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Show 152 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF the camp, and again that he had separated from me at the Forks. " If we had kept together," he murmured, "his fate might have been prevented, for doubtless one of us would have seen the Indians in time to have escaped." Thus, as I was afterward informed by some of the party, was my memory celebrated in that forlorn camp. Farther, having conceived a deep disgust at that vicinity, they moved their camp to the head waters of the Yellow Stone, leaving scores of beaver unmolested in the streams. The faithful fellows little thought that, while they weTe lamenting my untimely fall, I was being hugged and kissed to death by a whole lodge full of :near ·and dear Crow relatives, and that I was being welcomed with a public reception fully equal in intensity, though not in extravagance, to that accorded to the victor of W aterloo on his triumphal entry into Paris. Bridger had never supposed that the Indians whom he saw leading me away were Crows, he being ignorant that he was so near their territory. His impression was that these were Cheyennes, hence I was given up for dead and reported so to others. My death was communicated to the rendezvous when the fall hunt was over, and there was a general time of mourning in mountain style. I say" mountain style" in contradistinction to the manner of civilized circles, because, with them, when the death of a comrade is deplored, his good deeds alone are celebrated; his evil ones are interred with his bones. Modern politics have introduced the custom of perpetuating all that is derogatory to a man's fair fame, and burying in deep oblivion all that was honorable and praiseworthy. Hence I say, Give me the mountaineer, JAMES P. BECKWOURTH. 153 despite all the opprobrium that is cast upon his name, for in him you have a man of chivalrous feeling, ready to divide his last morsel with his distressed felloway, and to yield the last drop .of his blood to defend the life of his friend. CHAPTER XIII. War between the Crow Nation and other Indian Tribes.-My first Victory as a Crow Indian.-A Melancholy and Sentimental Indian. -Indian Masonry.-Return to Camp.-Great Rejoicing among my innumerable Relatives.-The Little Wife. AFTER feting for about ten days among my new neighbors, I joined a small war-party of about forty men, embodied for the ostensible purpose of capturing horses, but actually to kill their enemies. After advancing for three days, we fell in with a party of eleven of the Blood Indians, a band of the Black Foot tribe, immemorial ene1nies of the Crows. Our chief ordered a charge upon them. I .advanced directly upon their line, and had struck down my man before the others came up. The others, after making a furious ad vance, that threatened annihilation to our few foes, curveted aside in Indian fashion, thus losing the effect of a first onset. I corrected this unwarlike custom. On this occasion, seeing me engaged hand to hand with the enemy's whole force, they immediately came to my assistance, and the opposing party were quickly dispatched. I despoiled my victim of his gun, lance, war-club, bow, and quiver of arrows. Now I was the greatest man in the party, for I had killed the first warrior. We then painted our faces black (their mode of announcing victory), and rode back to the village, bear- G2 |
