Some would hang around
the necks, or rather on the breasts of their horses, the most
precious ornaments they had obtained from the white men; others
interwove feathers in their manes and tails. The Indian horses,
too, appear to have an attachment to their wild riders, and
indeed, it is said that the horses of the prairies readily
distinguish an Indian from a white man by the smell, and give a
preference to the former. Yet the Indians, in general, are hard
riders, and, however they may value their horses, treat them with
great roughness and neglect. Occasionally the Cheyennes joined
the white hunters in pursuit of the elk and buffalo; and when in
the ardor of the chase, spared neither themselves nor their
steeds, scouring the prairies at full speed, and plunging down
precipices and frightful ravines that threatened the necks of
both horse and horseman. The Indian steed, well trained to the
chase, seems as mad as the rider, and pursues the game as eagerly
as if it were his natural prey, on the flesh of which he was to
banquet.
The history of the Cheyennes is that of many of those wandering
tribes of the prairies. They were the remnant of a once powerful
people called the Shaways, inhabiting a branch of the Red River
which flows into Lake Winnipeg. Every Indian tribe has some rival
tribe with which it wages implacable hostility. The deadly
enemies of the Shaways were the Sioux, who, after a long course
of warfare, proved too powerful for them, and drove them across
the Missouri. They again took root near the Warricanne Creek, and
established themselves there in a fortified village.
The Sioux still followed with deadly animosity ; dislodged them
from their village, and compelled them to take refuge in the
Black Hills, near the upper waters of the Sheyenne or Cheyenne
River. Here they lost even their name, and became known among the
French colonists by that of the river they frequented.
The heart of the tribe was now broken; its numbers were greatly
thinned by their harassing wars. They no longer attempted to
establish themselves in any permanent abode that might be an
object of attack to their cruel foes. They gave up the
cultivation of the fruits of the earth, and became a wandering
tribe, subsisting by the chase, and following the buffalo in its
migrations.
Their only possessions were horses, which they caught on the
prairies, or reared, or captured on predatory incursions into the
Mexican territories, as has already been mentioned. With some of
these they repaired once a year to the Arickara villages,
exchanged them for corn, beans, pumpkins, and articles of
European merchandise, and then returned into the heart of the
prairies.
Such are the fluctuating fortunes of these savage nations. War,
famine, pestilence, together or singly, bring down their strength
and thin their numbers. Whole tribes are rooted up from their
native places, wander for a time about these immense regions,
become amalgamated with other tribes, or disappear from the face
of the earth. There appears to be a tendency to extinction among
all the savage nations; and this tendency would seem to have been
in operation among the aboriginals of this country long before
the advent of the white men, if we may judge from the traces and
traditions of ancient populousness in regions which were silent
and deserted at the time of the discovery; and from the
mysterious and perplexing vestiges of unknown races, predecessors
of those found in actual possession, and who must long since have
become gradually extinguished or been destroyed. The whole
history of the aboriginal population of this country, however, is
an enigma, and a grand one - will it ever be solved?
CHAPTER XXIV.
New Distribution of Horses- Secret Information of Treason in the
Camp.- Rose the Interpreter- His Perfidious Character- His Plots.
-Anecdotes of the Crow Indians.- Notorious Horse Stealers.- Some
Account of Rose.- A Desperado of the Frontier.
0N the sixth of August the travellers bade farewell to the
friendly band of Cheyennes, and resumed their journey. As they
had obtained thirty-six additional horses by their recent
traffic, Mr. Hunt made a new arrangement. The baggage was made up
in smaller loads. A horse was allotted to each of the six prime
hunters, and others were distributed among the voyageurs, a horse
for every two, so that they could ride and walk alternately. Mr.
Crooks being still too feeble to mount the saddle, was carried on
a litter.
Their march this day lay among singular hills and knolls of an
indurated red earth, resembling brick, about the bases of which
were scattered pumice stones and cinders, the whole bearing
traces of the action of fire. In the evening they encamped on a
branch of Big River.
They were now out of the tract of country infested by the Sioux,
and had advanced such a distance into the interior that Mr. Hunt
no longer felt apprehensive of the desertion of any of his men.
He was doomed, however, to experience new cause of anxiety. As he
was seated in his tent after nightfall, one of the men came to
him privately, and informed him that there was mischief brewing
in the camp. Edward Rose, the interpreter, whose sinister looks
we have already mentioned, was denounced by this secret informer
as a designing, treacherous scoundrel, who was tampering with the
fidelity of certain of the men, and instigating them to a
flagrant piece of treason. In the course of a few days they would
arrive at the mountainous district infested by the Upsarokas or
Crows, the tribe among which Rose was to officiate as
interpreter. His plan was that several of the men should join
with him, when in that neighborhood, in carrying off a number of
the horses with their packages of goods, and deserting to those
savages.
