The Life & Adventures of James P. Beckwourth
Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer, & Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.
Written from his own Dictation by T. D. Bonner. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square. 1856.
CHAPTER 37
Mistakes regarding the Character of the Indian.—Extent of the Western Tribes.—Their Character.—How a War against them should be conducted.—Reflections.—Closing Address to the Indian Heroine.
As an American citizen, a friend of my race, and a sincere lover of my country, and also as one well acquainted with the Indian character, I feel that I can not properly conclude the record of my eventful life without saying something for the Red Man. It should be remembered, when judging of their acts, that they consider the country they inhabit as the gift of the "Great Spirit," and they resent in their hearts the invasion of the immigrant just as much as any civilized people would, if another nation, without permission, should cross their territory. It must also be understood, that the Indians believe the buffalo to be theirs by inheritance, not as game, but in the light of ownership, given to them by Providence for their support and comfort, and that, when an immigrant shoots a buffalo, the Indian looks upon it exactly as the destruction by a stranger of so much private property.
With these ideas clearly in the mind of the reader, it can be understood why the Indian, in destroying a cow belonging to white people, or stealing a horse, considers himself as merely retaliating for injuries received, repaying himself, in fact, for what he has lost. For this act on the part of the Red Man, the United States troops are often turned indiscriminately upon his race; the innocent generally suffer, and those who have raised the storm can not understand of what crime they can be guilty.
But if the government is determined to make war upon the Western tribes, let it be done intelligently, and so effectually that mercy will temper justice. To attempt to chastise Indians with United States troops is simply ridiculous; the expense of such campaigns is only surpassed by their inefficiency. The Indians live on horseback, and they can steal and drive off the government horses faster than it can bring them together. The Indians having no stationary villages, they can travel faster, even with the incumbrance of their lodges, women, and children, subsisting themselves on buffalo slain on the way, than any force, however richly appointed, the country could send against them. An army must tire out in such a chase before summer is gone, while the Indians will constantly harass it with their sharp-shooters, and, should several powerful tribes unite — not an unusual occurrence — many thousand men would make no impression.
It should also be recollected by our officers sent to fight in the Rocky Mountains, that the Indians have a mode of telegraphing by the aid of robes and mirrors, and thus, by having their spies stationed at convenient distances, they convey intelligence of the movements of their enemies at great distances and in a very few minutes, thus informing villages whether it would be best to retreat or not. Some tribes telegraph by fires at night, and by smoke in the daytime. An officer might hear of a band of warriors encamped at a certain place; he immediately makes a forced march, and when his troops arrive at their destination, those sarne warriors may be many miles in his rear, encamped on his trail.
A village of three hundred lodges of Crows or Cheyennes could, within thirty minutes after receiving an order to move, have all their lodges struck, the poles attached to the horses, and their men, women, and children going at full speed, and could thus outstrip the best dragoons sent in their pursuit.
I have seen enough of Indian treaties and annuities to satisfy me that their effects for good are worse than fruitless. The idea formed by the Indians is that the annuities are sent to them by the great white chief because he is afraid of them, and wishes to purchase their friendship. There are some of the tribes — a very few — who would keep a treaty sacred; but the majority would not be bound by one, for they can not understand their nature. When caught at a disadvantage, and reduced to enter into a compact, they would agree to any proposals that were offered; but when the controlling power is withdrawn, and they can repeat their depredations with apparent impunity, no moral obligation would restrain them, and the treaty that was negotiated at so much cost to the country proves a mere delusion.
The officer having charge of an expedition against the Indians should rightly understand which band of a tribe he is commissioned to punish. The Siouxs, for instance, which, a few years ago, could raise thirty thousand warriors, are divided into many bands, which, at times, are hundreds of miles apart. One band of that tribe may commit a depredation on the emigrant road, and the other bands not even have heard of it they do not hold themselves amenable for the misdeeds of another body totally distinct from them in social relations, and to inflict chastisement upon them in such a case would be a manifest injustice. But in a case of extreme danger all these bands coalesce.
Other tribes have the same divisions into distinct bands, and many are hence led into the belief that each band is a tribe. The Siouxs range over a territory upward of a thousand miles in extent from north to south, and their country embraces some of the most beautiful spots in the world, as well for natural scenery as for extreme productiveness of soil. The Crows have but one band proper, although they are generally divided into two villages, as being a more convenient arrangement to afford pasture for their immense herds of horses, and also to hunt the buffalo. But these two villages are seldom more than three hundred miles apart, generally much nearer; they come together at least once a year, and have frequent accidental coalitions in the course of their wanderings. They speak the Grovan language, from which nation they are an offshoot.
The Pawnees are probably the most degraded, in point of morals, of all the Western tribes; they are held in such contempt by the other tribes that none will make treaties with them. They are a populous nation, and are inveterate against the whites, killing them wherever met. A treaty concluded with that nation at night would be violated the next morning. Those who engage in warfare with the Western Indians will remember that they take no prisoners except women and children. It has generally been believed that the Siouxs never kill white men, but this is a mistake; they have always killed them. I have seen white men's scalps in their hands, and many still fresh hanging in the smoke of their lodges.
The Western Indians have no hummocks or everglades to fight among, but they have their boundless prairies to weary an army in, and the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains to retreat to. Should a majority of those powerful nations coalesce in defense against one common enemy, it would be the worst Indian war — the most costly in blood and treasure that the national government has ever entered into. The coalition tribes could bring two hundred and fifty thousand warriors against any hostile force, and I know I am greatly within the limits of truth in assigning that number to them.
If it is the policy of government to utterly exterminate the Indian race, the most expeditious manner of effecting this ought to be the one adopted. The introduction of whisky among the Red Men, under the connivance of government agents, leads to the demoralization and consequent extermination, by more powerful races, of thousands of Indians annually. Still, this infernal agent is not effectual; the Indians diminish in numbers, but with comparative slowness. The most direct and speedy mode of clearing the land of them would be by the simple means of starvation — by depriving them of their hereditary sustenance, the buffalo. To effect this, send an army of hunters among them, to root out and destroy, in every possible manner, the animal in question. They can shoot them, poison them, dig pit-falls for them, and resort to numberless other contrivances to efface the devoted animal, which serves, it would seem, by the wealth of his carcass, to preserve the Indian, and thus impede the expanding development of civilization.
To fight the Indians vi et armis, the government could employ no such effectual means as to take into its service five hundred mountaineers for the space of one year, and any one tribe of Indians that they should fall foul of could never survive the contest. Such men, employed for that purpose, would have no encumbrance from superfluous baggage to impede them in a pursuit or a retreat over their illimitable plains. The mode of life of a mountaineer just fits him for an Indian fighter, and if he has to submit to privation, and put up with an empty commissariat, he has the means of support always at hand. He is so much an Indian from habit that he can fight them in their own way: if they steal his horses, he can steal theirs in return; if they snatch a hasty repose in the open air, it is all he asks for himself, and his health and spirits are fortified with such regimen. It is only by men possessing the qualities of the white hunter, combined with Indian habits, that the Indians can be effectually and economically conquered.
I have now presented a plain, unvarnished statement of the most noteworthy occurrences of my life, and, in so doing, I have necessarily led the reader through a variety of savage scenes at which his heart must sicken. The narrative, however, is not without its use. The restless youthful mind, that wearies with the monotony of peaceful every-day existence, and aspires after a career of wild adventure and thrilling romance, will find, by my experience, that such a life is by no means one of comfort, and that the excitement which it affords is very dearly purchased by the opportunities lost of gaining far more profitable wisdom. Where one man would be spared, as I have been, to pass through the perils of fasting, the encounters with the savage, and the fury of the wild beasts, and still preserve his life, and attain an age of near threescore, it is not too much to say that five hundred would perish, with not a single loved one near to catch his last whispered accent, would die in the wilderness, either in solitude, or with the fiendish savage shrieking in revolting triumph in his ear.
I now close the chapter of my eventful life. I feel that time is pressing; and the reminiscences of the past, stripped of all that was unpleasant, come crowding upon me. My heart turns naturally to my adopted people. I think of my son, who is the chief; I think of his mother, who went unharmed through the medicine lodge; I think of Bar-chee-am-pe, the brave heroine. I see her, tearful, watching my departure from the banks of the Yellow Stone. Her nation expects my return, that I may be buried with my supposed fathers, but none looks so eagerly for the great warrior as
PINE LEAF, THE INDIAN HEROINE.
I've seen her in her youthful years;
Her heart was light and free,
Her black eyes never dimm'd with tears,
So happy then was she.
When warriors from the fight return'd,
And halted for display,
The trophies that the victors won
She was first to bring away.
I've seen her kiss her brother's cheek
When he was called to go
The lurking enemy to seek,
Or chase the buffalo.
She loved him with a sister's love
He was the only son;
And "Pine Leaf" prized him far above
The warriors' hearts she'd won.
I've seen her in her mourning hours
That brother had been slain
Her head, that oft was decked with flowers,
Now shed its crimson rain;
Her bleeding head and bleeding hand
Her crimson, clotted hair
Her brother's in the spirit land,
And hence her keen despair.
I've heard her make a solemn vow
"A warrior I will be
Until a hundred foes shall bow,
And yield their scalps to me;
I will revenge my brother's death —
I swear it on my life,
Or never, while I draw a breath,
Will I become a wife."
I've seen her on her foaming steed,
With battle-axe in hand,
Pursuing at her utmost speed
The Black Foot and Shi-an.
I've seen her wield her polished lance
A hundred times and more,
When charging fierce in the advance
Amid the battle's roar.
I've seen her with her scalping-knife
Spring on the fallen foe,
And, ere he was yet void of life,
Make sure to count her coo.
I've seen her, at full speed again,
Oft draw her trusty bow,
Across her arrow take good aim,
And lay a warrior low.
I've heard her say, "I'll take my shield,
My battle-axe, and bow,
And follow you, through glen or field,
Where'er you dare to go;
I'll rush amid the blood and strife
Where any warrior leads:"
Pine Leaf would choose to lose her life
Amid such daring deeds.
I've heard her say, "The spirit land
Is where my thoughts incline,
Where I can grasp my brother's hand,
Extended now for mine.
There's nothing now in this wide world
No ties that bid me stay;
But, a broken-hearted Indian girl,
I weep both night and day.
" He tells me in my midnight dreams
I must revenge his fall,
Then come where flowers and cooling streams
Surround their spirits, all.
He tells me that the hunting-ground,
So far away on high,
Is filled with warriors all around
Who nobly here did die.
"He says that all is joy and mirth
Where the Great Spirit lives,
And joy that's never known on earth
He constantly receives.
No brother to revenge his wrongs —
The war-path is my road
A few more days I'll sing his songs,
Then hie to his abode."
I've heard her say, "I'll be your bride;
You've waited long, I know;
A hundred foes by me have died,
By my own hand laid low.
'Tis for my nation's good I wed;
For I would still be free
Until I slumber with the dead;
But I will marry thee."
And when I left the heroine,
A tear stood in her eye
As last I held her hand in mine,
And whispered a good-by.
"Oh, will you soon return again?"
The heroine did say;
"Yes, when the green grass decks the plain,"
I said, and came away.
THE END.
