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The major rejoiced that the captain was sensible enough to discontinue the pursuit at the Niobrara crossing. Beyond that there were numerous ridges, winding ravines, even a shallow cañon or two, the very places for ambuscade; and it would be an easy matter for a small party of the Sioux to drop back and give the pursuers a bloody welcome. No!
Before mother can get wind of it, I want orders to report at Niobrara." The dawn of an autumn day was breaking over a barren and desolate landscape. The mist was rising from the silent pools of the narrow stream that alternately lay in lazy reaches and sped leaping and laughing in swift rapid over pebbly bed the Mini Chaduza of the Sioux.
A number of prairie fires threw some light on the water, but barely enough to make the passage among snags and sand bars feasible. At daybreak the villages of Niobrara and Running Water were passed. A couple of hours later the weary voyagers hauled up on the bank and cooked breakfast. When barely under way again, a boat containing a rough looking stranger approached.
While we were in the sandhills, scouting the Niobrara country, the Pawnee Indians brought into camp some very large bones, one of which the surgeon of the expedition pronounced to be the thigh bone of a human being. The Indians said the bones were those of a race of people who long ago had lived in that country.
This continued for nine years, until, by the raids of the Sioux, one fourth of the Poncas had been killed or captured. Still they had not been told by the United States that these lands were theirs no longer; but, suddenly, in 1877, they were told that they must get out. At this time they had three villages, on the lower Niobrara River, and eight bands, each under a chief.
It was humid and hot; their Niobrara country had been dry and bracing. Within one year a third of them were dead from sickness; the rest were weak and miserable. They pined for the villages that they had built and loved, and that they had lost without any known reason. After a year and a half Standing Bear's boy died, as so many others had died; and the heart of Standing Bear was heavy.
The first week after leaving the Niobrara was without incident, except the meeting with a band of Indians, who were gathering and drying the wild fruit in which the country abounded. At first sighting their camp we were uneasy, holding the herd close together; but as they proved friendly, we relaxed and shared our tobacco with the men.
"What was the use, with the Niobrara only a few hours' march away?" Bitterly did Hatton reproach himself for his neglect in having left so important a matter to the men themselves, but there was no sense in fretting over the past. Something had to be done at once to provide water for the morrow's siege.
An inquiry into the various species of the genus Rhinoceros, recent and fossil, has led Dr. Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from the Niobrara Valley, Dr.
While we were in the sand-hills, scouting the Niobrara country, the Pawnee Indians brought into camp, one night, some very large bones, one of which a surgeon of the expedition pronounced to be the thigh-bone of a human being. The Indians claimed that the bones they had found were those of a person belonging to a race of people who a long time ago lived in this country.
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