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The present temporary location of the Red Cloud agency has, however, drawn just within the limits of Wyoming a body of Indians varying from 8,000 to 9,000, who are here, and usually, reckoned as belonging in Dakota. The Indians within the limits of Dakota Territory are the Sioux, the Poncas, and the Arickarees, Gros Ventres, and Mandans. Sioux.
The story of this war-scarred Gros Ventres veteran emphasizes with double pathos the many times expressed sentiment of this book that the Indian is a vanishing race, for he died within two weeks after returning home from the last Great Indian Council.
The most exciting event of this year was the attack that the Gros Ventres made upon us just as we moved our camp upon the table land back of the river in the spring. We had plenty of meat then and everybody was happy. The grass was beginning to appear and the ponies to grow fat. One night there was a war dance.
Even with this agreement Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were not satisfied, and they would not sign. "Up to this time I had fought in some important battles, but had achieved no great deed. I was ambitious to make a name for myself. I joined war parties against the Crows, Mandans, Gros Ventres, and Pawnees, and gained some little distinction.
'I will give you, he said, 'twenty Rees and Gros Ventres to escort you past the hostile camp. We set out very early and rode all day, so that night overtook us just before we reached the camp. "At nightfall we sent two scouts ahead, but before they left us they took the oath of the pipe in token of their loyalty. You all know the ancient war custom.
Dogs, considered a great delicacy by the Crees, Gros Ventres, Sioux, Assinaboines, and other surrounding tribes, were never eaten by the Blackfeet. No religious motive is assigned for this abstinence. I once heard a Piegan say that it was wrong to eat dogs. "They are our true friends," he said. "Men say they are our friends and then turn against us, but our dogs are always true.
It is claimed that the Crows sprang from the Gros Ventres of the Missouri, whose language they speak. The Gros Ventres were a very weak tribe, or band, who had, by incessant wars with the surrounding tribes, become reduced to a very insignificant number of warriors.
Tehatka was a medicine-man of the first order, and by the exercise of his superior cunning and dream power he was implicitly relied on by his followers; at length fortune deserted him, and he fell in a bloody battle with the Gros Ventres near the Knife River, a branch of the Missouri, in 1837. About the same date small-pox again swept the tribe, and they almost disappeared from the prairies.
There were eleven Crows and three Gros Ventres in our band; our leader was a Crow. There were about one hundred and thirty Sioux. We were making the ascent of the Little Rockies, and my friends went down into the ravine to shoot some buffalo. While they were down there shooting the buffalo and cutting them up the leader sent me to do scout work.
Young Indian men, mostly Sioux, some Cheyennes, a few Gros Ventres of the Prairie, all peaceable under the tacit truce of the trading post, rode out from their villages to their pony herds. From the post came the occasional note of an inharmonic drum, struck without rhythm by a hand gone lax. The singers no longer knew they sang. The border feast had lasted long. Keg after keg had been broached.
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