in the year of 1886 chief sitting bull of the sioux tribe got permission from the agent at standing rock agency in north dakota to make a visit to the crow agency in montana to visit the crow indians.
so he collected about fifty sioux warriors and made the trip, and went to the battle ground where general custer and his army was massacred in the year 1876, which was a short distance from the crow agency. he asked the crow agent for permission to have a war dance on the battle ground. he said he wanted to recall old times. the agent refused.
so sitting bull collected a bunch of crow warriors and had a party on the little horn river adjoining the battle ground. the party progressed very nicely until sitting bull got on his feet and declared he was the greatest warrior that ever lived, stating the fact that he had killed more white men and stolen more horses than any other chief living. that statement insulted the crow chief and the party turned into a fight. crazy head, the crow chief, pulled his knife, grabbed sitting bull by his long hair and throwed him down and made him smell his feet, which was the greatest insult one chief could offer another, as in the language of the indian it made sitting bull a dog, which is the worst name an indian can call anyone.
the party broke up, and the next night sitting bull, to get even, stole a bunch of crow horses, and with his fifty warriors started back for the sioux reservation.
but there was an old squaw man living with the crows that was plenty smart in the line of stealing horses and he collected a bunch of crows and followed sitting bull and overtook his party on the little horn river, and took the horses away from them and killed two sioux bucks and scalped them. sitting bull and the rest of his party got away and beat it back to their reservation.
now the crows got very uneasy over this affair and were afraid the sioux would go on the warpath and steal away from their reservation and come back and clean up on them. so the crow chief, crazy head, called all the crows together, which at that time was about 2,800, and made a blockade by putting all their lodges and tepees on a big fiat on the little horn river covering about 20 acres, and at night they put all their horses inside this enclosure, and put guards all around it at night. also inside this enclosure about two hundred of these warriors had tom-toms and they beat them all night and sang war songs. i want to say here that all the noise they made was to keep their spirits up, as they were deathly afraid of the siouxs.
the old squaw man was in this big gathering, all dressed up like the indians with britch cloth and head-dress with all kinds of feathers in his bonnet. i recall a rather amusing incident about him. a few years prior to the time i am writing of, the railroad ended at miles city, and the administration at washington, d.c., had notified the crow indian agent to send several chiefs to washington to try to make a peace treaty and give them certain portions of land if they would become civilized. the agent called this squaw man to the agency to send him with the chiefs as an interpreter. now the old man had never seen a train or railroad and thought he had to ride horseback all the way to washington. he told the agent he thought he could make the trip all right, but would have to have a new saddle. when he returned from washington, the indians were very anxious to know what he had seen and some of them still thought they could beat the white men at war. so they asked the old man how many whites he saw. he picked up both hands full of sand and throwed it in the air. said he, “the whites are just like that wherever i went.” it was said that this demonstration by the old man made it seem useless to most of the braves to carry the fight any farther.
they also had the scalps of those two indians they had killed hung on a tripod and some of the young braves sure put on a real war dance around the scalps.
another man and myself went there one night. it sure was some sight. we put blankets around us like the indians wore. this man i was with could talk indian and they told him they knew we were white men even in the dark from the way we walked. this man’s name was herb dana, and he lived on tongue river in wyoming. if he is alive yet he can verify what i have told about this incident.
that winter a man by the name of ed town and myself started across the reservation with a freighting outfit, which he owned. he lived at the foot of the big horn mountains. we had forty head of work cattle (which was texas steers) and six wagons (which was two teams, three wagons hooked together—ten yoke of cattle made a team). it was in the month of january and the weather turned bitter cold.
we were near froze to death one night. we made camp and unyoked the steers, turned them loose without any feed except a few willows that grew on the creek. we finally got the tent up and i was kicking around in snow up to my knees, trying to find wood enough to build a fire, but there wasn’t any to be found. about the time i had given up, an old indian came up to me and made signs he had a good lodge and no grub and that we had plenty food and no fire, and invited us to bring our food to his tepee. we were sure glad to make the trade.
his lodge was about 200 yards from our camp. we took all the bacon and flour the three of us could carry and went with the indian. that was as cold a night as i ever saw and am sure we would both lost our lives if it wasn’t for that indian.
i don’t think they had ate for a long time, as the squaws made bread and fried bacon all night. there was ten indians in the camp and did they eat!
the lodge was round with a hole at the top. the fire was in the middle of the lodge. they cooked the bread in a frying pan.
we stayed there three days during the blizzard and outside of a little smoke we were fairly comfortable, but i think when we left there we were two of the lousiest men ever walked. i traded an indian a $12.00 stetson for a muskrat cap—i could brush lice and nits off it in swarms.
when the storm broke we found enough steers to pull one wagon to the ranch. as far as i know the rest of them died.
the winter of 1886 and 1887 was the toughest winter of my life and i believe it will be verified by all cattle men of that period. there was men in montana and wyoming that had 5,000 cattle that didn’t roundup 100 head the next spring.
my boss paid me off when we got to the ranch. i met up with another kid about my age. we had about $20.00 between us and no place to go. so we made a dugout out of cottonwood poles and dirt. we had no stove, so built a fireplace to cook on—and on the coldest days it always smoked the worst. in the spring we smelled and looked like indians. we rustled a quarter of beef, a few beans, a little sugar and coffee and lived on that until spring. we got a little tapioca somewhere for dessert. we cooked that with water but we couldn’t spare much sugar—there was no place to get any more (that was on the line of montana and wyoming and was 100 miles from the railroad).
that winter the indians suffered terrible from hunger and after we set up housekeeping squaws and papooses would come to stay until we cooked our meal with the hopes of getting something to eat. we fed them for awhile but we were getting low on food and had to quit, but they would come every day and stay all day and we wouldn’t eat while they were there.
one day my partner said he wanted to eat, but didn’t know what to do with those damn indians. they were all huddled around the fireplace. i told him to make a lane through them as if he wanted to put some wood on the fire. i had a 45 six-shooter under my head on our bunk. when he made the opening i opened fire on the fireplace and took a fit. i hollered and bucked like a bronc. i throwed ashes all over the indians and they nearly tore the door down getting out. then we cooked and eat, and wasn’t bothered with indians for a long time.
about a week after a buck indian came by there looking for horses. it was very cold and my partner asked him in to get warm. he looked at me for a while and shook his head and made signs i was crazy. i guess the squaws had told him about me. we had put out some poisoned meat for coyotes and the indians found it and was going to eat it but was suspicious and tried it on a dog and it killed him, which didn’t raise us much in their estimation.
i will always think those indians got even with me. that following spring i wanted to leave that part of the country, and i didn’t have a horse. so i got to talking to some indians. they said they had a fine horse running in their bunch. it was a stray—nobody claimed it and i could have him. i made a date with them when they would corral their horses. i was there with my saddle. they showed me a beautiful big sorrel and told me to catch him, which i did. he trotted right up to me when i roped him and seemed very nice to saddle. i was wondering all the time why those indians were so kind to me, but oh boy, when i mounted him i found out. after the first jump i never saw anything but a little piece of sorrel mane in front of the saddle. i have been bucked off a good many times and often thought i could have rode most of the horses if i had got a break, but there never was any doubt about that indian gift horse—i never had a chinaman’s chance.
i saw several of those indians in years afterwards. they would think awhile before they would remember me—they would laugh and make signs with their hands how the horse bucked me off.
the crow indians’ name for me was the white man chews tobacco—masachele opa barusha.
one time an old crow indian told me quite a story about the tribe that i don’t believe many people know (and i have seen some evidence of the truth of his story).
i was riding line for a cow outfit on the crow reservation and an old crow chief came riding into my camp one morning about daylight, and asked me for something to eat, as he said he was making a long ride on some important business. i knew him—he was the same chief that pulled a knife on chief sitting bull, grabbed him by the hair and made him smell of his feet. this old chief’s white-man’s name was crazy head—his indian name was ah shumoch noch, which means “curly head.” his hair was curly (which is unusual for an indian) and he had very thick lips, which made me think of the story the old indian had told me. he said a great many snows ago, a negro showed up among the crows. nobody knew where he came from or how he got there, but he lived with them for many years. the crow name for a negro is masachele sha pit cot (which means white black man). while this old chief was enjoying his breakfast (and he was plenty hungry) i asked him in indian if he didn’t have some nigger blood in him, and it sure made him mad. i believe if he hadn’t been eating in my camp he would have done something to me, but he said “barrett” in a very loud voice, which means no, but i insisted that he must have a little negro blood. still his answer was no, with an oath, but i kept on teasing him about his curly hair and thick lips. he finally stuck out the end of his little finger with his thumb on the other hand to measure with—ecosh cota, which meant about the size of a pin head. he sure hated a nigger.
there was another old indian visited our camp sometimes, that was quite a character. but he could peddle the bull as good as any white man i ever knew. sometimes when he came to our camp—we wouldn’t have much food cooked and wouldn’t give him anything to eat, and he would silently sit on the ground watching us until we got through eating. when we put our cooking outfit away, he would get up on his feet, hitch his blanket over his shoulders and go out of the tent and call us all the mean dirty names he could think of, such as dogs, skunks and snakes. well, maybe the next time he came we would feed him and it was sure wonderful to see the change in him. he loved bacon and coffee. sometimes we would give him a big plate of bacon and sour dough bread. he would sit on the ground, cross his legs and boy, how he would eat! he would get his hands all bacon grease and rub them through his hair, and get a few shots of that strong coffee into him—it seemed to stimulate him like a shot of hop. then he would open up with his “bull.” he would talk part indian and part english. his favorite line was how much he loved the white man, such as, “me no steal em white man horse—white man he my brother—my heart very good for him” (and i know he would steal the coppers off of a dead white man’s eyes). he said the piegan indian and the sioux was very bad and all the time steal white man’s horse, but he was always watching out for the white man and wouldn’t let other indians steal white man horse.
i recall another indian i knew several years later, his name was christmas. i always thought that he had stolen my saddle. one time at big sandy, montana, we had shipped a train load of cattle out of malta, and as usual after the cattle were all loaded out, we proceeded to celebrate before we went back on the range to gather some more. i think there were about twenty of us when we started the night celebration, but sometime in the night i must have took a nap, anyway i came to about two o’clock in the morning and as it was late in the month of october it was quite cold, in fact i thought i would freeze to death, everybody was gone to camp, my horse was tied to the hitch rack, the saloons were all closed, and not a light anywhere. i was working my way around trying to find my horse. when this indian showed up where my horse was tied, he evidently had been drunk too and seemed very glad to find someone to talk to or steal something. he came up to where i was and said, “by golly con price i sure glad to see you, you my brother.” i guess i must have got some bad whiskey and felt pretty mean for while christmas was talking to me i thought it would be a good joke to swing on him. his hands were both hanging down by his sides, so i was not taking any chances. i braced myself and gave him all i had, right on the point of the chin. it turned him half way around and he fell on his stomach. he weighed about two hundred and twenty-five, he had on a pair of heavy cowhide boots, that must have weighed five pounds each. he had no sooner fell down than he was up again and running like hell, he didn’t look back or say a word, but with those big boots and his weight, it sounded like a bunch of horses running away. i saw him about a month afterward, he didn’t say anything, but smiled. i guess he thought it was a good joke too.
after christmas left i got on my horse, and started for camp, of course there were no roads so i started out across the prairie, and it was very dark and i got lost. i finally landed in some heavy sage brush, i got off my horse and tied him to some brush, by that time i had got awful thirsty and couldn’t find any water. i felt something in my chaps pocket, and found it was a bottle of tomato catsup (where or how i got it i never knew). i couldn’t get the cork out so i broke the head off of it with a rock, and drank nearly all of it. i layed down and went to sleep but woke up in a short time with a terrible pain in my stomach, the first thing i thought was that i had swallowed some of the glass from that ketchup bottle and i was sure scared. it was getting daylight about that time and i knew where i was, and i got on my horse and started for the old dhs horse ranch. there was no one home as the boys were all on the roundup. i heated a tub of water and got into it and had a big sweat, after that i felt much better, i cooked something to eat and went to bed and stayed there until the next morning. as i knew about where the roundup would be, i found camp that day, nobody said much to me about my absence, as it was a legitimate excuse those days for a cowboy getting drunk to be late on the job.
