"Take Your Rifles, Boys," Said Kearslcy, "And We'll Have Fresh Meat
For Supper." This Inducement Was Quite Sufficient.
The ten men left
their wagons and set out in hot haste, some on horseback and some on
foot, in pursuit of the supposed buffalo.
Meanwhile a high grassy
ridge shut the game from view; but mounting it after half an hour's
running and riding, they found themselves suddenly confronted by
about thirty mounted Pawnees! The amazement and consternation were
mutual. Having nothing but their bows and arrows, the Indians
thought their hour was come, and the fate that they were no doubt
conscious of richly deserving about to overtake them. So they began,
one and all, to shout forth the most cordial salutations of
friendship, running up with extreme earnestness to shake hands with
the Missourians, who were as much rejoiced as they were to escape the
expected conflict.
A low undulating line of sand-hills bounded the horizon before us.
That day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we
entered the hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. At
length we gained the summit, and the long expected valley of the
Platte lay before us. We all drew rein, and, gathering in a knot on
the crest of the hill, sat joyfully looking down upon the prospect.
It was right welcome; strange too, and striking to the imagination,
and yet it had not one picturesque or beautiful feature; nor had it
any of the features of grandeur, other than its vast extent, its
solitude, and its wilderness. For league after league a plain as
level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us; here and there the
Platte, divided into a dozen threadlike sluices, was traversing it,
and an occasional clump of wood, rising in the midst like a shadowy
island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing was
moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted
over the sand and through the rank grass and prickly-pear just at our
feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest
to the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and
the valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original
elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck
rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to
the wants and resources of their original natures.
We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the journey;
but four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie;
and to reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks.
During the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long
narrow sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the
Rocky Mountains. Two lines of sand-hills, broken often into the
wildest and most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at the distance
of a mile or two on the right and left; while beyond them lay a
barren, trackless waste - The Great American Desert - extending for
hundreds of miles to the Arkansas on the one side, and the Missouri
on the other. Before us and behind us, the level monotony of the
plain was unbroken as far as the eye could reach. Sometimes it
glared in the sun, an expanse of hot, bare sand; sometimes it was
veiled by long coarse grass. Huge skulls and whitening bones of
buffalo were scattered everywhere; the ground was tracked by myriads
of them, and often covered with the circular indentations where the
bulls had wallowed in the hot weather. From every gorge and ravine,
opening from the hills, descended deep, well-worn paths, where the
buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down to drink in the
Platte. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin sheet of
rapid, turbid water, half a mile wide, and scarce two feet deep. Its
low banks for the most part without a bush or a tree, are of loose
sand, with which the stream is so charged that it grates on the teeth
in drinking. The naked landscape is, of itself, dreary and
monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent
the valley of the Platte make it a scene of interest and excitement
to the traveler. Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one,
perhaps, fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his
rifle.
Early in the morning after we reached the Platte, a long procession
of squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading
his horse by a rope of bull-hide. His attire consisted merely of a
scanty cincture and an old buffalo robe, tattered and begrimed by
use, which hung over his shoulders. His head was close shaven,
except a ridge of hair reaching over the crown from the center of the
forehead, very much like the long bristles on the back of a hyena,
and he carried his bow and arrows in his hand, while his meager
little horse was laden with dried buffalo meat, the produce of his
hunting. Such were the first specimens that we met - and very
indifferent ones they were - of the genuine savages of the prairie.
They were the Pawnees whom Kearsley had encountered the day before,
and belonged to a large hunting party known to be ranging the prairie
in the vicinity. They strode rapidly past, within a furlong of our
tents, not pausing or looking toward us, after the manner of Indians
when meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and
met them; and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting
him with half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he
expressed much gratification. These fellows, or some of their
companions had committed a dastardly outrage upon an emigrant party
in advance of us. Two men, out on horseback at a distance, were
seized by them, but lashing their horses, they broke loose and fled.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 21 of 128
Words from 20318 to 21325
of 129303
