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After killing these it would be easy to send word west to the Arapahoes and Gros Ventres and Cheyennes, the Crows, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones, the Utes, to follow west on the Medicine Road and wipe out all who had gone on West that year and the year before. Then the Plains and the mountains would all belong to the red men again.
On the first visit of the proprietors to their new site, every one of them was murdered and scalped by the Indians. These regions are held by the Blackfeet, who, with their offshoots, the Bloods, Gros Ventres, and Piegans, are the most formidable Indians of Montana. They are polygamists, being in that respect exceptional among the Indians.
A man from the N W Company Came Down from the Gross Vintres to Get one of our interpeters to assist them in trade This man informed that the Party of Gross Ventres who persued the Ossinboins that Stold their horses, has all returned in their usial way by Small parties, the last of the party bringing 8 horses which they Stole from a Camp of Asniboins which they found on Mouse river-
As we retreated the Sioux pursued us. One Sioux was in advance and called upon me to stop, and as I stopped he fired at me but missed me, and then I fired and killed him. The Sioux then rushed on me so that I could not scalp the Sioux I had killed. We ran on into the mountains and escaped into another fort. In this last fort one of the Gros Ventres was shot and wounded.
A few of our young men had planned to invade the Gros Ventres country, but it seemed that they too had been thinking of us. Everybody was interested in the proposed war party. "Uncle, are you going too?" I eagerly asked him. "No," he replied, with a long sigh. "It is the worst time of year to go on the war-path.
They, however, quite scrupulously respect their obligation to preserve the peace; and no considerable difficulty has of late been experienced, or is anticipated, in keeping them in order. The Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans have an annual appropriation of $50,000 made for their benefit; the Assinaboines, $30,000; the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, $35,000; the River Crows, $30,000.
Had Antelope returned in due season, the charge would have been made before dawn, while the people were yet asleep. When the battle was over, the Rees, Mandans, and Gros Ventres gathered their dead and wounded. The night was filled with mourning. Soon the sad news was heralded throughout the camp that the beautiful daughter of the Ree chief was among the missing.
“We were surrounded by many different tribes, Shoshones, Sioux, Piegans, and Gros Ventres. They were all our enemies. We often went on the warpath against these people, because they were always trying to take our horses and conquer our land. When we went on the warpath sometimes we would stop and kill a buffalo and have a feast. If we could, we crawled up on the enemy’s camp and stole his horses.
The varying fortunes of the Gros Ventres, the strenuous war career of this noted chief, have ploughed deep furrows and written serious lines in his face. He is too old a man at fifty-five, but wounds and scars and battle rush age upon any man. Chief Red Whip said to me: “The greatest event in my life was my fight with the Sioux in the Little Rocky Mountains.
We may not wonder then that Bear Ghost should say: “The greatest event in my life was the participation in two great wars. I was on the warpath on the Missouri River against the Gros Ventres and the Mandans. It was a hard, fierce struggle; we had been facing and shooting each other from early dawn until the sun went down.
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