected
civilization one hundred years ahead_, opening up a highway for
commerce from New York to the "Golden Gate," to Asia, Africa, and
China, which will astonish the world and divert the course of trade to
the Pacific coast.
But you are interested mainly, I see, in reading about the incidents
which attended the opening up of this great national highway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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