Part 10 (1/2)
An adjournment is then taken for dinner, and in the afternoon, six gorgeously painted and hideously decorated clowns come forward and go through a series of antics calculated to disgust rather than amuse the spectator. The unfortunate sheep, which is still hanging to the pole, is finally thrown to the ground after several attempts have been made to climb the pole. The fruits and products are seized by the clowns, who rush off with them, and every one connected with the tribe seem to be highly satisfied with the outcome of the day's proceedings, and the culmination of the spectacle.
CHAPTER XI.
HOW CUSTER LIVED AND DIED.
”Remember Custer”--An Eye Witness of the Ma.s.sacre--Custer, Cody and Alexis--A Ride over the Scenes of the Unequal Conflict--Major Reno's Marked Failure--How ”Sitting Bull” Ran Away and Lived to Fight Another Day--Why a Medicine Man did not Summon Rain.
”Remember Custer” was the watchword and battle-cry of the small army of American soldiers who early in the present decade advanced against hostile Indians in the Northwest, who after indulging for weeks in a series of fantastic dances and superst.i.tious rites, were finally called to time by the Government and punished for their disregard of treaty rights and reasonable orders. Every American child should know who Custer was and why the troopers called upon each other to remember him on the occasion referred to. It is less than twenty years since he died.
His name should be remembered by civilians as well as soldiers for almost as many centuries to come.
There are some men who seem to defy and even court death. Custer was one of these. He was so recklessly brave that he often caused anxiety to his superior officers. Time and again he led a handful of men apparently into the jaws of death and brought them out safely, after having practically annihilated the foe. As the pitcher which is carried safely to the well ninety-nine times sometimes gets broken at the hundredth attempt, so was it with General Custer. In June, 1876, his detachment was outnumbered twenty to one at a little ford near Crazy Horse Creek, in Dakota, and his entire command was wiped out. An adopted son of ”Sitting Bull,” the famous Indian, states that he saw Custer die, adding that he twice witnessed the hero lying on his back fighting his foes.
The third time he saw him a blanket was drawn over the hero, who was apparently dead.
On another page is given an admirable ill.u.s.tration of the camp and ford, as well as of the monument erected in Custer's memory, with typical Indian camp scene. This picture is from photographs taken specially for Mr. Charles S. Fee, General Pa.s.senger Agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose tracks run close by this scene of such sad history.
A volume could be devoted to the life of Custer, the adventures he encountered, and the risks he ran in the course of his eventful and useful career. His works and his memoirs bristle with information concerning the actual truths of border life and Indian warfare, bereft of romance and exaggeration. Like almost all Indian fighters, Custer entertained a supreme contempt for the red man generally, although his naturally kind disposition led him to give credit to individual red men for bravery, grat.i.tude, and other characteristics generally believed to be inconsistent with their character and nationality.
Besides being a gallant fighter, Custer was also a great lover of recreation and fun, while a genuine hunting expedition drew him out from his almost habitual quiet and made him the natural leader of the party.
Among his friends was William Cody, better known to the amus.e.m.e.nt loving world as Buffalo Bill, on account of his alleged excessive prowess in the shooting and destruction of buffalo. If Mr. Cody were consulted, he would probably prefer to be called Indian Bill, as his hatred of the average red man was very largely in excess of his anxiety to kill the hump-backed oxen, which were, at one time, almost in sole possession of the Western prairies. On one occasion, he and Custer had a very delightful time together, and Cody has given a pleasing description of what took place.
This was on the occasion of the visit to this country of the Grand Duke Alexis. Some twenty-three years ago this European celebrity enjoyed a tour through the United States, and visited most of the grandest features of our native land. Before coming to the country, he had heard of its great hunting facilities, and also of the sport to be obtained from shooting buffalo on the prairie. He mentioned this fact to the officers of the Government, who were detailed to complete arrangements for his benefit, and, accordingly, it was arranged that the Grand Duke should be conducted into buffalo land, and initiated into the mysteries of buffalo hunting, by the officer who has since been annihilated by the Sioux, and the irrepressible hunter who has since developed into a prince among showmen.
These two somewhat rough, but very kind, chaperones, took with them on this trip a party of Indians, including ”Spotted Tail,” with whose daughter Custer carried on, we are told, a mild flirtation on the march.
A great deal of amus.e.m.e.nt was derived from the trip, as well as very much important information.
It was but four years later that Custer was engaged on a more serious and less entertaining mission. The scene of the tragedy was visited some three years ago by Mr. L. D. Wheeler, to whom we are indebted for the following very graphic and interesting description of the visit and of the thoughts it called forth:
”A rather lengthy ride found us at Reno's crossing of the river, the ford where he crossed to make his attack. Fording the stream, we dismounted among the young timber and bushes lining the stream, and ate lunch. Before lunch was finished, two Indian girls came down the river.
The younger, tall, slender and graceful, dressed in bright, clean scarlet, was a picture. With her jet black hair hanging in s.h.i.+ning plaits, her piercing eyes and handsome face, she was the most comely, sylph-like Indian maiden I have ever seen.
”Mounting our horses, lunch over, we cantered back on the trail that Custer and Reno followed, for a ride of several miles to Lookout Hill, or Point, which we ascended. This was the point where Custer and his officers obtained their first view of the valley of the Greasy Gra.s.s, as the Sioux call the Little Horn.
”After a survey of the region, spurring our horses forward, we in time found ourselves climbing the gentle acclivities which led up to Reno's old rifle-pits, now almost obliterated. The most noticeable feature of the spot is the number of blanched bones of horses which lie scattered about. A short distance from the pits--which are rather rounded, and follow the outline of the hills in shape--and in a slight hollow below them, are more bones of horses. This is where the wounded were taken, and the hospital established, and the horses kept. From the wavy summit line of the bluffs, the ground slopes in an irregular broken way back to the northeast and east, into a coulee that forms the pa.s.sage to the ford which Custer aimed for and never reached. The ground about the battle-field is now a national cemetery. It is enclosed by a wire fence, and there are several hundred acres of it. It might be cared for in a manner somewhat better than it is. During one of my visits there, a Crow Indian rode up to the gate and deliberately turned his herd of horses into the inclosure to graze.
”As I rode into the grounds, after fording and recrossing the river where Custer failed, the first object to greet my sight was a small inclosure, with large mound and headstone, which marked the spot where Lieutenant Crittenden fell. At one corner, and outside of it, stood the regulation marble slab which marks the place where each body on the field was found. This one stated that there Lieutenant Calhoun was killed. At numbers of places down the western slope, but near the ravines, the surface is dotted with the little gravestones. In some places, far down the descent, and far from where Custer, Van Reilly, Tom Custer and others fell, they are seen singly; in other spots three or four, or half a dozen. At one point there are over thirty, well ma.s.sed together. Down in this part of the field, in the ravine running towards the monument, is the stone marking where Dr. Lord's body was found, and with it are four others.
”In the shallow coulee east of the ridge, and almost at the bottom of the slope, some distance northwest of where Calhoun and Crittenden were killed, and on the main ridge slope of it, is a large group of stones.
Here is where Captain Miles Keogh and thirty-eight men gave up their lives. On this side of the ridge--the eastern side--between where Keogh and his men died and where Custer fell, there are numerous stones. On the opposite side of the Custer ridge--that which faces the river--and close to its crest, there are very few stones, and those are much scattered, and not in groups. At the northern extremity of the ridge is a slight elevation which overtops everything else, and slopes away in all directions, save where the ridge lies. Just below this knoll, or hillock--Custer Hill--facing southwest, is where Custer and the larger part of his men fell.”
On the right bank of the Missouri River--the Big Muddy--in North Dakota, almost within rifle shot of the town of Mandan, on the Northern Pacific Railroad, there existed in the '70s a military post named after the nation's great martyr President, Fort Abraham Lincoln. On the morning of the 17th of June, 1876, there went forth from here among others, with the pomp and ceremony for which they were distinguished, a cavalry regiment famed in the army for dash, bravery and endurance--the noted Seventh Cavalry.
At the head of the Seventh Cavalry was a man who was unquestionably the most picturesque character for long years, and perhaps for all previous and present time, in the army. Entering the army in active service during the Civil War, his career was a continual round of successes and advances, and at its close, aside from the peerless Sheridan, no cavalryman had a greater reputation for magnificent dash than he.
Transferred to the plains--the war over--his success as an Indian campaigner naturally followed, and at the time he moved out upon his latest and fated expedition, George Custer had a reputation as an Indian fighter second to none.