Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
Follow it to its source, two days' trot or tramp up towards Cheyenne Pass, and there you find them, as the Sioux did twenty years ago, before we bade them seek their lodge-poles farther north. How far is it to the prairie metropolis, a mile and a half, you venture?
The horizon was empty, the air was silent, the smoking tepees were vanished from the cottonwoods, and where those in the plain had been lay the lodge-poles, and the fires were circles of white, cold ashes. By noon an interpreter came from Red Cloud. Red Cloud would like to have Toussaint. If the white man was not willing, it should be war. Captain Brent told the story of Loomis and Kelley.
By good fortune plenty of large ant-hills, a yard or more in diameter, were scattered over the plain, and these were frequently broken by the footprints of men and horses, and marked by traces of the lodge-poles. The succulent leaves of the prickly-pear, also bruised from the same causes, helped a little to guide us; so inch by inch we moved along.
Up from among the wild rose-bushes along the sparkling stream, and climbing the great "divide" to the west, there ran a broad, new-beaten, dusty trail, pounded by the hoofs of ten thousand ponies, strewn on every side with abandoned lodge-poles, worn-out blankets, or other impedimenta, malodorous, unsightly.
It is all simple; there are marks beside the beaten trail, as well as in its track, which prove clearly the party ahead of us to be moving westward, that it travelled rapidly, and was certainly not less than a hundred strong, with ponies and lodge-poles.
It was less than two hours afterwards, without anybody to carry a report of it to anybody else, that the whole Nez Percé camp disappeared, and all its human occupants also took the advice of the buffaloes. It was necessary to carry all the meat they had, and all the pappooses, and a number of other things, and so it had not been possible to take all the lodges with their lodge-poles.
Otherwise the great encampment appeared completely deserted; there were no spirals of smoke rising above the lodge-poles, no gossiping groups anywhere about. It was plain enough to me. Those of the warriors capable of further action were elsewhere engaged upon some fresh foray, while the majority, overcome by drinking, were asleep within their darkened lodges.
Squaws bustled about in their busy preparations, the old hags screaming to one another at the stretch of their leathern lungs. The shaggy horses were patiently standing while the lodge-poles were lashed to their sides, and the baggage piled upon their backs. The dogs, with their tongues lolling out, lay lazily panting, and waiting for the time of departure.
Raymond and I separating, rode from side to side, scrutinizing every yard of ground, until at length I discerned traces of the lodge-poles passing by the side of a ridge of rocks. We began again to follow them. "What is that black spot out there on the prairie?" "It looks like a dead buffalo," answered Raymond.
One can easily tell from the appearance of a trail, if it be made by a war-party or not, because there are no Indians who take their families along when starting on the war-path; consequently, they never carry their lodge-poles with them, which are always fastened to the sides of the animals, and the ends permitted to drag on the ground behind.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking