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Show 322 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF We started on our way to the village. I desired him to select from his friends, and I would assemble my own. "No," said he, "my friends are fools. I don't want them. But you collect your warriors, and I will be one of them." Accordingly, I went to my father, and desired him to send for about seventy-five of my brothers and relatives, and tell them the Medicine Calf wished to see them; but I charged him not to tell them they were going away from the village. As they mustered one at a time, I acquainted them that I wanted them to leave the village singly and with the utmost secrecy, to meet me with their guns and battle-axes at a certain hour and in such a place, and in the mean time to answer no word to whatever question might be asked them. At the appointed hour I repaired to the post, and found them all in readiness. I then marched them to the place of attack. When we arrived within sight of ?ur foes we found them all very merry; they were singIng the~ olf Song, or Song of the Spies, they having no suspiCIOn that they were so near to the Crow village. We went cautiously up to the forts, which were ?uta few.yards apart; and while they were yet singIng we pOinted our guns, and, at a signal given by me, all fired. The whole party were slain; their notes ~ere cut short in death. Taking their scalps (nineteen I~ number) and guns, we reached our village by daylight, an~ entered it singing, dancing, and shouting. The village was aroused, and men, women, and children came running from all directions to learn the cause of the disturbance. We displayed our nineteen scalps, and I took to myself full credit for the force of my JAME~ P. BECKWOURTH. 323 medicine in divining where to find the foe, and cognizance was tak~n of the fact in the medicine lodge. We had five days' dancing to do full justice to this b:J;illiant achievement, and I had become so tired of their. continual mourning that their savage yells of delight seemed quite a luxury. One night a party of Black Feet came to borrow some of our horses, and happened to be caught in the fact. The alarm was given, the marauders fired upon, and one of them had his leg broken by a ball. He was found the next morning, unable to get away; but he sat up and defended himself until he had shot his last arrow. He was then brought into the village, and it was decided to burn him. A large fire was built, which was surrounded by hundreds, and when the fire was well burnt up the poor fellow was thrown in. This was the first act of the kind I had ever known the Crows to commit ; but there was no preventing it. It is an appalling sight to behold a human being, or even an inferior animal, perish in the flames ; I trust my eyes may -never witness such another scene. To see the writhing agony of the suffering wretch when cast Into the darting flames, and hear his piercing shrieks as the blaze gradually envelops his whole body, until the life is scorched out of the victim, and he falls ·prostrate among the logs, soon to become a charred mass of cinders undistinguishable from the element that consumed it-it is indeed a sight only fit for savages to look at. • I learned this one truth while I was with the In-dians, namely, that a white man can easily become an Indian, but that an Indian could never become a white man. Some of the very worst savages I ever saw in the Rocky Mountains were white men, and I could |
