Part 5

General Miles promptly dispatched Colonel Forsythe and a troop of two companies of the Seventh Cavalry to subdue them. It will be remembered that the Seventh was General Custer’s old regiment that met the Indians on the Little Big Horn on that memorable 25th of June, 1876, when every man taking part in the engagement was massacred by this _same tribe of Sioux Indians_ which this detachment under Colonel Forsythe was seeking. On the evening of the twenty-eighth of December, Colonel Forsythe came upon Big Foot’s band. No resistance was offered at the time, although the demeanor of the braves foreboded the terrible tragedy soon to follow. The Indians were escorted some miles distant and ordered to go into camp on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, which flows through a wide, open valley skirted for miles on either side by high, sandy bluffs and scant growth of fir, cedar and pine. The Indians were made to pitch their tepees in a semi-circle and park their wagons and ponies behind them. The soldiers formed in a triangle in front of the semi-circle with a Hotchkiss gun under command of Sergeant Wingate in the center of the triangle. The men stood by their guns throughout the bitter cold of the Dakota night, while the Indians were comfortably wrapped in their blankets within the shelter of the tepees. As the first rays of the sun were slanting across the bleak and cheerless plain, the shrill notes of a bugle rang out on the frosty air. It was the signal to arouse the Indian camp. They came from their tepees with blankets swathed about them, and desperation was stamped upon their faces. Big Foot, who was ill with pneumonia, was first carried out and laid upon a bed of fur in front of his tepee, and then two hundred and fifty braves seated themselves in rows about him. Through an interpreter they were ordered by Captain Wallace to lay down their arms. They were armed mostly with Winchesters which were concealed beneath the blankets about them. Suddenly the medicine man of the tribe sprang to his feet and threw a handful of dirt into the air. It was a signal, and in another instant the death-like shrieks--the Sioux war-cry, “Hi-yi-hip-yi!” echoed up and down the valley, and the blaze of two hundred Winchesters sent their deadly missiles into the faces of the soldiers not over thirty feet away. There was an instant of hush--then a crash of musketry, and the last Sioux Indian battle was on! There were wavering ranks of blue as men fell to the ground wounded or dying; frantic horses dashed riderless over the plain; forms in red blankets were running hither and thither as the deadly triangle poured a withering crossfire into the struggling mass about the tepees. There were swift retreats of small parties, followed by swifter pursuit of horsemen. Indians were shot right and left as the mellow cadence of the bugle said, “Fire at will.” Squaws were dashing right and left, attempting to stab the soldiers with their long, copper-handled scalping knives; boys kneeled on the ground and coolly fired rifles at the soldiers. They, too, were shot, and meanwhile the terrible Hotchkiss gun boomed death. Small fleeing parties gained the sand bluffs and shot the pursuing soldiers. A wagon, drawn by two ponies and loaded with bucks and squaws who were trying to get away, was struck by a six-inch shell and literally blown to pieces. Brave Captain Wallace was killed with a blow from a stone battle-ax as he was entering a tepee.

The field of carnage is a dreadful sight. The mind shrinks from contemplating it. Human life has there passed away. Agony and suffering is everywhere. Gloom is on men’s faces and dark frowns on their brows. One wishes it were effaced from memory, for in years to come one must see in fancy and hear again in fitful slumber the dying shrieks and piteous cries of agony.

That evening the sun set behind a bank of crimson clouds. Sickening odors came from the smouldering tepees. Stark faces, stiffening in death, were turned to the skies. There, too, were the wounded with the dew of death already upon their brows. Strong lines were drawn upon the faces of the dead that told of the awful desperation of the soul at the moment they fell. Weapons were clutched in pulseless hands, and piteous was the sight of the struggling, wounded horses in their vain attempt to join their mates in the wild chase among the hills. Amid these scenes could be heard the prattle of childish voices about the Indian tepees. In the tenderness of their years and the savagery of their nature they were unable to comprehend the awfulness of the hour. When darkness came over the scene like a pall, the booming gun had ceased, but the plains were aglow with the lurid fires in the high grass--a weird and fantastic scene. Two hours later and the crimson clouds, which at sunset had portended evil, burst into fury, and a blizzard, with icy winds and drifting snows, raged as if to aid the soldiers in their determination that no living thing should survive the day.

When, four days later, the winds had spent their fury, and General Colby was riding over the field with his party, a cry was heard from a snow-bank that covered the dead bodies of some squaws. A soldier dismounted and found an Indian pappoose tied to its dead mother’s back, and clasped in the child’s arms was a soiled, little rag doll which the baby fought to retain. General Colby immediately had the little waif cared for and afterwards adopted her. The Indians named her “Ziutka Lanuni,” which in the white man’s tongue means “Lost Bird.” She is now living at the home of Mrs. L. W. Colby in Washington, D. C., a beautiful Indian girl, well educated, speaking the tongue of the white man, for she never had the opportunity to learn the language of her people.

A few days after the battle the great Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, was slain by the Indian police. The news of the battle spread among the hostile Indians. They learned that the much prized ghost shirt was no protection against the white man’s bullets, and the closing scene of this drama occurred some weeks later when the hills about Pine Ridge agency fairly swarmed with returning hostiles.

No conquered general in the history of the world ever met the conqueror with haughtier mien than did Two Strikes, the untutored savage, chief of the hostile band, when he made his formal surrender to General Miles. Followed by half a dozen lesser chiefs, he strode majestically toward the agency school building in front of which stood General Miles and aides waiting to receive him. His magnificent form was erect, his head, proudly decked with the eagle feather, was thrown slightly back, while every muscle of his face was as tense as steel. His warrior robes were draped about his shoulders, while his arms were folded across a carbine upon his breast. With measured tread he approached and halted in front of General Miles and met the mild blue eye of that warrior with black, piercing eyes that fairly blazed fire. Steadily the two men gazed at each other for more than a minute. The muscles of the Indian’s face twitched and the proud lips essayed to speak--as though he would hurl a torrent of defiance and hatred into the conqueror’s face. With one swift movement he laid the carbine at the general’s feet, stood erect another instant gazing with defiant eyes--and strode away to join his people.

XIII.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOST MINE.

In 1879, Capt. Charles Watt and Irwin Baker built a cabin in a gulch some miles distant from where Cripple Creek now stands. Baker had in his possession samples of very rich gold-bearing ore which he claimed to have brought from Arizona, where he and a Mexican had been driven out by Indians, as their reservation at that time extended over that region of country. The Mexican afterwards died of wounds received in the fight, and Baker was the sole possessor of the secret of the mine. He would sit for hours and tell how they had dug the white quartz which was threaded and beaded with strings of gold, and hoarded vast quantities of it under a great shelving rock which bore evidence of having at one time been the home of the Cliff Dwellers. And how he had carefully made a map of the country and intended when the Indian troubles were over to hire a sufficient force of men and burros to go there and bring away enough of the treasure to fix him in comfortable circumstances for the rest of his life. He often spoke of the map which he kept carefully concealed among his effects, which consisted of a valise and some mining tools.

In the fall of 1879 Baker concluded to make a trip to Leadville, which was then in the height of prosperity, and taking his rifle, blankets, and a few days’ rations, set out on foot. He reached Leadville safely, and a few days later died of pneumonia. As no one claimed the few chattels, including the valise, which Baker left behind, Captain Watt as a matter of course took them. He searched everywhere for the map by which Baker set so much store, and not finding it, concluded it was concealed about his clothing and had been doubtless buried with him. And so years passed on, but the straight story the man had so often told around the cabin fire in the silence of night, was never forgotten by Watt, who, in the lonely hours among the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains, had thought of it a thousand times.

But one day, the hand of Fate and Chance took a part.

Captain Watt needed a strip of leather. There was none to be found. Finally, his eye rested upon the old valise which had once been the property of Irwin Baker, which had tumbled about prospectors’ cabins for the last ten years. It was worn out, but the sides would make the strip of leather the captain wanted. The first slash of his knife revealed between the outside and the lining a folded sheet of paper, yellowed with age, and a closer examination proved it to be the carefully prepared map which Irwin Baker had concealed ten years before. The lines were drawn with the skill of a civil engineer, and the places so plainly marked that a party instantly formed, believed they would have no difficulty in going straight to the lost mine.

Three others, myself and Captain Baker staked our time and money on the venture, and another month found us in the country called Coconino in Arizona through which the Colorado River crosses with many a curve and twist. It lies in the northern part of the great Colorado plateau and west of the Moqui country.

John Bowden, a young civil engineer, was one of our party. He had studied at Ann Arbor and also at the University of Minnesota. His field work covered about five years prior to joining us. He was not familiar with the Southwest, its climate and peculiar topography, but others of the party were, and in view of his knowledge of civil engineering he was considered a valuable man to us.

The sun shines in Coconino. It hangs day after day above Lava Butte, the Painted Desert, Shinumo Altar, and the Black Falls, as if it were a destroying angel, not the kindly orb that flashes in the northern belt, but a consuming, terrifying demon of the desert wastes from which there is no escape. Those who toil in the city’s ways think the sun is hot, that the humidity is deadly, that pain such as theirs is unknown. They have never looked up to the solar star from the buttes of Coconino. There, blazing through the century-dried air all that is inhuman in stellar heat feeds upon the brain, the senses of man, until he staggers over the sands and falls to death.

Our party had made its way north of Mesa Butte, carrying provisions and water, making slow progress, enduring extraordinary discomforts. It was after we had camped at the Little Colorado on the south bank, that Bowden and I, acting upon the advice of Captain Watt, made some advance explorations to determine how best we should approach Lava Butte, which, according to Baker’s map, was the key to the route to the lost mine.

We left one morning before sunrise and headed due north for the Painted Desert. We carried with our horses a two days’ supply of water and provisions. It was impossible after ten o’clock in the morning to advance farther in the heat. We camped in the swale of a dry arroya, making such shade as we could, and waited for the coming of the late afternoon, when we might press on a little more. Bowden attempted some observations, but found that his sight was affected and that he must rest. In the evening and before we halted for the night, Lava Butte was in sight. After supper, Bowden said he would walk a distance under the stars; and that he would return to the camp within an hour.

He had not returned by midnight, and I dared not leave the horses and search for him, but I fired my rifle as a signal at short intervals throughout the night. The next day I tried to find him, firing my rifle now and then, until I had burned the last cartridge, and then I made a fire of dried cactus stalks, in hopes that the smoke would attract his attention, but all this failed. The water supply began to run short, the horses were suffering, and Bowden did not appear. I then headed back for camp on the Little Colorado, intending to follow our trail in the sands, but the hot winds had swept over the desert and obliterated most of them. I had depended upon Bowden’s qualities as an engineer and had not taken as close an observation as I would otherwise. However, I remembered my experience in the Palm Desert of years before, and so urged my horse along through the torrid heat, always heading for a jutting butte where I thought our camp to be. At noon my horse died, and I lay in the shade of some rocks, giving myself up for lost, when, as the sun was going down and the shadows were creeping over the desert, I descried the relief party from our camp that was searching for us.

Bowden’s body was found five miles from the camp he and I had made. He had walked in the night through the dead land, where, in starlight or sunlight, all things look alike. But there is so much white and so much grey, that to distinguish one object from another, to remember it, to say, “I will come back to this,” is not possible. So when Bowden started to retrace his steps, he did not know where he was. The plain was all north, south, east and west.

He quite evidently had sat down and tried to collect his thoughts, for there were marks in the waste indicating the various positions he had taken. He had a small bottle of water with him, but no food.

No sound swept the plain. Bowden may have thought he was entombed in some vast charnel-house of the ages to which Time had brought Nature’s remains and left them without burial. He was on the crest of one-time vast lava beds, a spot where fearful fires once raged beneath his feet. Here the last great battle of the peaks of the continent had probably been fought with thunderbolt and flame hurled from the bowels of the earth. And he was alone. Not even the wretched lizards of the lava region were moving. He called. No voice answered. He walked, but it was in a circle, and he came back time and time again to his starting point. He waited for the dawn--one hope that the sun’s light might give him a trace of the camp. He saw the shade of the night grow deeper and deeper, and then the driving of this blackness back from the east and the coming there of a cold line of grey and then an insolent one of red and a savage yellow with that, and then, with one leap, the sun.

He must have scanned the plain, but there was no sight of camp. He called, he laughed, he cried. He drank his water to the last drop in the little bottle. He walked and ran. He returned to the spot where he had first become bewildered. He was hot and then cold, and the sun rose higher and higher; grew more pitiless with every advance. The white heat beat down on him; it rose in sheets before him. Now the lizards and the mean, creeping things came out, but they passed him by. They could wait. Others had preceded him. After a long time, Bowden threw his hands high in the air, far up to the sun god that was calling to him, although beating him down. He fell flat on his face, and there he slept his last sleep in the land where the sun shines forever and forever.

A week later and Captain Watt died of gastritis, and our party returned to Flagstaff and abandoned the search for the lost mine.

XIV.

THE LAND OF THE FAIR GOD.

Captain David L. Payne was a born frontiersman. He left his home in Grant County, Indiana, in 1856, at the age of 20 years. He started west to fight the Mormons, and got as far as Doniphan County, Kansas. Here he found plenty of excitement and joined the Free Soil party. Five years later, when the border was aflame with fire and steel, he was among the first to enlist in the Union army. He served with distinction throughout the war. In 1865 he was honorably discharged at Ft. Leavenworth, with the rank of major. After this he went to Pueblo de Taos, New Mexico, and joined a party under Kit Carson, in an expedition against the Apaches. And after this he was known as the “Cimarron Scout.”

I first met him in the Black Hills in 1876. He was then talking of Oklahoma, called by the Indians The Land of the Fair God. He claimed that the government had no title to the land. The next I noticed of him was in 1880, when he organized a band of raiders to invade Oklahoma and open it for settlement. His first company was thirteen strong. They went as far south as Fort Russell, on the Cimarron, leaving Arkansas City, April 30. They were captured and taken out by United States soldiers. But the brave pioneer was not to be daunted. His followers increased and they hovered upon the banks of the Arkansas River, awaiting the action of a dilatory congress at Washington until the country was thrown open to settlement, April 22, 1889.

Payne was like many other pioneers. He saw the land of promise, but dared not enter therein and live. Fate reserved this boon for others, while death decreed the brave soul should explore another bourne than this. While sitting at a breakfast table in Wellington, Kansas, December, 1884, he suddenly expired. Others may have felt as much interest in the opening of Oklahoma as Payne, but certainly none others devoted so much time and energy to the accomplishment of this work as he. He began the movement at a time when it was very unpopular, hence was the object of much unfavorable criticism and abuse, but he did not allow this to daunt him, and continued to surround himself with a class of followers who had the nerve to stand for the right.

On the opening day the people came. They represented every part of the Union--from the granite hills of Maine to the flowery borders of California, and from the northern lakes to the gulf. They formed one of the most cosmopolitan communities ever assembled in the United States, and as if by common consent all sectional prejudices were laid aside in one common interest of beginning life anew. When the shadows of night fell around and about them on that memorable day, Guthrie, the territorial capital, was a tented city. The rush for lands and lots was over; and men sat quietly about their bivouac fires discussing the exciting events of the day. It was a triumph for American manhood and education; that the day passed off peaceably, and a triumph for which Oklahomans may well feel proud when the turbulence of the times are considered. Practically there was no law save that administered by the United States military, until the organic act was effected, May 2, 1890, when Geo. W. Steele was appointed governor.

At the first session of the Territorial Legislature, a bill was introduced to remove the capital to Oklahoma City. When it was about to be placed upon its passage Arthur Daniels, the Speaker of the House, seized the bill and started on a run for the Santa Fe depot, where a special engine was waiting. Nearly all the members of the legislature started in pursuit, firing their revolvers at the fleeing speaker. He safely eluded them; and as the term of the legislature expired by law that night, the capital was saved to Guthrie.

Hammers and saws could be heard night and day. Men were building a city. In an incredible short space of time, palatial residences, business blocks and church spires rose upon what, a short time since, had been a barren plain. They had added another dot on the map.

The administration of Governor Steele was soon followed by the appointment of Governor A. J. Seay, an heroic figure on the federal side during the war of the rebellion, an able and kindly man whom history will revere. He was just the man for the times, for he always had a pleasant word or sound advice when occasion offered. He had the happy faculty of always looking at the bright side of life, and when speaking invariably put his audience in a good humor, as at the close of his term of office, in an address he said he always took an interest in the scriptural saying, “If a man die, shall he live again?” The crowd saw the point and gave a cheer for the retiring old hero so beloved by all.

About this time E. D. Nix was appointed United States marshal of the Territory. To Marshal Nix and his faithful deputies belong the credit of the suppression of outlawry in Oklahoma. At the time he was appointed in May, 1903, the country was overrun by a banditti that rivaled the noted James and Younger brothers, in Missouri. There was no safety for life or property outside the larger towns. Trains were held up, banks were looted, stores robbed, and travelers were murdered upon the highway.

To the young marshal, then only thirty years of age, it meant a long and bitter fight ahead, costing the lives of ninety-one deputy marshals, and over one and one-half million dollars to the government.

It was a fight to the death, but the young marshal was equal to the emergency, and the emergency confronted him. One by one the desperate bands were either captured or went down beneath the unerring aim of the faithful deputies; who were all skilled frontiersmen.

These men were inured to hardships, many had been on the cattle trails, and had burned cartridges in more than one Indian fight, some had been marshals of Abilene, Dodge City and other frontier towns in their days of lawlessness.

The time will come when men will paint them, write verses about them, as they deserve to be written about. These men who bared their breasts to outlaw’s bullets, as did deputies Bill Tighlman, W. W. Painter, John Hixon, Heck Thomas, Ed Kelley, Chris Madson, Wm. Banks, Frank Canton, John Hale, Frank Rhinehart and many others and to the heroic dead, such as Tom Houston, Lafe Shadley, Dick Speed, Jim Masterson and nearly a hundred others who fell as nobly as any soldier upon the battlefield in country’s cause, for it was in country’s cause in which they fell. The graves of these dead heroes should be decorated, as they will be in time when Oklahomans stop long enough in their monied pursuits to give thought to services rendered by these noble lives.

A bushwhacking war was waged by the outlaws for more than three years. As soon as one leader bit the dust there was another to take his place. They were in bands of from ten to twenty and had their rendezvous in the dark forests of the Chickasaw Indian nation, the Grand River hills of the Osage Indian country or the Glass Mountains in the extreme west of Oklahoma. Often they would meet at a given point, do some daring act of train robbery, then scatter like quails with an agreed place of meeting; perhaps a hundred and fifty miles away. They were like the Insurgents of Cuba. No organized force could reach them. They knew every bridle path in the woods, or trail on the plains. Nothing prevailed but an Indian mode of warfare; but by long perseverance Marshal Nix’s force conquered.