OCR Text |
Show CHAPTER X. THE WAR PARTIES. "By the nine gods he swore it, And named a trysting day, And bade his mes engers ride forth East and west and south and north, h. ,, To summon 1s array. LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. THE summer of 1846 was a season of much warlike excitement among all the western bands of the Dahcotah. In 1845 they encountered great reverses. Many war parties had been sent out · some of them had been totally cut off, and others had ' returned broken and disheartened; so that the whole nation was in mourning. Among the rest, ten warriors had gone to the Snake country~ led by the son of a prominent Ogillallah chief, called the Whirl wind. In passing over Laramie Plains they encountered a supen·o r number o f t h ei· r enemi· es, were sur-rounded, and killed to a man. Having performed this exploit, the Snakes became alarmed, dreading the resentment of the Dahcotah, and they hastened therefore to signify their wish for peace by sending the scalp of the slain partisan, together with a small parcel of tobacco attached, to his tribesmen and relations. They had employed old Vaskiss, the trader, as their messenger, THE WAR PARTIES. 143 and the scalp was the same that hung in our room at the fort. But the Whirlwind proved inexorable. Though his character hardly corresponds with his name, he is nevertheless an Indian, and hates the Snakes with his whole soul. Long before the scalp arrived, he had made his preparations for revenge. l-Ie sent messengers with presents and tobacco to all the Dahcotah within three hundred miles, proposing a grand combination to chastise the Snakes, and naming a place and time of rendezvous. The plan was readily adopted, and at this moment many villages, probably embracing in the whole . five or six thousand ~ouls, were slowly creeping over the prairies and tending toward the common centre at 'La Bonte's Camp,' on the Platte. Here their warlike rites were to be celebrated with more than ordinary solemnity, and a thousand warriors, as it was said, were to set out for the enemy's country. The characteristic result of this preparation will appear in the sequel. I was greatly rejoiced to hear of it. I had come into the country almost exclusively with a view of observing the Indian character. I-Iaving from childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and having failed completely to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have recourse to observation. I wished to satisfy myself with regard to tho position of the Indians among the races of men '· the vices and the virtues that have sprung from their innate character and from their modes of life, their gov-ernment, their superstitions, and their domestic situation. To accomplish my purpose it was necessary to live in the midst of them, and become, as it were, one of them. I proposed to join a village, and make myself an inmate of one of their lodges; and henceforward this narrative, so far as I a1n concerned, will he chiefly a record of the progress of this design, apparently so |