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Updated: May 11, 2025
But they first invited us to visit them, which we did, as not to have done so would have been a violent breach of plains etiquette, that might cause a disruption of friendship. In the Indian village, after our horses had been unpacked and turned out to graze, Uncle Kit and Black Buffalo strolled about among the lodges or wick-i-ups, of which there were something like fifteen hundred.
We turned our course, somewhat, making a circuitous route, and when we were just opposite the wick-i-ups, Jim Bridger and Uncle Kit climbed to the top of the hill, taking my glasses with them, and took in the situation. When they returned to where we were they were feeling much more encouraged, saying: "Thank God we are rid of the Blackfoots and Crows; those are the Bannocks.
This Indian village was situated at Pawnee Rock, on the Arkansas river, in a beautiful valley, in what is now the southwest corner of Benton Co., Kan. The wick-i-ups were made of poles set on ends, gathered together at the top, and covered with buffalo skins from which the hair had been removed. The Kiowas were, at that time, the most numerous tribe of Indians in the United States.
In traveling down this stream, which is quite crooked, and just as we were rounding one of those points of the hill running down to the creek, riding in the lead I saw two Indian wick-i-ups about half a mile ahead, just in the edge of the brush. I at once gave the signal to turn back, and we got out of sight without being discovered by the Indians.
On arriving there I found the Indians so situated that it was impossible to ascertain the number from the fact that in this extraordinarily warm climate the Indians do not use any wick-i-ups or lodges, so that the only method by which we could make an estimate of their number was by counting the number of fires they had end calculate each fire to represent a certain number of Indians, this being our method of estimating them when in wick-i-ups, we reckoned their number to be one hundred and fifty.
"I come from the wick-i-ups of my fathers to say one last word to the whites. I am an old, old man. The last winter was bitter hard and I may never see another July sun. I have lived too long.
They swung on up the black road into the reservation, around a long hill, through a short bit of wood to the edge of a great meadow where John halted the car. On all sides but one were pine woods. The one side was bordered by a little lake, motionless under the July sun. On the edge of the pines were set dozens of tents and birch-bark wick-i-ups.
They visited one or two neat Indian farms, but for the most part Charlie led her from one wick-i-up to the other, deep set in recesses of the wood, where the only whites to intrude on the Indians were the occasional government wood cruisers. These wick-i-ups were hovels, usually in the last stages of poverty and desolation.
Uncle Kit, being well acquainted with the Comanche chief, as well as the most of his warriors, loaded up all his furs and we moved over near the Comanches' quarters a few days before the battle was to take place. As the Comanches came in they would pitch their wick-i-ups back on the hill about a quarter of a mile south of the little stream, which was to be their line of battle.
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