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FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF MOUNTAIN CHARLIE - Charles Stewart Stobie, Indian Scout, Artist and early photographer
Continued from Mountain Charlies Blog...
My admiration for interesting characters that led a life of adventure brought me to research all the folks mentioned in Mountain Charlie's memoires, a long lost relative from my Stobie side of the family - I found this all a very fascinating read, enjoy...
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To Mickeyflynn@,
Your inquiry to Jessica Bennett has been passed on to the staff of the Buffalo Bill Museum here at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center to answer. Yes, Charles Stobie was a friend of Buffalo Bill's as they were both scouts and knew each other from those days - 1860s. They remained friends throughout their lives. When the Irma Hotel here in Cody opened in November 1902, Stobie was present as was one of his paintings titled "Buffalo Bill's Hidden Camp Bob." That painting is the only thing we have of his - and it hangs in the hallway outside my office! In checking on the friendship between Stobie and BB, I checked one of the best biographies of BB by Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. One of his sources for Stobie is Stobie's diary which is held in the manuscript collection of the Colorado State Historical Society in Denver, Colorado. You might contact them for more information on Stobie. Their email address is: www.coloradohistory.org Good luck. Sincerely,Lynn J. HouzeCuratorial AssistantBuffalo Bill MuseumBuffalo Bill Historical Center720 Sheridan Ave.Cody, WY 82414
(307)578-4006FAX: (307)578-4076www.bbhc.org
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FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF MOUNTAIN CHARLIE
1798 - 1866
by Susan Robinson
While many African Americans lived colorful, exciting lives in the Old West, James P. Beckwourth was the only one to have a book written about his exploits during his lifetime. His biography, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians, as told to Thomas D. Bonner, an itinerant Justice of the Peace in California’s gold country in 1855, achieved enough popularity in its original U.S. release to be published in England and France as well by 1860. While his story was full of misspelled names and probable exaggerations of his own prowess (very typical of Old West storytelling) most of the major events in which Beckwourth took part have been verified by historians, and his account of life with the Crow Indians is accepted as one of the best sources of information about Crow society from that era.
(This anecdote came from the www.Beckwourth.org website:
”An often-told story has it that when the book appeared, a group of miners who were well-acquainted with Beckwourth commissioned one of its members to pick up a copy while on a trip to San Francisco. But the man, being careless, got a copy of the Bible instead. In the evening, he was requested to read aloud from the long-awaited book, and opening it at random, he hit upon and read the story of Samson and the foxes.
‘That'll do!’ one of the men cried. ‘I'd know that story for one of Jim's lies anywhere!’”)
Beckwourth was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to a slave mother and English father, who had thirteen children together. His father, Sir Jennings Beckwith, raised him as a son, and filed emancipation papers for him when he was a young man. While James was a teenager, the family moved to Missouri, which at the time was considered the western frontier. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in St. Louis, but he did not like working for the man, and at the age of eighteen he ran away from his apprenticeship and spent some time in New Orleans. It was his first experience with the deep South, and as a free man of color, he experienced difficulty in various areas, such as finding employment. He returned briefly to his parents and then joined an expedition of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1823.
Jim Beckwourth became a well-known mountain man, living in the wilderness as a fur trapper, hunter and trader. He became a crack shot, skilled at survival and frontiersmanship. He associated with the likes of Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith. During this time, he married his first wives, two Blackfoot Indian women, whom he deserted after a few weeks.
In 1828, Beckwourth claimed he was captured by the Crow Indian tribe while out on a trapping expedition; after his capture, a Crow Indian woman claimed him as her long-lost son. It is possible that the contact was planned by the fur trading company to encourage the Crows to trade with them, but Beckwourth ended up completely accepted by the Crows, and lived with them for at least six years. The Crows had warlike traditions, and the only ways to achieve any status in their society were to demonstrate courage and success in battle or to steal horses from enemies. Beckwourth became proficient in both these areas, earning the title “War Chief.” He was given several Crow names, including “Bull’s Robe.” He married numerous (at least ten) Crow women, including one young lady named “Pine Leaf.”
Pine Leaf was remarkable because she was a warrior. She had been captured by the Crow as a young child, after her brother was killed by Blackfeet. Legend has it that to avenge him, she vowed not to marry until she had killed a hundred enemy warriors. She became very good at it, and attained “chief” status herself, which was unheard of for a woman. Apparently unattainable, she was pursued for a long time by Beckwourth. She finally married him, and he left her and the Crow tribe five weeks later.
Beckwourth established and ran a couple of trading posts before making a brief trip back to St. Louis in 1836. He learned that his father had passed away the year before, and he found Missouri much changed—St. Louis was no longer the frontier town he remembered from his youth, and did not suit the adventurous life that Beckwourth was determined to live. He made one brief visit to the Crow nation, which unfortunately coincided with an outbreak of smallpox that decimated the Plains Indians in 1837. Beckwourth’s detractors (he was quite famous, and had some) accused him of purposely infecting the tribe to kill them off. Most people, including those that knew him personally, like the other mountain men, did not believe that he was that sort of person, and attributed the outbreak to other sources. Beckwourth had developed a lot of respect and closeness with the Crows, and while he had no qualms about killing enemy warriors in battle, wholesale genocide of the people who had adopted him was certainly not his style, even if he had had a motive.
In search of further adventure and “renown”, as he liked to say, Beckwourth joined the Missouri Volunteers of the U.S. Army to fight in the Seminole Wars in Florida. After a shipwreck on the way to Tampa Bay that stranded horses and soldiers on a reef for twelve days, Beckwourth arrived in Florida and worked as a scout and in various other capacities for the Missouri Volunteers. It proved to be less exciting than he had hoped. He wrote:
“Now we had another long interval of inactivity, and I began to grow tired of Florida . . . It seemed to me to be a country dear even at the price of the powder to blow the Indians out of it, and certainly a poor field to work in for renown. . . . I wanted excitement of some kind -- I was indifferent of what nature, even if it was no better than borrowing horses of the Black Feet. The Seminoles had no horses worth stealing, or I should certainly have exercised my talents for the benefit of the United States.”
Beckwourth left Florida and returned to St. Louis to look for employment. It only took him five days to run into an old acquaintance, Louis Vasquez, who had established a fort on the Platte River in Colorado. Vasquez hired Beckwourth to represent his business interests in dealing with the Cheyenne Indians. They took the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest, and Beckwourth used his knowledge of Plains Indian societies to establish a trading relationship with the Cheyenne. He stayed in the area for a few years, but when he tired of it he went south to Taos, New Mexico, and went into business for himself, trading with the Cheyenne. He married another wife, Luisa Sandoval. In 1842 he and his wife opened their own trading post back up north, calling the little settlement “Pueblo” (it is now a city in Colorado.) His competitors, two brothers with the surname of Bent, for whom Beckwourth had worked before starting his own business, kept trying to cause legal trouble for Beckwourth. So in 1844 he took off again, this time for California.
He intended to expand his trading business there, but trouble was brewing, as White settlers began to revolt against the Mexican government of California. When war broke out, Beckwourth and several friends quickly retreated back to Pueblo, stealing about 1800 horses from Mexican ranchers on the way. He wrote, “This was a fair capture and our morals justified it, for it was war-time.”
When they arrived in Pueblo, Beckwourth found that his wife, Luisa, had given up on him and remarried. He apparently did not mind very much. In 1848 he decided to return to California to try his luck as a gold miner.
He was hired as chief scout for General John C. Fremont, and made another mark in the history books by discovering a pass across the Sierra Nevadas that proved to be less hazardous than Donner Pass; Beckwourth Pass is between the Feather and Truckee rivers, a few miles north of Reno, Nevada. It came to be used by the gold-seekers of 1849 and later emigrants; it was also chosen to be the route over the Sierras for the Western Pacific Railway.
After arriving in California, he stopped at Mission San Miguel to visit a family he was friendly with, the Reeds. This was not a pleasant reunion, as Beckwourth walked right into the aftermath of the worst mass murder in early California history. The entire family, including Mrs. Reed and her hours-old infant, the midwife and her teenage daughter, and the Native American servants and their children, had been killed, mostly hacked to death with axes. He stumbled over dead bodies in several rooms and hallways before feeling an inexplicable urge to get out of there. It was a good thing he did, because the murderers were still in the house, and were waiting to shoot him too, had he discovered them. Beckwourth returned with a posse, and found that the bodies had been piled up in an attempt to burn them. The five murderers, all White men, were arrested near Santa Barbara; they were tried, and received the death penalty for their crimes (the posse shot them).
In 1866, Beckwourth fought in the Cheyenne War. Then he was hired by the government to interpret in peace negotiations with the Crow. He was famous and respected by both sides. He worked at this for a while, before he died under suspicious circumstances in Denver in that same year. The story has it that the Crows asked him to return to the tribe as a leader, but he declined, so they poisoned him at his farewell dinner so they could keep his “powerful medicine” with them always.
What a guy!
READ HIS BOOK THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF J P BECKWOURTH online at:-
http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeandadventur00beckgoog
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Death: Oct. 29, 1876, USA
Western Mountain Man and Scout. In the late 1840’s he drifted to St. Louis, Missouri where he joined a trapping party. At the Powder River in Wyoming, this group was always in constant attack form bands of Blackfoot Indians. To this end he and the mountain men soon started working for Jim Bridger at Fort Bridger, as scouts and stolen horse agents. After serving as a teamster for Stephen Kearney during the Mexican War, he married, headed to California and prospected. With the gold discovery in Montana, he tried his luck there and fought three claim jumpers killing one. He served as scout with Kit Carson at the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas. In 1868, he was named Chief of Scouts for George Custer. In celebration, he became drunk and missed the Battle of the Washita. In 1874, he lead Custer in the famous Black Hills Expedition and staked a homestead on what is now Rapid City, South Dakota. After being involved in a number of Indian skirmishes in Wyoming and South Dakota, he was scout for General George Crook when Crook was chasing the Sioux after the Little Big Horn fight. At Fort Robinson, Nebraska he quarreled with a man named Tom Newcomb, who shot him in the back. He was originally buried in the Fort Robinson Cemetery, but moved to the Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Nebraska. (bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith)
Search Amazon for Moses Milner
Burial:
Fort McPherson National Cemetery
Maxwell
Lincoln County
Nebraska, USA
buy his book California Joe Noted scout and Indian Fighter.
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/888628/used/California%20Joe:%20Noted%20Scout%20and%20Indian%20Fighter
MORE ON CALIFORNIA JOE
http://books.google.com/books?id=0wS5dfCYhtAC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Joe+Milner&source=bl&ots=qyqHj8Ghlz&sig=OapPZU9AjHzpgajDRpm1bu6iN78&hl=en&ei=EQzgSfLkF5rqlQfJtIjgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA101,M1
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BOOK FOR SALE ON MAJOR JACK DOWNING
Letters Of Major Jack Downing Of The Downingville Militia (1864)
http://www.thenile.co.nz/books/Jack-Downing-Seba-Smith/Letters-Of-Major-Jack-Downing-Of-The-Downingville-Militia-1864/9781437228168/
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READ ABOUT WILD BILL HICKOK at:-
http://www.abacom.com/~jkrause/hickok.html
http://www.historynet.com/wild-bill-hickok-pistoleer-peace-officer-and-folk-hero.htm
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-BillHickok.html
The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill
http://books.google.com/books?id=1qvU4Lq8NAcC&pg=PA429&dq=Charles+Stewart+Stobie&ei=fx7gSe74MIKEygSLkIC0DQ
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NATIVE INDIAN SPIRITUAL GROUNDS
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/IL-Cahokia.html
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Downing
Jacob Downing was a Major in the Union Army and a subordinate of Colonel John Chivington.
In April 1864, Downing came upon a band of Cheyennes camped near Cedar Bluffs, 60 miles above the South Platte. Although he only suspected them of stealing cattle and horses, Downing launched an attack that killed an estimated 25 Cheyennes and destroyed their lodges and belongings. Jacob Downing was also an officer present during the Sand Creek Massacre (also called the "Chivington massacre").
More on Major Jacob Downing
http://books.google.com/books?id=pownTI9gfNgC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=Major+Jacob+Downing's&source=bl&ots=C4I5FZ3P3O&sig=BnnVs5dINCCoRkQIQZN25zuhSKk&hl=en&ei=pB3gSc6MFYPNlQfPmsjgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
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by Ben Dugan
GCN Historical Writer
12/14/2006 - The Panic of 1857 left many men in the “States” without any means of employment. The Colorado Gold Rush was an opportunity for many to make a new start. Among the thousands of gold-seekers was a Kit Carson and the Ute Indian Commission circa 1864
veteran of the California Gold Rush, D.C. Oakes, who came from Iowa. In California, Oakes had saved $6,000 from gold mining activities in the gold-rich Feather River District. Returning to Iowa from California in 1853, he was able to marry and began a contracting and building business. Following the Panic of 1857, Oakes left for Colorado after his business became less lucrative.
He reached Cherry Creek in 1858 and joined Green Russell’s party on the Platte River. He had limited success on the Platte but never was able to make the grand “strike”. He returned to Iowa for the winter and saw the possibility of publishing a guidebook based on an account of the diary of one of Green Russell’s party. Oakes had seen firsthand the gold mining possibilities and thought that Colorado could offer the same opportunities as the California Gold Rush did ten years earlier. Oakes, with a partner, published a guidebook to the Colorado Goldfields in Pacific City, Iowa.
The guidebook recommended a route along the south side of the Platte and South Platte rivers and to be wary of Indians. He also advised travelers not to hunt buffalo with horses and listed the supplies that should be purchased totaling $517.25. The guidebook was put on sale at outposts on the Missouri River and became widely circulated. “Pikes Peak or Bust” became the cry as thousands of travelers headed across the plains to Denver and the mountains beyond.
Oakes had been busy making arrangements for his own return to the Colorado goldfields. He partnered with William Street and purchased a steam sawmill, knowing that lumber would be necessary in order to build any kind of permanent settlement in Colorado. During his trip across the plains, he was praised and admired. Along the way near Julesburg, Colorado, he encountered an eastbound wagon train that claimed they had not found anything worth staying for and that the guidebook told lies. They chagrined the guidebook as a hoax. Oakes was hanged in effigy and tombstones were written along the main trail that read: “Here lies D.C. Oakes, who was the starter of this damned hoax.” Seeing that he was no longer popular, he avoided the main route.
Oakes left the sawmill party to investigate the mining activity along South Boulder Creek and Gamble Gulch. Finding that the gold deposits there were abundant, he returned to the sawmill party only to discover that his partner had dissolved the partnership and had begun the return trip east. Oakes caught up with Street the following day and convinced them that there really was gold and that the others had not tried hard enough. The party turned around and reached a spot twenty miles south of Auraria (near present-day Castle Rock) and set up the sawmill. The D.C. Oakes lumber mill began shipping lumber to Denver in the summer of 1859.
Indian troubles abounded in the early 1860s, and as a countermeasure, Oakes built “Fort Lincoln” to protect settlers. It was used as a refuge for thirty families who spent six months there. Provisions could only be obtained under cover of darkness. While they were there, the pioneers' homes were burned by the Indians and their livestock was driven off. In 1865, Oakes sold his sawmill and became involved with Indian affairs. He was appointed an Indian agent and became friends with Kit Carson. In 1868 he attended the peace conference in Washington with Carson. On the return trip, Kit Carson became sick and died.
Oakes was quite successful at being an Indian agent by understanding their plight and temperament. He was very popular among the Indians. He left his Indian post in 1869 to become a deputy land surveyor in extending public surveys. The advice Oakes gave to his Indian agent successor was ignored. In 1878, Nathan Meeker was appointed Indian agent and was killed by an Indian uprising in 1879 at the White River Agency.
Oakes dabbled in local politics and also became a director of the Alpine Tunnel Company, which was responsible for building the Alpine Tunnel in central Colorado in the early 1880s. He was frequently elected as a delegate to county and territorial conventions. He is recognized as a great Colorado Pioneer, without whose effort Colorado might not have been settled on the grand scale that it was. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Denver.
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Other great american west artists ( Fredrick saddlesack Remington )
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/subjects/the_American_West.html
SELF-PORTRAIT ON A HORSE
by Frederic Remington 1861 to 1909
Remington was born in Canton in northern New York on October 4, 1861. His boyhood fostered a lifelong love of horses and the outdoors, while his father's tales of action as a cavalry officer in the Civil War inspired a passion for things military that found a western focus with the battle of the Little Bighorn during the nation's Centennial Year, 1876. At the age of fourteen Remington was smitten with the urge to go see the West for himself.
As a member of a prominent family, Remington was expected to graduate from college, prepared for a career in business, but spent only a year and a half at Yale University playing football and studying art. After his father's death, he traveled to Montana in 1881, and experienced his first impression of the West. In 1883, he moved to Kansas where he made an unsuccessful attempt at sheep ranching. The year he spent there was the only time he actually made the West his home, although he made many trips out West and occasionally accompanied the U.S. Cavalry on patrol along the Southwest frontier.
Frederic Remington's major paintings were tributes to the Wild West of fantasy. They drew on the artist's experiences for their sense of place and authentic details, but on his imagination for their subject matter. Remington's achievement was to fuse observation and imagination so seamlessly that his contemporaries assumed he had actually witnessed what he portrayed.
Remington had been exhibiting in major art shows since 1888, and was seeking recognition as not just an illustrator, but an artist in the recognized sense of the term. He made the breakthrough he was seeking in 1895 when he turned to sculpting, which he excelled at and which earned him the critical respect for his work that he strived for. He completed twenty-two sculptures, many which became the defining masterpieces of the Western art tradition.
By 1900 Remington had returned to painting and he began to experiment with impressionism. His technique evolved dramatically the last five years of his life as he rejected the crisp linear illustrator style to concentrate on mood, color and light - sunlight, moonlight, and firelight. His later oils are consistent with his conclusion that his West was dead. So he painted impressionistic scenes in which the West, now entirely confined to memory, was invested with a poetry and mystery the present could not touch. He died at the age of 48, a victim of appendicitis.
MAESTROS OF THE MOUNTAINS
by: Kerry Ross Boren
Virtually everything I ever learned about history, philosophy, science, religion, politics and human nature in general, I learned by sitting around a campfire in the Uintah Mountains of northeastern Utah, listening to men who had opinions on everything from Einstein's Theory of Relativity to whether or not the Pope pees standing up. We are not talking about rocket scientists or PhD's here. Hell nol We're talking about ranchers, dirt farmers, cowboys, sheepherders, and river rats-hard-baked, odd freaks of humanity, reprobates and other such luminaries who had obtained their degrees from the School of Hard Knocks. By their own admission they were much smarter than those pre-fessors of higher learning who had diplomas where their brains ought to be, and who never knew whether they were scratching their watch or winding their ass. From these pundits of pugnacity, these grizzled old maestros of the mountains, I learned among other things that opinions are more important than facts and in much greater supply. My father, who was kicked out of the sixth grade for dunking his teacher in the cold water of Henry's Fork of the Green River, was one of these campfire sages. Normally a man of few words, the flickering flame of an aromatic pinion-log campfire and good company seemed to trigger in him a fountain of memories. It inspired him to dispense wisdom in the form of country aphorisms and misty-eyed reminiscences like bubbling water from an artesian well. I acquired a higher form of education at this campfire campus that ever I did in public school, and with much less encouragement. At this forum, and at a very early age, I gleaned my first interest in history, and began recording the biographies and reminiscences of some of these fascinating old characters who were to have such a profound influence on my life. Their stories are replete with pathos, humor, and if you look deep enough, there is a wisdom there that belies its homely origins. We will share a few of their stories in these pages. HOW DAD KILLED THE SHEEPHERDER My father had been planning to run away from home for some time. He hated his step- mother, he hated school, his father was too strict, and he was strong-willed and determined to make his own way in life. In 1906, at the age of thirteen, fate conspired to give him a chance. During the previous year his father had uprooted the family from their home on the Uintah- Ouray Indian Reservation, where he had been happy, to trek across the mountain and settle at Linwood, on Henry's Fork, where he knew no one. He was sent to school in the Stateline Schoolhouse, a little red school where the state lines of Utah and Wyoming ran along the ridge-pole, where he felt abused by the hard-nosed schoolmaster who delighted in caning his unruly students with a birch sapling. He made a friend at school. Wilford "Wilf" Tolten, son of the local Mormon bishop, was near his own age and disposition. Caught talking in class, the schoolmaster caned them both soundly. They vowed revenge. They hid themselves in the willow brakes along Henry's Fork after school, waylaid the teacher, and ducked him in the river. Neither of them dared to return home, so they ran away to Wyoming, lied about their ages, and found jobs herding sheep in the Wind River country. They both felt pretty big for their breeches. They had stood up for themselves, exerted their independence and now had men's jobs with a sheep rancher at twenty-and-found. Nobody was ever going to tell them what to do again, they vaunted. "Wash them god-damned dishes, and when you get that done, chop some firewood for the stovel Move yer lazy assesl They's work to be donel" The sheepherder, a grizzled, fuzzy-faced old hard case with leathery hide and the disposition of a rattlesnake with hemorrhoids, was far meaner to them than the weasely little schoolmaster had been. He barked orders continuously and emphasized his contempt for slowness by a cuff on the ear. He resented having to put up with them at all, and said so in no uncertain terms. "I'm the boss of this here camp," he bellowed, "and don't you damned well forget it. When I say jump, you better ask how high, an' if'n I say piss, you better ask how farl" They hated him instantly. But this wasn't the schoolmaster; this old reprobate was tough, and they were rightly afraid of him. "We gotta do somethin' about this," my father complained. "Yeah," agreed Wilf, "but VJLU?" "I'll think of somethin'." my father replied. They lived together in a sheepwagon on a windy ridge. That is to say, the old sheepherder lived in the wagon; he made Ed and Wilf sleep outside, and even if it rained they could only crawl under the wagon for protection, such as it was. He cooked the meals and shoved it over the dutch door on tin plates at the same time when he fed the dogs. He kept a loaded double-barreled 12- gauge shotgun leaning just inside the door. "Fer coyotes and other pesky varmints." "We gotta do somethin' about this," my father repeated, following weeks of abuse. "Yeah," echoed Wilf, "but Abal?" "I've got an idea, but you gotta back me up all the way." "Don't I always?" "He always takes a nap about two o'clock in the afternoon," my father said, leaning in close so he couldn't be overheard. "Now here's what we do..."
On the fateful day of showdown the two boys stealthily approached the door of the sheepwagon. My father stepped carefully up on the wagon tongue so as not to rock the wagon and peered inside. "He's asleep," he whispered over his shoulder to Wilf. "Let's gol" "Get the shotgun," Wilf croaked, half scared to death. "Don't forget the shotgun." They carefully opened the bottom half of the Dutch door-the top was open-and climbed inside. My father grabbed up the shotgun and approached the elevated bed at the back of the sheep camp; Wilf followed close behind, dragging a length of rope. My father poked the shotgun under the snoring nose of the old sheepherder and cocked both of the hammers back. The old man snorted a couple of times and woke up. His eyes crossed as he looked down the muzzle of the gun and saw my father's flushed face, grimacing malevolently. "What the hell..?" he started, trying to sit up. "Shut upl" my father barked. "I'm the boss of this camp now. When I tell you to jump, you better ask how high, an' when I say to piss, you better ask how farl" They forced him off the bed in his long-johns and tied him securely to a chair. He lost his bravado and began to tremble. "What're you boys plannin' to do to me?" "Why, we're gonna kill you, of course," my father retorted. Wilf tied a blindfold over the old sheepherder's eyes. "Now, you boys ain't serious ... are you? I mean, I might'a been a little too harsh with you boys, but I ain't done nothin' so bad you'd go an' do somethin' like that ... would you?" "You better start sayin' yore prayers, old man," piped in WIlf, at last getting into the sport of it. "Yeah," my father added, "do you have any idea what a double-o buckshot blast will do to a man's face? BLAMI"-the old man jumped in his chair-"Mincemeati" "Now come on, boys," the old man begged, beads of sweat welling up in the wrinkles of his brow, "I promise you if you let me go, I won't say nothin' to nobody 'bout what you boys done, an' I promise I won't say one harsh word to you boys. An' you don't even have to do the chores around camp. Now, whatta you say, huh?" "No deal, old man," my father said. "You know too much, now. You gotta die." "Yeah," echoed Wilf, "die." A wash basin of water had been heating on the nearby stove where the old man had planned to wash up after his nap. A washcloth steamed in the boiling water. Wilf grabbed up a splinter of woods from the box next to the stove and carefully lifted the steaming washcloth from the basin. My father leaned close to the old man's ear and said, sotto voce, "Get ready to meet your maker, you old tyrant, for on the count of three I'm gonna blow yore brains out!" ~
"One..." the old sheepherder stiffened. "Two..." he started to sob. My father clicked the hammers on the shotgun, at which the old man sucked in his breath, then pointed the barrel out of the door of the sheepwagon. "Three!" BOOM!! My father fired both barrels out the door and just as they went off, Wilf hit the old sheepherder in the face with the hot wet dishcloth. The old man pissed his pants and passed out. Two days later the boys were back at Linwood, penniless-they had not dared pick up their pay-and unusually docile. They never bothered to explain where they had been or why they had returned home so hastily. TONTO Some years ago I went into a bank in Vernal, Utah, which is situated quite near the Ute Indian Reservation, and applied for a personal loan. I sat down at the loan manager's desk and filled out an application. The loan manager was a typical westerner, decked out in bolo tie and white Stetson hat. I handed him the completed application and after perusing it, he passed it to a Native American employee at an adjoining desk. "Hey, Tonto," he said to the Indian, "process this for me, will you?" The Ute hurried off to comply. "Did I hear you just call that man 'Tonto'?" I asked. "Why, yes I did. Just a little nickname I have for him." "Isn't that just a bit condescending?" I queried. He leaned back in his chair, grinned, and pushed his Stetson back on his forehead. "Not at all. Not at all. You see, I am the Loan Arranger, and he's my faithful sidekick. That's why I call him Tonto." OLD MAN PUFFER His name was James Monroe Puffer, but to all and sundry who knew him he was simply Old Man Puffer. My grandfather, Willard Schofield, had known him in Beaver, in Southern Utah, even before they came together to Daggett County in Northeastern Utah in 1895. They were related by marriage through the Twitchell family. Old Man Puffer had been a pioneer settler at Beaver. He had befriended an old Indian named Beaver Adz, for whom the town and county of Beaver was named. Old Beaver was not a "local" Indian. He had come into the region before the arrival of the Mormons with a company of Canadian fur trappers, liked what he saw, and decided to remain. When he met Puffer, they became inseparable friends and local legends. ~
Old Beaver was a noted tracker. He was often employed during the Indian wars to track renegade Utes and rustled livestock. Old Man Puffer frequently accompanied him and learned the secrets of tracking from the master. My grandfather often recounted the story of Puffer's first tracking experience with Beaver Adz. Sometime during the night, someone had driven off livestock from the town. Old Beaver was called for to track down the culprits, and he took with him his proteg6, Puffer. It was a cold and wintry day. After only a few miles on the trail Beaver suddenly stopped, examined the tracks, and reported there were three men, not Indians but Whites. "How can you tell that?" Puffer asked. "Three horses have iron shoes," Beaver replied. "White men." A few miles farther on Beaver stopped again and examined signs in the snow. "One man old. Two men are young." he said. Puffer was amazed. "How could you possibly tell that?" Beaver pointed to three yellow stains in a snowbank. Beaver kneeled down and pointed to the tracks and the stains. "One man he pee close to shoes: him old. Other two pee far out: them young." When the three men were finally captured, it was found they were an elderly father and his two young sons. Old Man Puffer settled in the little town of Manila (then known appropriately as Sandtown) in 1896. He was a familiar sight on the streets for many years. He dressed in a curious combination of buckskin and corduroy, chewed tobacco and spat it out between words, and was more often drunk than not. He trapped beaver and bobcats for a living, and reeked of animal fat. He bathed once a year whether he needed it or not. His habits and behavior was generally frowned upon, especially by the staunch church- goers and member of the Ladies' Relief Society. The religious ladies set out on a personal and zealous mission to reform him and, if possible, convert him to the faith in order to save his soul. It was an exercise in futility. They tried persuasion, then shamed him, but he obstinately chewed and drank and cursed his way toward damnation. The ladies warned him sternly that his evil habits would be the death of him, and that tobacco and whiskey would be his undoing. James Monroe Puffer died at the age of 1041 When he died the good ladies of the Relief Society, with all proper self-righteous acclaim, stated: "We told him that his evil habits would be the death of himl" ~
OUT TO LUNCH Heber Bennion, Jr. operated one of the largest ranches in Daggett County. When he was not ranching in our remote region of the state, Heber worked as Secretary of State, with a plush office next to the governor's in the Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City. Heber like to recount the story about when he took his personal secretary out to lunch at an exclusive Salt Lake restaurant. When the waitress approached their table to take their order, Heber selected beef's tongue. His secretary twisted her face into a grimace of revulsion. "You had really ought to try it," Heber encouraged. "It's quite good." Oooo, no," she said, still contorting her face. "I don;t want anything that comes out of a cow's mouth-just give me a couple of eggs..." THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF A MODEL T FORD A familiar figure in Lucerne Valley for many years was an old Danish immigrant named Rounholt. He homesteaded forty acres in the center of the valley, and made a meager living by growing hay and grain. He lived in an old clapboard cabin with a tar paper roof, stayed mostly to himself, and drove an old Model T Ford-one of the very first to come off the assembly line. His English was broken and he lacked the confidence to speak and so remained mostly silent. Few had heard him put more than two sentences together. Old Man Rounholt-as he was commonly known-had no farm machinery. When his lucerne or wheat crop came ready to harvest, he generally hired my father to put it up for him. One day my father was in the process of mowing his hay when Old Man Rounholt came driving across the field in his old Model T. Halfway across the field the car suddenly stopped. The old man got out, walked around it a couple of times, then pulled out the hand crank and with great exertion began cranking it around and around-but the car wouldn't start. "Py yumpin' yminy." my father heard him say, "ju piss uff yunkl Vy cause ju do dis to me, ju som of da pitchl" He banged the fender several times with the crank, then turned and walked across the field to where my father was mowing hay. "Are you having car trouble?" my father asked him. "Ed, I svare I donut unnerstan' it. I py dis damn car ven it vus new an' I haf had it tventy- fife yeres an' it nefer broke down on me before; vy it break down now?" He huffed and puffed a moment or two, then added, "Ed, can I borrow yore gun?" My father was reluctant to lend the gun to him, thinking him desperate enough to turn it on himself, but in the end he relented, pulling his Winchester 30-30 from its boot on the rear of the tractor; most ranchers carried rifles to ward off predators preying on their livestock. ~ Old Man Rounholt grabbed the rifle, levered a cartridge in the chamber, then turned and retraced his steps back to the car. My father watched curiously as the old Dane stood in front of the Model T, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and fired a shot through the radiator, sending a plume of steam into the air like a geyser. Then he turned and crossed the field again, and handed the rifle back to my father.
"Py jiminy, I feels better now," he said. "Donut pother to bury dat traitor. Let her rot over she stands."
The Model T stood in the middle of the field throughout my growing years. When Old Man Rounholt died, the car was towed away and thrown into a wash to impede erosion. Eventually a bank caved over the Model t and the "murdered" car at last had its burial.
MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS
He was a late comer to the mountains. Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Joe Meek, all had preceded him, but none were greater. James Baker left his Illinois home for the Far West in 1839 at the instigation of Carson, who was his distant relation. After wandering the West as a trapper, guide, scout and indian fighter, he settled down more or less permanently in the dirt-roofed cabin of his brother John on Henry's Fork, about seven miles above that stream's confluence with the Green River at Flaming Gorge. He was a common sight in the region for the next halfcentury.
Though married to one of the many daughters of Chief Washakie of the Shoshones, he was a loner, a solitary, a dispiser of the company of men. He never wore anything other than buckskins. He packed a pistol, a Green River knife, and a tomahawk on a beaded belt. His leggins were made of wapiti hide by his wife, and his moccasins of bearskin, from the hide of a bear he had killed with his knife. His headwear alternated between fur, felt and Ute headband.
During the winter of 1877-78, the Baker brothers encountered two other brothers in Brown's Park: Frank and Jesse James. The notorious outlaw brothers, who had recently been involved in the killing of two lawmen in Wyoming, were on their way to visit an uncle in California. The Bakers invited the James boys to spend the winter in their cabin on Henry's Fork.
The Baker cabin was some thirty miles due west of Brown's Park. The journey was made in a raging snowstorm. It nearly became their last. Lost in a whiteout blizzard, they were reduced to wading upstream in the icy waters of Henry's Fork to the Baker cabin, which had been built on the north bank. Jesse James froze his feet. He thawed them out in the oven of John Baker's old "Majestic" cast iron stove. This stove was in my possession for many years.
Dick Son was John Baker's son-in-law. He had been a guide for the Prof. F.V. Hayden Expedition from the famous Peabody Museum, that collected fossils from the region and left the good doctor's name to a local landmark-Hayden Peak in the high Uintahs. Dick Son was present the day Jesse James thawed out his feet.
"You never heard such squealing in your life," Jack Son told me, "as when the feeling returned to his frozen feet." Jack was a son of Dick Son and a grandson of John Baker. "I've heard my dad tell the story a hundred times. Jesse James wailed so loud with pain it set the dogs to barking."
The James boys must have had some negative influence on Jim and John Baker. During the early eighties they joined Shadrach "Shade" Large, Elijah "Lige" Driscoll, and Isaac "Ike" Reece in the robbery of a freight office in Green River, Wyoming, about fifty miles north of their ranches on Henry's Fork. Ike Reece was wounded in the fracas. His partners in crime aided him in riding as far as Twelve Mile Butte, about three-fourths of the way home. There, at Timber Springs, they propped him up under a pinion pine and left him to die.
Back at Henry's Fork the "gang" stopped at the ranch of their friend Phil Mass and told him what had transpired. Old Phil, a former Pony Express rider whose own son, "One-eyed" Jack Mass, would one day ride with the Wild Bunch, was dismayed that they had left their friend Ike Reece to die alone.
Phil rode out to Twelve Mile Butte and there found Reece dead beneath the tree. He buried him there where he died and erected a headboard over the grave that remained for many years, and which in my youth I found and copied:
HERE LIES THE BODY OF OLD IKE REECE
HIS HEAD LIES WEST, HIS ASS LIES EAST
In 1879, Jim Baker found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Utes of northwestern Colorado, who were his longtime enemies, rebelled against the stringent measures imposed upon them by Indian agent Nathan C. Meeker. They murdered Meeker and a number of other men at the White River Agency and carried the women into captivity. They also killed Major T.T. Thornburgh and most of his troops on Milk River when they attempted to come to the rescue of the agency.
Joe Rankin, who had made a record ride north to Fort Steele, Wyoming, for help, reported that he had passed Jim Baker, not far from the agency, cowering in a ditch. Thereafter, afraid for his life, Baker constructed a two-story fortified house on the Snake River, not far from Baggs, Wyoming, where he lived out the remainder of his life. He lived to an advanced age.
In 1896 he was in Baggs, Wyoming, when Butch Cassidy and his newly organized gang rode into town to celebrate. That celebration earned them the now famous sobriquet "The Wild Bunch." One young outlaw named John "Judge" Bennett thought he would toy with the old man,
-8- then nearly eighty years old. Old Jim threshed the young rooster soundly, and threatened to scalp him with his tomahawk.
In 1897 the General Authorities of the Mormon Church extended an invitation to the old Mountain Man to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in Utah. He politely declined. The last such experience he had with "civilization" proved disastrous.
The good people of Denver had honored him as a guest of the city. They made him the Grand Marshal of a parade and put him up in Denver's most posh hotel. The grand hotel was plush with bright red carpet, marble pillars, full-length mirrors and crystal chandeliers. The restaurant served live lobster and escargot. The hotel bar, also carpeted, offered more drink than he could drink with names he couldn't pronounce. Presidents and Wall Street wizards had been feted there with less ceremony than the old mountaineer.
But the entire experience was more than he could cope with. Porters discovered him in the morning asleep on the floor, the bed unslept in. He showed up at a lavish dinner, as honored guest of the mayor and local dignitaries, dressed in his buckskins and smelling of bear-grease and beaver-fat. They suggested a bath and a new suit of clothes. He averred that he had already had a bath "once this yard," and when offered a black tuxedo, he told them, "I ain't dead yet, by Godl" Flush toilets scared him to death and he refused to use one, relieving himself in the alley behind the hotel.
In the evening he came down to the bar, thinking it would at least be a familiar place; it wasn't. Red carpet, chandeliers, electric lighting, polished mirrors and stuffed velvet chairs, it was more palatial than frontier. He could not have been more out of place.
He stood at the bar, the object of scrutiny, his jaw full of chewing tobacco. He looked around for a place to spit and seeing none spat on the red carpet. A porter grabbed a polished brass spittoon and quickly sat it on top of the stain. Jim turned his head and spat in the other direction. The porter ran with the spittoon and placed it on the second stain. Again Jim turned around and spat tobacco juice on the carpet. The porter scurried with the spittoon to the new location.
"Lookee 'ere, tenderfoot," he said to the porter, "If'n ye keep a'movin' that there thing around like that, I'm liable to spit in it''
PAPA
In June of 1961 1 drove fifty-five miles across the badiands to Green River, Wyoming, to visit my old friend Tom Welch. Tom had recently turned ninety-six. He had fallen and broken his hip not long since and got about now only with the aid of a cane and half a shot of whiskey.
Because he seldom went out, the interior of the little four-room house where he lived alone smelled of stale tobacco, coffee, boiled beans, and sweat; it was not an altogether unpleasant odor. In the cool of the evening he sat in an old rocking chair on the porch, and there I found him, rocking back and forth with his memories.
He was depressed. He knew he had not much longer to live, and I knew it would probably be my last visit with him. In former times he had enjoyed reminiscing; but now he merely sat and rocked, and I would see his mind go away and hide somewhere.
"Let's get out of the house and go for a walk," I suggested, thinking the change would do him
900CL
.Where in hell can I go?" he huffed. "I can't walk very far, you know."
"Where would you like to go?"
"Well," he pondered, "I haven't been down to the Red Feather in a long time."
Near the turn of the century, Tom and Dr. hawk had formed a partnership to purchase the Red Feather Bar & Grill and the adjacent Tomahawk Hotel (named for Tom and Dr. Hawk) in the center of town. Dr. Hawk was the doctor who patched up members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. The money used to finance the purchase had come from Tom's participation in the Tipton, Wyoming, train robbery with Butch Cassidy on 29 August 1900. Tom was wounded in the leg during that robbery, and Dr. Hawk had removed the bullet. After Dr. Hawk's death, Tom became sole proprietor of the businesses, eventually selling out but retaining an interest in the Red Feather Bar.
The Red Feather was only four blocks east of Tom's house but he had to take the walk in slow installments. We must have seemed an incongruous pair-a ninety-six year-old man and a youth who was not yet twenty. By the time we arrived at the bar, he was working hard just to stand still.
"I shouldn't go in," I said. "I'm under age."
"Hell, I was a man before I was twelve. You're close enough."
It was cool and dark inside the bar. The evening crowd had not arrived and so it was mostly quiet, except for Johnny Cash singing, "I Tow the Line" on the jukebox. Amber lights reflected in the glass eyes of stuffed antelope heads above the counter, making them appear alive and other-worldly. In a small showcase on the end of the bar was a "Wyoming Jack-a-loupe"-a local joke invented to fool and entertain tourists-a stuffed jackrabbit mounted with small deer antlers.
Tom, who always sat at the counter, refused my help in mounting a barstool. I sat next to him and nursed a Coke while he drank Jack Daniels and chatted with the bartender. He was beginning to loosen up and relax a little. Getting out was doing him a world of good. He hadn't been out in a long time.
1 0 The only other persons in the bar besides ourselves was a couple sitting in a rear booth quietly talking over drinks and Club sandwiches. They sat in shadow and I took little notice of them.
With a little prompting Tom began to reminisce. I asked him about the black outlaw, Isom Dart, who had trained horses for the Wild Bunch, rustled cattle, and died with a bullet through his heart from the rifle of bounty hunter Tom Horn back in the year 1900.
"Hell, yes, I remember ol' Nigger Isom. he roped a bear one time up on Cold Springs Mountain, an' damn that bear got mad! It turned on the horse and started chasin' it, and ol' Isom, he dug in his spurs and yelled, 'Git up, hoss, or that black son-of-a-bitch is gonna git on behind! Tom laughed at this story as though he was hearing it himself for the first time.
The man in the booth seemed to be engrossed in our conversation. At last he picked up his drink and approached the bar, helping himself to a stool next to Tom.
"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation," the man said, addressing Tom. "I'm a hunter myself. Have you ever hunted grizzly bear in Alaska?"
Tom gave this intruder a suspicious once-over. The man appeared to be in his late sixties, with a bushy grey beard that appeared to be on fire from the reflection of the red neon "Red Feather" sign behind the bar. He wore a fedora hat and khaki safari jacket over a red flannel shirt.
But Tom, even at ninety-six, was himself a strong figure of a man. He topped six-feet-four and weighed well over 200 pounds-all of it muscle. He had lived an active outdoor life and was still lean and tough. He had killed several men that I was aware of, one as late as 1920, and had once got into a gunfight with my grandfather. He was a former cattleman, livestock inspector, deputy sheriff, and member of the Wild Bunch. He was a man to be reckoned with at any age. I always had a healthy fear of him.
"Can't say that I have ever hunted grizzlies in Alaska," he replied at last to the stranger's inquiry. "Had a griz hunt me once though, just south of here, over in the Uintah Mountain country."
"You don't say? I'd like to hear that story. Bartender-top off this drink for me, will you? And another round for my new friends."
For the next two hours they swapped stories. I listened to tales of safari in Africa by the stranger, countered by a tale of elk hunting in Jackson Hole by Tom; tigers in India versus mountain lions in Colorado; marlin fishing off the coast of Cuba versus 200-pound pike on the Columbia. The two men, thoroughly engrossed in their vaunting duel, completely ignored me-the kid-in their enthusiasm.
The lady in the booth ordered another sandwich for herself and invited me to join her.
"Papa talks too much when he's drinking," she told me, "but he's been so depressed lately, I simply don't have the heart to stop him now. He seems to be enjoying himself so much."
A few customers came into the bar during the course of the evening and soon joined the growing throng of spectators enthralled by the stories. Never have such talks been told by such spinners of fascination. Every story was topped by the next. When there was drama, the bar fell hushed; when there was humor, the listeners roared and slapped their knees. Both of the men were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
At last, however, the lady left the booth and approached her husband.
"Forgive me for interrupting," she told him, speaking as one familiar with diplomacy, "but it's getting late, Papa, and we have a long drive ahead of us." The man glanced at his watch.
"My wife is quite right, gentlemen. I have been enjoying myself so much I forgot the hour. We're on our way home to Ketchum, Idaho. I'm afraid I'll have to drive all night now to make it, but it's been worth it."
He shook hands all the way around. He thanked Tom profusely for what he said had been one of the best evenings of his life.
"You know, Tom," he ejaculated, "someday somebody had ought to write your story."
Tom turned to gaze at me.
"Well, this here young man has offered to write about me more than once, but I don't want my name in no damned book!"
The stranger shook my hand firmly, then leaned over and said, sotto voce: "You should do it. Write his story." He adjusted his fedora and without looking back went out the door, his wife on his arm.
"Damned nice feller," Tom said, whether to himself I do not know.
"Don't you know who that was?" The bartender interjected excitedly. "That was Ernest Hemingwayl"
The bar fell quiet.
"Who the hell is Ernest Hemingway?" Tom asked.
On 3 July 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway stuck the muzzle of a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains out.
Sources:
Interviews: Tom Welch; W.J. Clark; Edward Boren; Wilford Tolten; Willard Schofield; Heber Bennion, Jr.; Jack Son.
The Escapades of Frank & Jesse James, Carl W. Breihan
Personal communication with Ernest Hemingway.
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http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol5/html_files/v5p0705.html
INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES
Vol. V, Laws (Compiled from December 22, 1927 to June 29, 1938)
Compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler. Washington : Government Printing Office, 1941.
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PART IV—UNRATIFIED TREATIES
Treaty With The Sho-Sho-Nee Nation Of Indians
Treaty With The Capote Band Of Utahs In New Mexico
Treaty With The Mohuache Band Of The Utahs
Treaty With Mixed Bands Of Bannacks And Shoshonees
Treaty With The Utah, Yampah Ute, Pah-Vant, Sanpete Ute, Tim-P-Nogs And Cum-Nm-Bah Bands Of The Utah Indians
Treaty With The Weber Ute Band Of Utah Indians
Treaty With Crow Nation Of Indians, Montana
Treaty With The Assiniboines
Treaty With The Uintah And Yampa Or Grand River Bands Of Utah Indians
Treaty With The Shoshones, Bannacks, And Sheepeaters
Chickasaw Treaty Or Certificate
Page Images
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August 29, 1866 | Unratified.
TREATY WITH THE UINTAH AND YAMPA OR GRAND RIVER BANDS OF UTAH INDIANS, AUGUST 29, 1866.
Article 1
Page 705
The President of the United States of America, by Alexander Cummings, Governor of Colorado Territory, and Exofficio Supt Indian Affairs for the same Hon A.C. Hunt, and D.C. Oakes, U.S. Indian Agent duly authorized and appointed as Commissioners, for the purpose, of the one part, and the undersigned chiefs and warriors of the Uintah and Yampa or Grand River Bands of Utah Indians on the other part, have made and entered into the following Treaty of amity & friendship which, when ratified by the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall be binding on both parties, to, wit
ARTICLE 1.
There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Uintah and Yampa or Grand River bands of Utah Indians.
Page 706
It is the purpose of the United States Government, by some of the citizens thereof; to make a road or roads through the lands claimed by the Green River or (Yampa) and Uintah bands of Ute Indians. And in consideration of a present by the United States, of twenty five (25) head of cattle and sundry provisions, blankets clothing and other articles—the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged and the delivery witnessed by James Baker, Interpreter, Hon H. P. Bennett, and Brevet Major Lewis Thompson, U.S.A., the Indians aforesaid agree that they will not interfere with the construction of said roads, nor molest any persons engaged thereon, nor any stations or buildings or settlements which may be made, and will aid in protecting the persons travelling on the roads or employed upon them.
It is agreed by said Indians, in case of any violation of the provisions of this article, by any individual of the aforesaid band, or of any violence by any of them to any United States Citizen or white resident travelling through the lands claimed by them, that the individual guilty of said wrong shall be delivered up to the United States Authorities to be punished by the laws thereof.
The United States guarantees that, for any wrong done upon any of the aforesaid bands, by any citizen or white resident of the United States, the party guilty of the wrong shall be punished by the United States with the same penalties as though the wrong had been committed on a white citizen.
And in further consideration of the foregoing, the United States agrees to furnish to the aforesaid Indians with twenty five (25) horses, with saddles, bridles, and blankets for each complete on the ratification of this treaty. And annually thereafter blankets and stock either horses, cattle or sheep, to the value of five thousand ($5000) dollars, and provisions to the value of three thousand (3000) dollars, this annuity to continue until some arrangement is made with the tribe for their permanent settlement.
In Testimony Whereof the said Commissioners, as aforesaid, and the said Chiefs anal Warriors of the said Bands of Utah Indians have hereunto set their hands and seals at the Hot Sulphur Springs as aforesaid, on this Twenty Ninth day of August, A.D. One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Six.
ALEXANDER CUMMINGS [SEAL]
Gov. C.T. and Sup Ind Affr's and Commissioner
M HUNT [SEAL]
Commissioner
DANIEL C. OAKES [SEAL]
Indian Agent and Commissioner
SA-GA-WICH, or, BUZZARD his x mark [SEAL]
JACK, or ONE NAME his x mark [SEAL]
PA-END or HIGH his x mark [SEAL]
SA-PACH or WHITE his x mark [SEAL]
UN-CA-CHEP, RED LODGE POLE his x mark [SEAL]
NEVADA or SNOW his x mark [SEAL]
SACH-WA-TSCHWHICH, BLUE RIVER, his x mark [SEAL]
PA-HA-PITCH, or SWIMMER his x mark [SEAL]
YA-HA-ME-NA, PRICKLY PEAR his x mark [SEAL]
PAN-QUI-TO, or MINNOW his x mark [SEAL]
TA-HA-KEN, WASHINGTON his x mark [SEAL]
Witnesses to the Treaty and signatures.
JOEL BEEKER,
HIRAM P. BENNET,
LEWIS THOMPSON
Br. Major, U.S. Army,
Interpreter.
JOEL BEEKER.
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-95-
G.P.A. Healy - American English Artist
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
Chapter XIII
AT THE WHITE HOUSE, 1842
IT WAS April again-- April, 1842--and George Healy once
more stood leaning against the rail of a ship, plunged into
memories of the past while his eyes turned oceanward toward
the future. Louisa had not accompanied him to Liverpool--eager
though she had been to see him settled in his cabin on the Cale
donia--because the new baby required her continued presence
in London. So George had left her with little two-year-old Arthur
and two-month-old Agnes in the care of her mother.
Healy's thoughts turned to those earlier Aprils, momentous
milestones in his exciting twenty-eight years of life. In 1830,
twelve years before--was it April, that month of nature's promise
that so often presaged new unfoldings in his career?--Mr. Sully
was in Boston to paint Colonel Perkins, and Healy, only sixteen
then, had opened his heart to the older artist, whose encourage
ment had hastened the day of George's great decision.
Then in April, 1834, after his success with the Tuckers and
lovely Mrs. Otis, he had found himself on his way to France: his
first view of New York, his first ocean crossing, Paris, a new life,
new comradeships, and art as he had dreamed it. . . . Two years
later, in April, 1836, he was in England with the Faulkners. And
now, in 1842, after an absence of eight years Healy was on his way
back to America--on a mission for the King of France.
Eight years! Much had occurred in that time: his father's death
soon after he left; then two years later his mother's; and lately
the loss of his brother John, who had not let them know how ill
Publication Information: Book Title: G.P.A. Healy, American Artist: An Intimate Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century. Contributors: Marie Mare De - author. Publisher: McKay. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1954. Page Number: 95.
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Category: Frontier Life
Death date: March 14, 1885
Years in state: 1856-1885
State contribution: Leader of Pawnee Scouts; helped provide protection for travelers on the trails; helped open state to white settlement.
National contribution: Under U.S. Army generals, led Pawnee scouts against Cheyenne and Sioux.
Major Frank Joshua North, the organizer and leader of the well-known Pawnee Scouts Army unit, was born in New York state in 1840. The family moved first to Ohio and later to Omaha in Nebraska territory in 1856. Several years later, after the death of his father, North moved in 1858 with his family to Platte County. To help support his family, young North found work as a clerk in the trader's store at the Pawnee Agency. He soon learned the Pawnee language and became an interpreter.
In 1864 he was employed by the U.S. Army to organize and lead a company of Pawnee Scouts against bands of Indians who were resisting the government. The next year he was made a captain in the army and was placed in command of the scouts. From 1865-1877 North and the Pawnee Scouts served in Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming.
North and the Pawnee Scouts saw action under General Patrick Conner in the Powder River Expedition of 1865. Following this battle, the Pawnee gave Captain North the name "Pani Le-Shar" (Chief of the Pawnee) as a special tribute. During 1867 and 1868 Captain North and four scout companies acted as guards for Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. He led the Pawnee Scouts in the Battle of Summit Springs, under Major General E. A. Carr in 1869.
North was promoted to major, put in charge of a scout battalion, and served under General George Crook in an expedition on the Big Horn in 1876-77.
Major North retired from army service in 1877. He served in the state house of representatives in 1882-83. North, along with Buffalo Bill Cody, and his brother, Luther North, actively managed a ranch located on the Dismal River north of North Platte, the first ranch to have its headquarters in the Sand Hills.
North is also listed as a performer in Buffalo Bill's 1883 "Wild West" show. He was known as the best revolver shot on the Plains.
North died at his home in Columbus, Nebraska on March 14, 1885. He was named to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in 1958.
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Going to Europe in 1835 Healy studied under Baron Gros in Paris and in Rome. He received a third-class medal in Paris in 1840, and one of the second class in 1855, when he exhibited his "Franklin urging the claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI."
Among his portraits of eminent men are those of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Guyot, Seward, Louis Philippe, and the presidents of the United States from J. Q. Adams to Grant--this series being painted for the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.. Healy also painted a very famous presidential portrait of Abraham Lincoln in 1877. This painting was based on one that he did in 1868 and scketches in 1864.
His large group, Webster replying to Hayne, containing 180 portraits, is in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day. He died in Chicago, Illinois, on 24 June 1894.
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ON MARIANO MEDINA -
http://books.google.com/books?id=rowboQsADH4C&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=Mariano+Medino&source=bl&ots=Xevkz7d2zS&sig=o3BneMkOrbOOg8_Wq8xVQfGdiks&hl=en&ei=n_rhSa72EZjNlQejsrzgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPA11,M1
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for pics http://www.sittingbull.org/
Chief Sitting Bull
1831-1890
Hunkpapa Sioux Leader and Medicine Man
SITTING BULL, Sioux chief, born about 1837. He was the principal chief of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and friendly Indians, refusing to be transported to the Indian territory. In June, 1876, they defeated and massacred Gen. George A. Custer's advance party of Gen. Alfred H. Terry's column, which was sent against them, on Little Big Horn River. They were pursued northward by General Terry.
Sitting Bull, with a part of his band, made his escape into British Territory, and, through the mediation of Dominion officials, surrendered on a promise of pardon in 1880. In July and August, 1888, in a conference at Standing Rock, Dakota, he influenced his tribe to refuse to relinquish Indian lands.
He died in 1890 when followers tried to rescue him from the reservation police.
TATANKA IYOTAKA
By: ~Anonymous Lakota
Saturday, December 15th, 2002 was the 112th Memorial anniversary of the assassination of Tatanka Iyotaka, more commonly known as Sitting Bull. This inspirational leader was murdered deep within Lakota Nation territory, a vast area encompassing much of the central and northern Great Plains. Tatanka Iyotaka in his day was one of the most influential leaders on the prairie. Today, he is the most recognizable Indian in the world.
Tatanka Iyotaka was not impressed by white society and their version of civilization. He was shocked and saddened to see the number of homeless people living on the streets of American cities. He gave money to hungry white people many times when he was in the large cities.
He counseled his people to be wary of what they accept from white culture. He saw some things which might benefit his people; but cautioned Indian people to accept only those things that were useful to us, and to leave everything else alone. Tatanka Iyotaka was a man of clear vision and pure motivation.
As is often the case with extraordinary people, Tatanka Iyotaka was murdered by his own people. The colonial force set the weak of his own race against him. A tactic they continue to use. Indian police today carry on the tradition started by the assassins of Tatanka Iyotaka and Tasunke Witko. Indian police harassing, arresting, even killing other Indian people keeps the colony in control. Seeing that their paychecks, just like those of the elected tribal/band councilors, come from the colonial government points to that quite clearly.
The unrelenting love for his land and his people caused the enemies of the Lakota to fear Tatanka Iyotaka. The Hunkpapa Oyate and the Titonwan Lakota had many powerful leaders, but Tatanka Iyotaka will forever remain the icon of traditional, full-blood strength and dignity.
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Info courtesy of http://www.geocities.com/pegmihedu/standingbear.html STANDING BEAR
Prologue: During the 1800's the United States government established Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, and Indians from different tribes moved on to it. Some tribes, however, settled on land that was reserved for them in other parts of the country as part of treaty agreements. Sometimes a treaty was broken and a tribe was forced to move. An important event that was to effect all Indians was the Supreme Court case of Standing Bear vs. Crook..........
Standing Bear was a chief of the Ponca Indians, a small peaceful tribe. The Poncas had migrated from the east and settled in the lowland of the Missouri River Valley on a reservation that the United States had given them by treaty in 1858. In January, 1877, the government ordered the Poncas to move to Indian Territory in Oklahoma because their reservation had been included in land given to another tribe by treaty. Standing Bear did not think it was right for his people to have to leave their reservation. In spite of his protests, he and a group of other chiefs were taken south to Indian Territory to choose a new place for the tribe to live.
Standing Bear and the other chiefs did not like the land and refused to choose a place. They asked to be returned to their reservation but they were told they had to stay in Indian Territory and were left there with no interpreter or money. Standing Bear and the other chiefs started walking back to their reservation in the north. When they reached the Otoe Indian Reservation in Southern Nebraska, they were given horses and food. Then they continue north, stopping briefly at the Omaha Indian reservation. During their journey, they sent a telegram to the president of the United States asking for his help. After returning to his reservation, Standing Bear continued to object to moving his people.
In May, however, the tribe was forced to leave their reservation and go to Indian Territory leaving behind their farm equipment, livestock, houses, and most of their household goods. The new land was difficult to farm and the winters were severe. Many Indians died of hunger, disease, and exposure. Standing Bear I asked to return to his old reservation but his request was denied. He and a group of other Indians went to see the President of the United States and were told they had to stay in Indian Territory, but that they would be given better land and their belongings would be sent to them.
During their second winter in Indian Territory, more Indians died, including all but one of Standing Bear's children. In January 1879, Standing Bear decided to take some of his people back to their old reservation before they all perished. Accompanied by his wife and child, and several men with their wives and children, Standing Bear set out for the north. In the middle of March, they arrived at the Omaha Reservation, destitute and starving. The Omahas welcomed the Poncas and gave them food and shelter and land on which to plant seed. When the government heard that the Poncas were living on the Omaha reservation, orders were sent to General George Crook to return them to Indian Territory.
General Crook had dealt with Indians for many years and was aware that they were sometimes treated unfairly. It was with reluctance, therefore, that he sent soldiers to arrest Standing Bear and his followers and bring them to Fort Omaha. General Crook listened to Standing Bear's story about the unjust treatment of the Ponca tribe. He was sympathetic with Standing Bear and because several of the Poncas were sick he held up the orders to return them to Indian Territory.
This delay gave the assistant-editor of a newspaper in Omaha time to publish the plight of the Ponca Indians in newspapers across the country. He decided to see if Indians had any rights and was able to convince two prominent lawyers to volunteer their services and represent Standing Bear in a suit against the government. On April 8, 1879, a Writ of Habeas Corpus was filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska.
The hearing began on May 1, 1879 in Lincoln, Nebraska and lasted two days and one evening. A United States District attorney represented General Crook. The first person to testify was the interpreter for Standing Bear. He answered questions about the condition of the Poncas when they arrived at the Omaha reservation, and said that although many were sick those who were able were working. He also said they no longer had a chief and wanted to live as white men. The next person to testify was the officer who arrested Standing Bear and his followers. He answered questions about the condition of the Poncas at the time of their arrest. Standing Bear was the third and last person to testify. He answered questions about the events of the two years previous to his arrest. No testimony was given on behalf of General Crook.
In his closing statement, one of Standing Bear's attorneys gave several reasons why the government could not claim title to the Ponca land. He also claimed that there was no law for the removal of the Poncas to Indian Territory. The attorney for General Crook claimed that Standing Bear was not entitled to the protection of the Writ of Habeas Corpus because he was not a person under the law. The other attorney for Standing Bear claimed that the writ applied to every human being and that the position taken by the government undermined the very foundation of human liberty. Standing Bear was then allowed to speak on his own behalf and pleaded with great emotion for fair treatment of his people. The courtroom was filled with many who were sympathetic with the Indians, and Standing Bear received continual rounds of applause. At the conclusion of his speech, court was adjourned.
On May 12, the Judge Elmer Dundy filed his decision. He had been impressed with what Standing Bear said and ruled in his favor. He stated an Indian was a person within the meaning of the law and had the right to a writ of habeas corpus. He further stated that although General Crook had the right to remove Standing Bear and his followers from the Omaha reservation, he did not have the right to force them to move to Indian Territory and they were being held in violation of the law. He then ordered that they be released.
A few days later, General Crook received orders from the government to release Standing Bear and his followers, and they went to live on the Omaha reservation. The Ponca Indians who were still in Indian Territory sued to be reunited with Standing Bear. Their suit was denied and the tribe was split apart.
The chief of the Omaha tribe and his daughter, Susette LaFlesche, a teacher at the government school on the Omha reservation, had become involved in Standing Bear's struggle for justice. They arranged for him to tell his story in the east where he won the attention and sympathy of many important people. The government was asked to investigate and confirmed Standing Bear's story. In 1881 better lands were given to those Indians who stayed in Indian Territory and payment was made to those who had lost property. A home was provided for Standing Bear and his followers at their old reservation. Standing Bear died in 1908 and was buried on a hill overlooking the village site of his ancestors.
A twenty-two foot statue of Standing Bear stands just south of Ponca City in Northern Oklahoma.
In 1978 Standing Bear was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
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as Remembered by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman)
If any people ever fought for liberty and justice, it was the Cheyennes. If any ever demonstrated their physical and moral courage beyond cavil, it was this race of purely American heroes, among whom Little Wolf was a leader.
I knew the chief personally very well. As a young doctor, I was sent to the Pine Ridge agency in 1890, as government physician to the Sioux and the Northern Cheyennes. While I heard from his own lips of that gallant dash of his people from their southern exile to their northern home, I prefer that Americans should read of it in Doctor George Bird Grinnell's book, "The Fighting Cheyennes." No account could be clearer or simpler; and then too, the author cannot be charged with a bias in favor of his own race.
At the time that I knew him, Little Wolf was a handsome man, with the native dignity and gentleness, musical voice, and pleasant address of so many brave leaders of his people. One day when he was dining with us at our home on the reservation, I asked him, as I had a habit of doing, for some reminiscences of his early life. He was rather reluctant to speak, but a friend who was present contributed the following:
"Perhaps I can tell you why it is that he has been a lucky man all his life. When quite a small boy, the tribe was one winter in want of food, and his good mother had saved a small piece of buffalo meat, which she solemnly brought forth and placed before him with the remark: 'My son must be patient, for when he grows up he will know even harder times than this.'
"He had eaten nothing all day and was pretty hungry, but before he could lay hands on the meat a starving dog snatched it and bolted from the teepee. The mother ran after the dog and brought him back for punishment. She tied him to a post and was about to whip him when the boy interfered. 'Don't hurt him, mother!' he cried; 'he took the meat because he was hungrier than I am!'"
I was told of another kind act of his under trying circumstances. While still a youth, he was caught out with a party of buffalo hunters in a blinding blizzard. They were compelled to lie down side by side in the snowdrifts, and it was a day and a night before they could get out. The weather turned very cold, and when the men arose they were in danger of freezing. Little Wolf pressed his fine buffalo robe upon an old man who was shaking with a chill and himself took the other's thin blanket.
As a full-grown young man, he was attracted by a maiden of his tribe, and according to the custom then in vogue the pair disappeared. When they returned to the camp as man and wife, behold! there was great excitement over the affair. It seemed that a certain chief had given many presents and paid unmistakable court to the maid with the intention of marrying her, and her parents had accepted the presents, which meant consent so far as they were concerned. But the girl herself had not given consent.
The resentment of the disappointed suitor was great. It was reported in the village that he had openly declared that the young man who defied and insulted him must expect to be punished. As soon as Little Wolf heard of the threats, he told his father and friends that he had done only what it is every man's privilege to do.
"Tell the chief," said he, "to come out with any weapon he pleases, and I will meet him within the circle of lodges. He shall either do this or eat his words. The woman is not his. Her people accepted his gifts against her wishes. Her heart is mine."
The chief apologized, and thus avoided the inevitable duel, which would have been a fight to the death.
The early life of Little Wolf offered many examples of the dashing bravery characteristic of the Cheyennes, and inspired the younger men to win laurels for themselves. He was still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, when the most trying crisis in the history of his people came upon them. As I know and as Doctor Grinnell's book amply corroborates, he was the general who largely guided and defended them in that tragic flight from the Indian Territory to their northern home. I will not discuss the justice of their cause: I prefer to quote Doctor Grinnell, lest it appear that I am in any way exaggerating the facts.
"They had come," he writes, "from the high, dry country of Montana and North Dakota to the hot and humid Indian Territory. They had come from a country where buffalo and other game were still plentiful to a land where the game had been exterminated. Immediately on their arrival they were attacked by fever and ague, a disease wholly new to them. Food was scanty, and they began to starve. The agent testified before a committee of the Senate that he never received supplies to subsist the Indians for more than nine months in each year. These people were meat-eaters, but the beef furnished them by the government inspectors was no more than skin and bone. The agent in describing their sufferings said: 'They have lived and that is about all.'
"The Indians endured this for about a year, and then their patience gave out. They left the agency to which they had been sent and started north. Though troops were camped close to them, they attempted no concealment of their purpose. Instead, they openly announced that they intended to return to their own country.
We have heard much in past years of the march of the Nez Perces under Chief Joseph, but little is remembered of the Dull Knife outbreak and the march to the north led by Little Wolf. The story of the journey has not been told, but in the traditions of the old army this campaign was notable, and old men who were stationed on the plains forty years ago are apt to tell you, if you ask them, that there never was such another journey since the Greeks marched to the sea. . . .
"The fugitives pressed constantly northward undaunted, while orders were flying over the wires, and special trains were carrying men and horses to cut them off at all probable points on the different railway lines they must cross. Of the three hundred Indians, sixty or seventy were fighting men -- the rest old men, women, and children. An army officer once told me that thirteen thousand troops were hurrying over the country to capture or kill these few poor people who had left the fever-stricken South, and in the face of every obstacle were steadily marching northward.
"The War Department set all its resources in operation against them, yet they kept on. If troops attacked them, they stopped and fought until they had driven off the soldiers, and then started north again. Sometimes they did not even stop, but marched along, fighting as they marched. For the most part they tried -- and with success -- to avoid conflicts, and had but four real hard fights, in which they lost half a dozen men killed and about as many wounded."
It must not be overlooked that the appeal to justice had first been tried before taking this desperate step. Little Wolf had gone to the agent about the middle of the summer and said to him: "This is not a good country for us, and we wish to return to our home in the mountains where we were always well. If you have not the power to give permission, let some of us go to Washington and tell them there how it is, or do you write to Washington and get permission for us to go back."
"Stay one more year," replied the agent, "and then we will see what we can do for you. "No," said Little Wolf. "Before another year there will be none left to travel north. We must go now."
Soon after this it was found that three of the Indians had disappeared and the chief was ordered to surrender ten men as hostages for their return. He refused. "Three men," said he, "who are traveling over wild country can hide so that they cannot be found. You would never get back these three, and you would keep my men prisoners always." The agent then threatened if the ten men were not given up to withhold their rations and starve the entire tribe into submission. He forgot that he was addressing a Cheyenne. These people had not understood that they were prisoners when they agreed to friendly relations with the government and came upon the reservation. Little Wolf stood up and shook hands with all present before making his final deliberate address.
"Listen, my friends, I am a friend of the white people and have been so for a long time. I do not want to see blood spilt about this agency. I am going north to my own country. If you are going to send your soldiers after me, I wish you would let us get a little distance away. Then if you want to fight, I will fight you, and we can make the ground bloody at that place."
The Cheyenne was not bluffing. He said just what he meant, and I presume the agent took the hint, for although the military were there they did not undertake to prevent the Indians' departure. Next morning the teepees were pulled down early and quickly. Toward evening of the second day, the scouts signaled the approach of troops. Little Wolf called his men together and advised them under no circumstances to fire until fired upon. An Arapahoe scout was sent to them with a message. "If you surrender now, you will get your rations and be well treated." After what they had endured, it was impossible not to hear such a promise with contempt. Said Little Wolf: "We are going back to our own country. We do not want to fight." He was riding still nearer when the soldiers fired, and at a signal the Cheyennes made a charge. They succeeded in holding off the troops for two days, with only five men wounded and none killed, and when the military retreated the Indians continued northward carrying their wounded.
This sort of thing was repeated again and again. Meanwhile Little Wolf held his men under perfect control. There were practically no depredations. They secured some boxes of ammunition left behind by retreating troops, and at one point the young men were eager to follow and destroy an entire command who were apparently at their mercy, but their leader withheld them. They had now reached the buffalo country, and he always kept his main object in sight. He was extraordinarily calm. Doctor Grinnell was told by one of his men years afterward: "Little Wolf did not seem like a human being. He seemed like a bear." It is true that a man of his type in a crisis becomes spiritually transformed and moves as one in a dream.
At the Running Water the band divided, Dull Knife going toward Red Cloud agency. He was near Fort Robinson when he surrendered and met his sad fate. Little Wolf remained all winter in the Sand Hills, where there was plenty of game and no white men. Later he went to Montana and then to Pine Ridge, where he and his people remained in peace until they were removed to Lame Deer, Montana, and there he spent the remainder of his days. There is a clear sky beyond the clouds of racial prejudice, and in that final Court of Honor a noble soul like that of Little Wolf has a place.
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Chief Ouray Historical Ute Leader
Ignacio, Colorado
He was a man of peace at a time of war between Indians and whites.
Chief Ouray of the Tabeguache band led the Southern Ute Tribe during the mid 1800's - a time of great social and political change, a time when a proud people were uprooted and forced to accept resettlement.
Yet, he is revered today as one of the Ute's greatest leaders - patient, diplomatic and unwavering in his friendship toward the whites.
Ouray, perhaps one of the greatest chiefs of the Uncompahgre band of Utes, was born in Taos, New Mexico, in 1833. His mother was a member of the Uncompahgre band and his father, Guera Murah, was half Jicarilla Apache. While a youngster near Taos pueblo, he learned to speak both Spanish and English, but preferred Spanish as it was dominant in that area. Only later did he learn Ute and Apache.
At the age of 18 he gave up his work as a sheepherder and came to Colorado to become a full-fledged member of the Tabeguache band of Utes in which his father, in spite of his Apache blood, had become a leader. From then until 1860 he lived like all Utes, hunting, fighting the Plains Indians, and visiting with other Ute bands.
Ouray lived until August 24, 1880, and was considered an eminently great leader. He directed his powers and energies to the task of solving the many problems arising from the coming of the white men. Illness overcame him on a visit to the Southern Utes and he died on the east bank of the Pine River near the present agency. He was secretly buried in the rocks two miles south of the town of Ignacio. Forty-five years later, most of his bones were recovered and re-interred in the cemetery southeast of the agency and the grave appropriately marked.
Ouray is noted mostly for his unwavering friendship for the whites with whom he always kept faith and whose interests he protected even on trying occasions. When he visited Washington. D.C. in 1880, President Hayes called him "the most intellectual man I've ever conversed with." He was about five feet seven inches tall, and as he grew older he became quite portly. His manner was refined and polished, his face stern and dignified in repose but lighting up pleasantly when he talked. He ordinarily wore the white man's broadcloth and boots, but he never cut off his long hair which he wore in two braids that hung on his chest in the Ute fashion.
Information from the article Chief Ouray Day, by the Southern Ute Drum
The Stobie Clan originated from Stobo Village near Peebles in the borders of Scotland their stronghold which is now a luxury health spa.
From Edinburgh by road:
Take the A703 to Peebles; go through Peebles, following the A72 to Glasgow.
After four miles turn left at the signpost to Stobo.
Follow the B712 and the main gates for Stobo Castle are to your right two miles down the road.
From Glasgow by road:
Take the A721 to Peebles, join the A72 Blyth Bridge.
Follow the A72 and turn right at the signpost for Stobo.
Follow the B712 for two miles, and you’ll see the entrance gates on your right.***************************************************************
Ironicly Mountain Charlie 1845 to 1931 outlived them all..
My admiration for interesting characters that led a life of adventure brought me to research all the folks mentioned in Mountain Charlie's memoires, a long lost relative from my Stobie side of the family - I found this all a very fascinating read, enjoy...
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To Mickeyflynn@,
Your inquiry to Jessica Bennett has been passed on to the staff of the Buffalo Bill Museum here at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center to answer. Yes, Charles Stobie was a friend of Buffalo Bill's as they were both scouts and knew each other from those days - 1860s. They remained friends throughout their lives. When the Irma Hotel here in Cody opened in November 1902, Stobie was present as was one of his paintings titled "Buffalo Bill's Hidden Camp Bob." That painting is the only thing we have of his - and it hangs in the hallway outside my office! In checking on the friendship between Stobie and BB, I checked one of the best biographies of BB by Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. One of his sources for Stobie is Stobie's diary which is held in the manuscript collection of the Colorado State Historical Society in Denver, Colorado. You might contact them for more information on Stobie. Their email address is: www.coloradohistory.org Good luck. Sincerely,Lynn J. HouzeCuratorial AssistantBuffalo Bill MuseumBuffalo Bill Historical Center720 Sheridan Ave.Cody, WY 82414
(307)578-4006FAX: (307)578-4076www.bbhc.org
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FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF MOUNTAIN CHARLIE
1798 - 1866
by Susan Robinson
While many African Americans lived colorful, exciting lives in the Old West, James P. Beckwourth was the only one to have a book written about his exploits during his lifetime. His biography, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians, as told to Thomas D. Bonner, an itinerant Justice of the Peace in California’s gold country in 1855, achieved enough popularity in its original U.S. release to be published in England and France as well by 1860. While his story was full of misspelled names and probable exaggerations of his own prowess (very typical of Old West storytelling) most of the major events in which Beckwourth took part have been verified by historians, and his account of life with the Crow Indians is accepted as one of the best sources of information about Crow society from that era.
(This anecdote came from the www.Beckwourth.org website:
”An often-told story has it that when the book appeared, a group of miners who were well-acquainted with Beckwourth commissioned one of its members to pick up a copy while on a trip to San Francisco. But the man, being careless, got a copy of the Bible instead. In the evening, he was requested to read aloud from the long-awaited book, and opening it at random, he hit upon and read the story of Samson and the foxes.
‘That'll do!’ one of the men cried. ‘I'd know that story for one of Jim's lies anywhere!’”)
Beckwourth was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to a slave mother and English father, who had thirteen children together. His father, Sir Jennings Beckwith, raised him as a son, and filed emancipation papers for him when he was a young man. While James was a teenager, the family moved to Missouri, which at the time was considered the western frontier. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in St. Louis, but he did not like working for the man, and at the age of eighteen he ran away from his apprenticeship and spent some time in New Orleans. It was his first experience with the deep South, and as a free man of color, he experienced difficulty in various areas, such as finding employment. He returned briefly to his parents and then joined an expedition of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1823.
Jim Beckwourth became a well-known mountain man, living in the wilderness as a fur trapper, hunter and trader. He became a crack shot, skilled at survival and frontiersmanship. He associated with the likes of Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith. During this time, he married his first wives, two Blackfoot Indian women, whom he deserted after a few weeks.
In 1828, Beckwourth claimed he was captured by the Crow Indian tribe while out on a trapping expedition; after his capture, a Crow Indian woman claimed him as her long-lost son. It is possible that the contact was planned by the fur trading company to encourage the Crows to trade with them, but Beckwourth ended up completely accepted by the Crows, and lived with them for at least six years. The Crows had warlike traditions, and the only ways to achieve any status in their society were to demonstrate courage and success in battle or to steal horses from enemies. Beckwourth became proficient in both these areas, earning the title “War Chief.” He was given several Crow names, including “Bull’s Robe.” He married numerous (at least ten) Crow women, including one young lady named “Pine Leaf.”
Pine Leaf was remarkable because she was a warrior. She had been captured by the Crow as a young child, after her brother was killed by Blackfeet. Legend has it that to avenge him, she vowed not to marry until she had killed a hundred enemy warriors. She became very good at it, and attained “chief” status herself, which was unheard of for a woman. Apparently unattainable, she was pursued for a long time by Beckwourth. She finally married him, and he left her and the Crow tribe five weeks later.
Beckwourth established and ran a couple of trading posts before making a brief trip back to St. Louis in 1836. He learned that his father had passed away the year before, and he found Missouri much changed—St. Louis was no longer the frontier town he remembered from his youth, and did not suit the adventurous life that Beckwourth was determined to live. He made one brief visit to the Crow nation, which unfortunately coincided with an outbreak of smallpox that decimated the Plains Indians in 1837. Beckwourth’s detractors (he was quite famous, and had some) accused him of purposely infecting the tribe to kill them off. Most people, including those that knew him personally, like the other mountain men, did not believe that he was that sort of person, and attributed the outbreak to other sources. Beckwourth had developed a lot of respect and closeness with the Crows, and while he had no qualms about killing enemy warriors in battle, wholesale genocide of the people who had adopted him was certainly not his style, even if he had had a motive.
In search of further adventure and “renown”, as he liked to say, Beckwourth joined the Missouri Volunteers of the U.S. Army to fight in the Seminole Wars in Florida. After a shipwreck on the way to Tampa Bay that stranded horses and soldiers on a reef for twelve days, Beckwourth arrived in Florida and worked as a scout and in various other capacities for the Missouri Volunteers. It proved to be less exciting than he had hoped. He wrote:
“Now we had another long interval of inactivity, and I began to grow tired of Florida . . . It seemed to me to be a country dear even at the price of the powder to blow the Indians out of it, and certainly a poor field to work in for renown. . . . I wanted excitement of some kind -- I was indifferent of what nature, even if it was no better than borrowing horses of the Black Feet. The Seminoles had no horses worth stealing, or I should certainly have exercised my talents for the benefit of the United States.”
Beckwourth left Florida and returned to St. Louis to look for employment. It only took him five days to run into an old acquaintance, Louis Vasquez, who had established a fort on the Platte River in Colorado. Vasquez hired Beckwourth to represent his business interests in dealing with the Cheyenne Indians. They took the Santa Fe Trail to the Southwest, and Beckwourth used his knowledge of Plains Indian societies to establish a trading relationship with the Cheyenne. He stayed in the area for a few years, but when he tired of it he went south to Taos, New Mexico, and went into business for himself, trading with the Cheyenne. He married another wife, Luisa Sandoval. In 1842 he and his wife opened their own trading post back up north, calling the little settlement “Pueblo” (it is now a city in Colorado.) His competitors, two brothers with the surname of Bent, for whom Beckwourth had worked before starting his own business, kept trying to cause legal trouble for Beckwourth. So in 1844 he took off again, this time for California.
He intended to expand his trading business there, but trouble was brewing, as White settlers began to revolt against the Mexican government of California. When war broke out, Beckwourth and several friends quickly retreated back to Pueblo, stealing about 1800 horses from Mexican ranchers on the way. He wrote, “This was a fair capture and our morals justified it, for it was war-time.”
When they arrived in Pueblo, Beckwourth found that his wife, Luisa, had given up on him and remarried. He apparently did not mind very much. In 1848 he decided to return to California to try his luck as a gold miner.
He was hired as chief scout for General John C. Fremont, and made another mark in the history books by discovering a pass across the Sierra Nevadas that proved to be less hazardous than Donner Pass; Beckwourth Pass is between the Feather and Truckee rivers, a few miles north of Reno, Nevada. It came to be used by the gold-seekers of 1849 and later emigrants; it was also chosen to be the route over the Sierras for the Western Pacific Railway.
After arriving in California, he stopped at Mission San Miguel to visit a family he was friendly with, the Reeds. This was not a pleasant reunion, as Beckwourth walked right into the aftermath of the worst mass murder in early California history. The entire family, including Mrs. Reed and her hours-old infant, the midwife and her teenage daughter, and the Native American servants and their children, had been killed, mostly hacked to death with axes. He stumbled over dead bodies in several rooms and hallways before feeling an inexplicable urge to get out of there. It was a good thing he did, because the murderers were still in the house, and were waiting to shoot him too, had he discovered them. Beckwourth returned with a posse, and found that the bodies had been piled up in an attempt to burn them. The five murderers, all White men, were arrested near Santa Barbara; they were tried, and received the death penalty for their crimes (the posse shot them).
In 1866, Beckwourth fought in the Cheyenne War. Then he was hired by the government to interpret in peace negotiations with the Crow. He was famous and respected by both sides. He worked at this for a while, before he died under suspicious circumstances in Denver in that same year. The story has it that the Crows asked him to return to the tribe as a leader, but he declined, so they poisoned him at his farewell dinner so they could keep his “powerful medicine” with them always.
What a guy!
READ HIS BOOK THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF J P BECKWOURTH online at:-
http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeandadventur00beckgoog
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Death: Oct. 29, 1876, USA
Western Mountain Man and Scout. In the late 1840’s he drifted to St. Louis, Missouri where he joined a trapping party. At the Powder River in Wyoming, this group was always in constant attack form bands of Blackfoot Indians. To this end he and the mountain men soon started working for Jim Bridger at Fort Bridger, as scouts and stolen horse agents. After serving as a teamster for Stephen Kearney during the Mexican War, he married, headed to California and prospected. With the gold discovery in Montana, he tried his luck there and fought three claim jumpers killing one. He served as scout with Kit Carson at the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas. In 1868, he was named Chief of Scouts for George Custer. In celebration, he became drunk and missed the Battle of the Washita. In 1874, he lead Custer in the famous Black Hills Expedition and staked a homestead on what is now Rapid City, South Dakota. After being involved in a number of Indian skirmishes in Wyoming and South Dakota, he was scout for General George Crook when Crook was chasing the Sioux after the Little Big Horn fight. At Fort Robinson, Nebraska he quarreled with a man named Tom Newcomb, who shot him in the back. He was originally buried in the Fort Robinson Cemetery, but moved to the Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Nebraska. (bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith)
Search Amazon for Moses Milner
Burial:
Fort McPherson National Cemetery
Maxwell
Lincoln County
Nebraska, USA
buy his book California Joe Noted scout and Indian Fighter.
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/888628/used/California%20Joe:%20Noted%20Scout%20and%20Indian%20Fighter
MORE ON CALIFORNIA JOE
http://books.google.com/books?id=0wS5dfCYhtAC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Joe+Milner&source=bl&ots=qyqHj8Ghlz&sig=OapPZU9AjHzpgajDRpm1bu6iN78&hl=en&ei=EQzgSfLkF5rqlQfJtIjgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA101,M1
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BOOK FOR SALE ON MAJOR JACK DOWNING
Letters Of Major Jack Downing Of The Downingville Militia (1864)
http://www.thenile.co.nz/books/Jack-Downing-Seba-Smith/Letters-Of-Major-Jack-Downing-Of-The-Downingville-Militia-1864/9781437228168/
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READ ABOUT WILD BILL HICKOK at:-
http://www.abacom.com/~jkrause/hickok.html
http://www.historynet.com/wild-bill-hickok-pistoleer-peace-officer-and-folk-hero.htm
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-BillHickok.html
The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill
http://books.google.com/books?id=1qvU4Lq8NAcC&pg=PA429&dq=Charles+Stewart+Stobie&ei=fx7gSe74MIKEygSLkIC0DQ
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NATIVE INDIAN SPIRITUAL GROUNDS
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/IL-Cahokia.html
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Downing
Jacob Downing was a Major in the Union Army and a subordinate of Colonel John Chivington.
In April 1864, Downing came upon a band of Cheyennes camped near Cedar Bluffs, 60 miles above the South Platte. Although he only suspected them of stealing cattle and horses, Downing launched an attack that killed an estimated 25 Cheyennes and destroyed their lodges and belongings. Jacob Downing was also an officer present during the Sand Creek Massacre (also called the "Chivington massacre").
More on Major Jacob Downing
http://books.google.com/books?id=pownTI9gfNgC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=Major+Jacob+Downing's&source=bl&ots=C4I5FZ3P3O&sig=BnnVs5dINCCoRkQIQZN25zuhSKk&hl=en&ei=pB3gSc6MFYPNlQfPmsjgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
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by Ben Dugan
GCN Historical Writer
12/14/2006 - The Panic of 1857 left many men in the “States” without any means of employment. The Colorado Gold Rush was an opportunity for many to make a new start. Among the thousands of gold-seekers was a Kit Carson and the Ute Indian Commission circa 1864
veteran of the California Gold Rush, D.C. Oakes, who came from Iowa. In California, Oakes had saved $6,000 from gold mining activities in the gold-rich Feather River District. Returning to Iowa from California in 1853, he was able to marry and began a contracting and building business. Following the Panic of 1857, Oakes left for Colorado after his business became less lucrative.
He reached Cherry Creek in 1858 and joined Green Russell’s party on the Platte River. He had limited success on the Platte but never was able to make the grand “strike”. He returned to Iowa for the winter and saw the possibility of publishing a guidebook based on an account of the diary of one of Green Russell’s party. Oakes had seen firsthand the gold mining possibilities and thought that Colorado could offer the same opportunities as the California Gold Rush did ten years earlier. Oakes, with a partner, published a guidebook to the Colorado Goldfields in Pacific City, Iowa.
The guidebook recommended a route along the south side of the Platte and South Platte rivers and to be wary of Indians. He also advised travelers not to hunt buffalo with horses and listed the supplies that should be purchased totaling $517.25. The guidebook was put on sale at outposts on the Missouri River and became widely circulated. “Pikes Peak or Bust” became the cry as thousands of travelers headed across the plains to Denver and the mountains beyond.
Oakes had been busy making arrangements for his own return to the Colorado goldfields. He partnered with William Street and purchased a steam sawmill, knowing that lumber would be necessary in order to build any kind of permanent settlement in Colorado. During his trip across the plains, he was praised and admired. Along the way near Julesburg, Colorado, he encountered an eastbound wagon train that claimed they had not found anything worth staying for and that the guidebook told lies. They chagrined the guidebook as a hoax. Oakes was hanged in effigy and tombstones were written along the main trail that read: “Here lies D.C. Oakes, who was the starter of this damned hoax.” Seeing that he was no longer popular, he avoided the main route.
Oakes left the sawmill party to investigate the mining activity along South Boulder Creek and Gamble Gulch. Finding that the gold deposits there were abundant, he returned to the sawmill party only to discover that his partner had dissolved the partnership and had begun the return trip east. Oakes caught up with Street the following day and convinced them that there really was gold and that the others had not tried hard enough. The party turned around and reached a spot twenty miles south of Auraria (near present-day Castle Rock) and set up the sawmill. The D.C. Oakes lumber mill began shipping lumber to Denver in the summer of 1859.
Indian troubles abounded in the early 1860s, and as a countermeasure, Oakes built “Fort Lincoln” to protect settlers. It was used as a refuge for thirty families who spent six months there. Provisions could only be obtained under cover of darkness. While they were there, the pioneers' homes were burned by the Indians and their livestock was driven off. In 1865, Oakes sold his sawmill and became involved with Indian affairs. He was appointed an Indian agent and became friends with Kit Carson. In 1868 he attended the peace conference in Washington with Carson. On the return trip, Kit Carson became sick and died.
Oakes was quite successful at being an Indian agent by understanding their plight and temperament. He was very popular among the Indians. He left his Indian post in 1869 to become a deputy land surveyor in extending public surveys. The advice Oakes gave to his Indian agent successor was ignored. In 1878, Nathan Meeker was appointed Indian agent and was killed by an Indian uprising in 1879 at the White River Agency.
Oakes dabbled in local politics and also became a director of the Alpine Tunnel Company, which was responsible for building the Alpine Tunnel in central Colorado in the early 1880s. He was frequently elected as a delegate to county and territorial conventions. He is recognized as a great Colorado Pioneer, without whose effort Colorado might not have been settled on the grand scale that it was. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Denver.
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Other great american west artists ( Fredrick saddlesack Remington )
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/subjects/the_American_West.html
SELF-PORTRAIT ON A HORSE
by Frederic Remington 1861 to 1909
Remington was born in Canton in northern New York on October 4, 1861. His boyhood fostered a lifelong love of horses and the outdoors, while his father's tales of action as a cavalry officer in the Civil War inspired a passion for things military that found a western focus with the battle of the Little Bighorn during the nation's Centennial Year, 1876. At the age of fourteen Remington was smitten with the urge to go see the West for himself.
As a member of a prominent family, Remington was expected to graduate from college, prepared for a career in business, but spent only a year and a half at Yale University playing football and studying art. After his father's death, he traveled to Montana in 1881, and experienced his first impression of the West. In 1883, he moved to Kansas where he made an unsuccessful attempt at sheep ranching. The year he spent there was the only time he actually made the West his home, although he made many trips out West and occasionally accompanied the U.S. Cavalry on patrol along the Southwest frontier.
Frederic Remington's major paintings were tributes to the Wild West of fantasy. They drew on the artist's experiences for their sense of place and authentic details, but on his imagination for their subject matter. Remington's achievement was to fuse observation and imagination so seamlessly that his contemporaries assumed he had actually witnessed what he portrayed.
Remington had been exhibiting in major art shows since 1888, and was seeking recognition as not just an illustrator, but an artist in the recognized sense of the term. He made the breakthrough he was seeking in 1895 when he turned to sculpting, which he excelled at and which earned him the critical respect for his work that he strived for. He completed twenty-two sculptures, many which became the defining masterpieces of the Western art tradition.
By 1900 Remington had returned to painting and he began to experiment with impressionism. His technique evolved dramatically the last five years of his life as he rejected the crisp linear illustrator style to concentrate on mood, color and light - sunlight, moonlight, and firelight. His later oils are consistent with his conclusion that his West was dead. So he painted impressionistic scenes in which the West, now entirely confined to memory, was invested with a poetry and mystery the present could not touch. He died at the age of 48, a victim of appendicitis.
MAESTROS OF THE MOUNTAINS
by: Kerry Ross Boren
Virtually everything I ever learned about history, philosophy, science, religion, politics and human nature in general, I learned by sitting around a campfire in the Uintah Mountains of northeastern Utah, listening to men who had opinions on everything from Einstein's Theory of Relativity to whether or not the Pope pees standing up. We are not talking about rocket scientists or PhD's here. Hell nol We're talking about ranchers, dirt farmers, cowboys, sheepherders, and river rats-hard-baked, odd freaks of humanity, reprobates and other such luminaries who had obtained their degrees from the School of Hard Knocks. By their own admission they were much smarter than those pre-fessors of higher learning who had diplomas where their brains ought to be, and who never knew whether they were scratching their watch or winding their ass. From these pundits of pugnacity, these grizzled old maestros of the mountains, I learned among other things that opinions are more important than facts and in much greater supply. My father, who was kicked out of the sixth grade for dunking his teacher in the cold water of Henry's Fork of the Green River, was one of these campfire sages. Normally a man of few words, the flickering flame of an aromatic pinion-log campfire and good company seemed to trigger in him a fountain of memories. It inspired him to dispense wisdom in the form of country aphorisms and misty-eyed reminiscences like bubbling water from an artesian well. I acquired a higher form of education at this campfire campus that ever I did in public school, and with much less encouragement. At this forum, and at a very early age, I gleaned my first interest in history, and began recording the biographies and reminiscences of some of these fascinating old characters who were to have such a profound influence on my life. Their stories are replete with pathos, humor, and if you look deep enough, there is a wisdom there that belies its homely origins. We will share a few of their stories in these pages. HOW DAD KILLED THE SHEEPHERDER My father had been planning to run away from home for some time. He hated his step- mother, he hated school, his father was too strict, and he was strong-willed and determined to make his own way in life. In 1906, at the age of thirteen, fate conspired to give him a chance. During the previous year his father had uprooted the family from their home on the Uintah- Ouray Indian Reservation, where he had been happy, to trek across the mountain and settle at Linwood, on Henry's Fork, where he knew no one. He was sent to school in the Stateline Schoolhouse, a little red school where the state lines of Utah and Wyoming ran along the ridge-pole, where he felt abused by the hard-nosed schoolmaster who delighted in caning his unruly students with a birch sapling. He made a friend at school. Wilford "Wilf" Tolten, son of the local Mormon bishop, was near his own age and disposition. Caught talking in class, the schoolmaster caned them both soundly. They vowed revenge. They hid themselves in the willow brakes along Henry's Fork after school, waylaid the teacher, and ducked him in the river. Neither of them dared to return home, so they ran away to Wyoming, lied about their ages, and found jobs herding sheep in the Wind River country. They both felt pretty big for their breeches. They had stood up for themselves, exerted their independence and now had men's jobs with a sheep rancher at twenty-and-found. Nobody was ever going to tell them what to do again, they vaunted. "Wash them god-damned dishes, and when you get that done, chop some firewood for the stovel Move yer lazy assesl They's work to be donel" The sheepherder, a grizzled, fuzzy-faced old hard case with leathery hide and the disposition of a rattlesnake with hemorrhoids, was far meaner to them than the weasely little schoolmaster had been. He barked orders continuously and emphasized his contempt for slowness by a cuff on the ear. He resented having to put up with them at all, and said so in no uncertain terms. "I'm the boss of this here camp," he bellowed, "and don't you damned well forget it. When I say jump, you better ask how high, an' if'n I say piss, you better ask how farl" They hated him instantly. But this wasn't the schoolmaster; this old reprobate was tough, and they were rightly afraid of him. "We gotta do somethin' about this," my father complained. "Yeah," agreed Wilf, "but VJLU?" "I'll think of somethin'." my father replied. They lived together in a sheepwagon on a windy ridge. That is to say, the old sheepherder lived in the wagon; he made Ed and Wilf sleep outside, and even if it rained they could only crawl under the wagon for protection, such as it was. He cooked the meals and shoved it over the dutch door on tin plates at the same time when he fed the dogs. He kept a loaded double-barreled 12- gauge shotgun leaning just inside the door. "Fer coyotes and other pesky varmints." "We gotta do somethin' about this," my father repeated, following weeks of abuse. "Yeah," echoed Wilf, "but Abal?" "I've got an idea, but you gotta back me up all the way." "Don't I always?" "He always takes a nap about two o'clock in the afternoon," my father said, leaning in close so he couldn't be overheard. "Now here's what we do..."
On the fateful day of showdown the two boys stealthily approached the door of the sheepwagon. My father stepped carefully up on the wagon tongue so as not to rock the wagon and peered inside. "He's asleep," he whispered over his shoulder to Wilf. "Let's gol" "Get the shotgun," Wilf croaked, half scared to death. "Don't forget the shotgun." They carefully opened the bottom half of the Dutch door-the top was open-and climbed inside. My father grabbed up the shotgun and approached the elevated bed at the back of the sheep camp; Wilf followed close behind, dragging a length of rope. My father poked the shotgun under the snoring nose of the old sheepherder and cocked both of the hammers back. The old man snorted a couple of times and woke up. His eyes crossed as he looked down the muzzle of the gun and saw my father's flushed face, grimacing malevolently. "What the hell..?" he started, trying to sit up. "Shut upl" my father barked. "I'm the boss of this camp now. When I tell you to jump, you better ask how high, an' when I say to piss, you better ask how farl" They forced him off the bed in his long-johns and tied him securely to a chair. He lost his bravado and began to tremble. "What're you boys plannin' to do to me?" "Why, we're gonna kill you, of course," my father retorted. Wilf tied a blindfold over the old sheepherder's eyes. "Now, you boys ain't serious ... are you? I mean, I might'a been a little too harsh with you boys, but I ain't done nothin' so bad you'd go an' do somethin' like that ... would you?" "You better start sayin' yore prayers, old man," piped in WIlf, at last getting into the sport of it. "Yeah," my father added, "do you have any idea what a double-o buckshot blast will do to a man's face? BLAMI"-the old man jumped in his chair-"Mincemeati" "Now come on, boys," the old man begged, beads of sweat welling up in the wrinkles of his brow, "I promise you if you let me go, I won't say nothin' to nobody 'bout what you boys done, an' I promise I won't say one harsh word to you boys. An' you don't even have to do the chores around camp. Now, whatta you say, huh?" "No deal, old man," my father said. "You know too much, now. You gotta die." "Yeah," echoed Wilf, "die." A wash basin of water had been heating on the nearby stove where the old man had planned to wash up after his nap. A washcloth steamed in the boiling water. Wilf grabbed up a splinter of woods from the box next to the stove and carefully lifted the steaming washcloth from the basin. My father leaned close to the old man's ear and said, sotto voce, "Get ready to meet your maker, you old tyrant, for on the count of three I'm gonna blow yore brains out!" ~
"One..." the old sheepherder stiffened. "Two..." he started to sob. My father clicked the hammers on the shotgun, at which the old man sucked in his breath, then pointed the barrel out of the door of the sheepwagon. "Three!" BOOM!! My father fired both barrels out the door and just as they went off, Wilf hit the old sheepherder in the face with the hot wet dishcloth. The old man pissed his pants and passed out. Two days later the boys were back at Linwood, penniless-they had not dared pick up their pay-and unusually docile. They never bothered to explain where they had been or why they had returned home so hastily. TONTO Some years ago I went into a bank in Vernal, Utah, which is situated quite near the Ute Indian Reservation, and applied for a personal loan. I sat down at the loan manager's desk and filled out an application. The loan manager was a typical westerner, decked out in bolo tie and white Stetson hat. I handed him the completed application and after perusing it, he passed it to a Native American employee at an adjoining desk. "Hey, Tonto," he said to the Indian, "process this for me, will you?" The Ute hurried off to comply. "Did I hear you just call that man 'Tonto'?" I asked. "Why, yes I did. Just a little nickname I have for him." "Isn't that just a bit condescending?" I queried. He leaned back in his chair, grinned, and pushed his Stetson back on his forehead. "Not at all. Not at all. You see, I am the Loan Arranger, and he's my faithful sidekick. That's why I call him Tonto." OLD MAN PUFFER His name was James Monroe Puffer, but to all and sundry who knew him he was simply Old Man Puffer. My grandfather, Willard Schofield, had known him in Beaver, in Southern Utah, even before they came together to Daggett County in Northeastern Utah in 1895. They were related by marriage through the Twitchell family. Old Man Puffer had been a pioneer settler at Beaver. He had befriended an old Indian named Beaver Adz, for whom the town and county of Beaver was named. Old Beaver was not a "local" Indian. He had come into the region before the arrival of the Mormons with a company of Canadian fur trappers, liked what he saw, and decided to remain. When he met Puffer, they became inseparable friends and local legends. ~
Old Beaver was a noted tracker. He was often employed during the Indian wars to track renegade Utes and rustled livestock. Old Man Puffer frequently accompanied him and learned the secrets of tracking from the master. My grandfather often recounted the story of Puffer's first tracking experience with Beaver Adz. Sometime during the night, someone had driven off livestock from the town. Old Beaver was called for to track down the culprits, and he took with him his proteg6, Puffer. It was a cold and wintry day. After only a few miles on the trail Beaver suddenly stopped, examined the tracks, and reported there were three men, not Indians but Whites. "How can you tell that?" Puffer asked. "Three horses have iron shoes," Beaver replied. "White men." A few miles farther on Beaver stopped again and examined signs in the snow. "One man old. Two men are young." he said. Puffer was amazed. "How could you possibly tell that?" Beaver pointed to three yellow stains in a snowbank. Beaver kneeled down and pointed to the tracks and the stains. "One man he pee close to shoes: him old. Other two pee far out: them young." When the three men were finally captured, it was found they were an elderly father and his two young sons. Old Man Puffer settled in the little town of Manila (then known appropriately as Sandtown) in 1896. He was a familiar sight on the streets for many years. He dressed in a curious combination of buckskin and corduroy, chewed tobacco and spat it out between words, and was more often drunk than not. He trapped beaver and bobcats for a living, and reeked of animal fat. He bathed once a year whether he needed it or not. His habits and behavior was generally frowned upon, especially by the staunch church- goers and member of the Ladies' Relief Society. The religious ladies set out on a personal and zealous mission to reform him and, if possible, convert him to the faith in order to save his soul. It was an exercise in futility. They tried persuasion, then shamed him, but he obstinately chewed and drank and cursed his way toward damnation. The ladies warned him sternly that his evil habits would be the death of him, and that tobacco and whiskey would be his undoing. James Monroe Puffer died at the age of 1041 When he died the good ladies of the Relief Society, with all proper self-righteous acclaim, stated: "We told him that his evil habits would be the death of himl" ~
OUT TO LUNCH Heber Bennion, Jr. operated one of the largest ranches in Daggett County. When he was not ranching in our remote region of the state, Heber worked as Secretary of State, with a plush office next to the governor's in the Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City. Heber like to recount the story about when he took his personal secretary out to lunch at an exclusive Salt Lake restaurant. When the waitress approached their table to take their order, Heber selected beef's tongue. His secretary twisted her face into a grimace of revulsion. "You had really ought to try it," Heber encouraged. "It's quite good." Oooo, no," she said, still contorting her face. "I don;t want anything that comes out of a cow's mouth-just give me a couple of eggs..." THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF A MODEL T FORD A familiar figure in Lucerne Valley for many years was an old Danish immigrant named Rounholt. He homesteaded forty acres in the center of the valley, and made a meager living by growing hay and grain. He lived in an old clapboard cabin with a tar paper roof, stayed mostly to himself, and drove an old Model T Ford-one of the very first to come off the assembly line. His English was broken and he lacked the confidence to speak and so remained mostly silent. Few had heard him put more than two sentences together. Old Man Rounholt-as he was commonly known-had no farm machinery. When his lucerne or wheat crop came ready to harvest, he generally hired my father to put it up for him. One day my father was in the process of mowing his hay when Old Man Rounholt came driving across the field in his old Model T. Halfway across the field the car suddenly stopped. The old man got out, walked around it a couple of times, then pulled out the hand crank and with great exertion began cranking it around and around-but the car wouldn't start. "Py yumpin' yminy." my father heard him say, "ju piss uff yunkl Vy cause ju do dis to me, ju som of da pitchl" He banged the fender several times with the crank, then turned and walked across the field to where my father was mowing hay. "Are you having car trouble?" my father asked him. "Ed, I svare I donut unnerstan' it. I py dis damn car ven it vus new an' I haf had it tventy- fife yeres an' it nefer broke down on me before; vy it break down now?" He huffed and puffed a moment or two, then added, "Ed, can I borrow yore gun?" My father was reluctant to lend the gun to him, thinking him desperate enough to turn it on himself, but in the end he relented, pulling his Winchester 30-30 from its boot on the rear of the tractor; most ranchers carried rifles to ward off predators preying on their livestock. ~ Old Man Rounholt grabbed the rifle, levered a cartridge in the chamber, then turned and retraced his steps back to the car. My father watched curiously as the old Dane stood in front of the Model T, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and fired a shot through the radiator, sending a plume of steam into the air like a geyser. Then he turned and crossed the field again, and handed the rifle back to my father.
"Py jiminy, I feels better now," he said. "Donut pother to bury dat traitor. Let her rot over she stands."
The Model T stood in the middle of the field throughout my growing years. When Old Man Rounholt died, the car was towed away and thrown into a wash to impede erosion. Eventually a bank caved over the Model t and the "murdered" car at last had its burial.
MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS
He was a late comer to the mountains. Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Joe Meek, all had preceded him, but none were greater. James Baker left his Illinois home for the Far West in 1839 at the instigation of Carson, who was his distant relation. After wandering the West as a trapper, guide, scout and indian fighter, he settled down more or less permanently in the dirt-roofed cabin of his brother John on Henry's Fork, about seven miles above that stream's confluence with the Green River at Flaming Gorge. He was a common sight in the region for the next halfcentury.
Though married to one of the many daughters of Chief Washakie of the Shoshones, he was a loner, a solitary, a dispiser of the company of men. He never wore anything other than buckskins. He packed a pistol, a Green River knife, and a tomahawk on a beaded belt. His leggins were made of wapiti hide by his wife, and his moccasins of bearskin, from the hide of a bear he had killed with his knife. His headwear alternated between fur, felt and Ute headband.
During the winter of 1877-78, the Baker brothers encountered two other brothers in Brown's Park: Frank and Jesse James. The notorious outlaw brothers, who had recently been involved in the killing of two lawmen in Wyoming, were on their way to visit an uncle in California. The Bakers invited the James boys to spend the winter in their cabin on Henry's Fork.
The Baker cabin was some thirty miles due west of Brown's Park. The journey was made in a raging snowstorm. It nearly became their last. Lost in a whiteout blizzard, they were reduced to wading upstream in the icy waters of Henry's Fork to the Baker cabin, which had been built on the north bank. Jesse James froze his feet. He thawed them out in the oven of John Baker's old "Majestic" cast iron stove. This stove was in my possession for many years.
Dick Son was John Baker's son-in-law. He had been a guide for the Prof. F.V. Hayden Expedition from the famous Peabody Museum, that collected fossils from the region and left the good doctor's name to a local landmark-Hayden Peak in the high Uintahs. Dick Son was present the day Jesse James thawed out his feet.
"You never heard such squealing in your life," Jack Son told me, "as when the feeling returned to his frozen feet." Jack was a son of Dick Son and a grandson of John Baker. "I've heard my dad tell the story a hundred times. Jesse James wailed so loud with pain it set the dogs to barking."
The James boys must have had some negative influence on Jim and John Baker. During the early eighties they joined Shadrach "Shade" Large, Elijah "Lige" Driscoll, and Isaac "Ike" Reece in the robbery of a freight office in Green River, Wyoming, about fifty miles north of their ranches on Henry's Fork. Ike Reece was wounded in the fracas. His partners in crime aided him in riding as far as Twelve Mile Butte, about three-fourths of the way home. There, at Timber Springs, they propped him up under a pinion pine and left him to die.
Back at Henry's Fork the "gang" stopped at the ranch of their friend Phil Mass and told him what had transpired. Old Phil, a former Pony Express rider whose own son, "One-eyed" Jack Mass, would one day ride with the Wild Bunch, was dismayed that they had left their friend Ike Reece to die alone.
Phil rode out to Twelve Mile Butte and there found Reece dead beneath the tree. He buried him there where he died and erected a headboard over the grave that remained for many years, and which in my youth I found and copied:
HERE LIES THE BODY OF OLD IKE REECE
HIS HEAD LIES WEST, HIS ASS LIES EAST
In 1879, Jim Baker found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Utes of northwestern Colorado, who were his longtime enemies, rebelled against the stringent measures imposed upon them by Indian agent Nathan C. Meeker. They murdered Meeker and a number of other men at the White River Agency and carried the women into captivity. They also killed Major T.T. Thornburgh and most of his troops on Milk River when they attempted to come to the rescue of the agency.
Joe Rankin, who had made a record ride north to Fort Steele, Wyoming, for help, reported that he had passed Jim Baker, not far from the agency, cowering in a ditch. Thereafter, afraid for his life, Baker constructed a two-story fortified house on the Snake River, not far from Baggs, Wyoming, where he lived out the remainder of his life. He lived to an advanced age.
In 1896 he was in Baggs, Wyoming, when Butch Cassidy and his newly organized gang rode into town to celebrate. That celebration earned them the now famous sobriquet "The Wild Bunch." One young outlaw named John "Judge" Bennett thought he would toy with the old man,
-8- then nearly eighty years old. Old Jim threshed the young rooster soundly, and threatened to scalp him with his tomahawk.
In 1897 the General Authorities of the Mormon Church extended an invitation to the old Mountain Man to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in Utah. He politely declined. The last such experience he had with "civilization" proved disastrous.
The good people of Denver had honored him as a guest of the city. They made him the Grand Marshal of a parade and put him up in Denver's most posh hotel. The grand hotel was plush with bright red carpet, marble pillars, full-length mirrors and crystal chandeliers. The restaurant served live lobster and escargot. The hotel bar, also carpeted, offered more drink than he could drink with names he couldn't pronounce. Presidents and Wall Street wizards had been feted there with less ceremony than the old mountaineer.
But the entire experience was more than he could cope with. Porters discovered him in the morning asleep on the floor, the bed unslept in. He showed up at a lavish dinner, as honored guest of the mayor and local dignitaries, dressed in his buckskins and smelling of bear-grease and beaver-fat. They suggested a bath and a new suit of clothes. He averred that he had already had a bath "once this yard," and when offered a black tuxedo, he told them, "I ain't dead yet, by Godl" Flush toilets scared him to death and he refused to use one, relieving himself in the alley behind the hotel.
In the evening he came down to the bar, thinking it would at least be a familiar place; it wasn't. Red carpet, chandeliers, electric lighting, polished mirrors and stuffed velvet chairs, it was more palatial than frontier. He could not have been more out of place.
He stood at the bar, the object of scrutiny, his jaw full of chewing tobacco. He looked around for a place to spit and seeing none spat on the red carpet. A porter grabbed a polished brass spittoon and quickly sat it on top of the stain. Jim turned his head and spat in the other direction. The porter ran with the spittoon and placed it on the second stain. Again Jim turned around and spat tobacco juice on the carpet. The porter scurried with the spittoon to the new location.
"Lookee 'ere, tenderfoot," he said to the porter, "If'n ye keep a'movin' that there thing around like that, I'm liable to spit in it''
PAPA
In June of 1961 1 drove fifty-five miles across the badiands to Green River, Wyoming, to visit my old friend Tom Welch. Tom had recently turned ninety-six. He had fallen and broken his hip not long since and got about now only with the aid of a cane and half a shot of whiskey.
Because he seldom went out, the interior of the little four-room house where he lived alone smelled of stale tobacco, coffee, boiled beans, and sweat; it was not an altogether unpleasant odor. In the cool of the evening he sat in an old rocking chair on the porch, and there I found him, rocking back and forth with his memories.
He was depressed. He knew he had not much longer to live, and I knew it would probably be my last visit with him. In former times he had enjoyed reminiscing; but now he merely sat and rocked, and I would see his mind go away and hide somewhere.
"Let's get out of the house and go for a walk," I suggested, thinking the change would do him
900CL
.Where in hell can I go?" he huffed. "I can't walk very far, you know."
"Where would you like to go?"
"Well," he pondered, "I haven't been down to the Red Feather in a long time."
Near the turn of the century, Tom and Dr. hawk had formed a partnership to purchase the Red Feather Bar & Grill and the adjacent Tomahawk Hotel (named for Tom and Dr. Hawk) in the center of town. Dr. Hawk was the doctor who patched up members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. The money used to finance the purchase had come from Tom's participation in the Tipton, Wyoming, train robbery with Butch Cassidy on 29 August 1900. Tom was wounded in the leg during that robbery, and Dr. Hawk had removed the bullet. After Dr. Hawk's death, Tom became sole proprietor of the businesses, eventually selling out but retaining an interest in the Red Feather Bar.
The Red Feather was only four blocks east of Tom's house but he had to take the walk in slow installments. We must have seemed an incongruous pair-a ninety-six year-old man and a youth who was not yet twenty. By the time we arrived at the bar, he was working hard just to stand still.
"I shouldn't go in," I said. "I'm under age."
"Hell, I was a man before I was twelve. You're close enough."
It was cool and dark inside the bar. The evening crowd had not arrived and so it was mostly quiet, except for Johnny Cash singing, "I Tow the Line" on the jukebox. Amber lights reflected in the glass eyes of stuffed antelope heads above the counter, making them appear alive and other-worldly. In a small showcase on the end of the bar was a "Wyoming Jack-a-loupe"-a local joke invented to fool and entertain tourists-a stuffed jackrabbit mounted with small deer antlers.
Tom, who always sat at the counter, refused my help in mounting a barstool. I sat next to him and nursed a Coke while he drank Jack Daniels and chatted with the bartender. He was beginning to loosen up and relax a little. Getting out was doing him a world of good. He hadn't been out in a long time.
1 0 The only other persons in the bar besides ourselves was a couple sitting in a rear booth quietly talking over drinks and Club sandwiches. They sat in shadow and I took little notice of them.
With a little prompting Tom began to reminisce. I asked him about the black outlaw, Isom Dart, who had trained horses for the Wild Bunch, rustled cattle, and died with a bullet through his heart from the rifle of bounty hunter Tom Horn back in the year 1900.
"Hell, yes, I remember ol' Nigger Isom. he roped a bear one time up on Cold Springs Mountain, an' damn that bear got mad! It turned on the horse and started chasin' it, and ol' Isom, he dug in his spurs and yelled, 'Git up, hoss, or that black son-of-a-bitch is gonna git on behind! Tom laughed at this story as though he was hearing it himself for the first time.
The man in the booth seemed to be engrossed in our conversation. At last he picked up his drink and approached the bar, helping himself to a stool next to Tom.
"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation," the man said, addressing Tom. "I'm a hunter myself. Have you ever hunted grizzly bear in Alaska?"
Tom gave this intruder a suspicious once-over. The man appeared to be in his late sixties, with a bushy grey beard that appeared to be on fire from the reflection of the red neon "Red Feather" sign behind the bar. He wore a fedora hat and khaki safari jacket over a red flannel shirt.
But Tom, even at ninety-six, was himself a strong figure of a man. He topped six-feet-four and weighed well over 200 pounds-all of it muscle. He had lived an active outdoor life and was still lean and tough. He had killed several men that I was aware of, one as late as 1920, and had once got into a gunfight with my grandfather. He was a former cattleman, livestock inspector, deputy sheriff, and member of the Wild Bunch. He was a man to be reckoned with at any age. I always had a healthy fear of him.
"Can't say that I have ever hunted grizzlies in Alaska," he replied at last to the stranger's inquiry. "Had a griz hunt me once though, just south of here, over in the Uintah Mountain country."
"You don't say? I'd like to hear that story. Bartender-top off this drink for me, will you? And another round for my new friends."
For the next two hours they swapped stories. I listened to tales of safari in Africa by the stranger, countered by a tale of elk hunting in Jackson Hole by Tom; tigers in India versus mountain lions in Colorado; marlin fishing off the coast of Cuba versus 200-pound pike on the Columbia. The two men, thoroughly engrossed in their vaunting duel, completely ignored me-the kid-in their enthusiasm.
The lady in the booth ordered another sandwich for herself and invited me to join her.
"Papa talks too much when he's drinking," she told me, "but he's been so depressed lately, I simply don't have the heart to stop him now. He seems to be enjoying himself so much."
A few customers came into the bar during the course of the evening and soon joined the growing throng of spectators enthralled by the stories. Never have such talks been told by such spinners of fascination. Every story was topped by the next. When there was drama, the bar fell hushed; when there was humor, the listeners roared and slapped their knees. Both of the men were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
At last, however, the lady left the booth and approached her husband.
"Forgive me for interrupting," she told him, speaking as one familiar with diplomacy, "but it's getting late, Papa, and we have a long drive ahead of us." The man glanced at his watch.
"My wife is quite right, gentlemen. I have been enjoying myself so much I forgot the hour. We're on our way home to Ketchum, Idaho. I'm afraid I'll have to drive all night now to make it, but it's been worth it."
He shook hands all the way around. He thanked Tom profusely for what he said had been one of the best evenings of his life.
"You know, Tom," he ejaculated, "someday somebody had ought to write your story."
Tom turned to gaze at me.
"Well, this here young man has offered to write about me more than once, but I don't want my name in no damned book!"
The stranger shook my hand firmly, then leaned over and said, sotto voce: "You should do it. Write his story." He adjusted his fedora and without looking back went out the door, his wife on his arm.
"Damned nice feller," Tom said, whether to himself I do not know.
"Don't you know who that was?" The bartender interjected excitedly. "That was Ernest Hemingwayl"
The bar fell quiet.
"Who the hell is Ernest Hemingway?" Tom asked.
On 3 July 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway stuck the muzzle of a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains out.
Sources:
Interviews: Tom Welch; W.J. Clark; Edward Boren; Wilford Tolten; Willard Schofield; Heber Bennion, Jr.; Jack Son.
The Escapades of Frank & Jesse James, Carl W. Breihan
Personal communication with Ernest Hemingway.
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http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol5/html_files/v5p0705.html
INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES
Vol. V, Laws (Compiled from December 22, 1927 to June 29, 1938)
Compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler. Washington : Government Printing Office, 1941.
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PART IV—UNRATIFIED TREATIES
Treaty With The Sho-Sho-Nee Nation Of Indians
Treaty With The Capote Band Of Utahs In New Mexico
Treaty With The Mohuache Band Of The Utahs
Treaty With Mixed Bands Of Bannacks And Shoshonees
Treaty With The Utah, Yampah Ute, Pah-Vant, Sanpete Ute, Tim-P-Nogs And Cum-Nm-Bah Bands Of The Utah Indians
Treaty With The Weber Ute Band Of Utah Indians
Treaty With Crow Nation Of Indians, Montana
Treaty With The Assiniboines
Treaty With The Uintah And Yampa Or Grand River Bands Of Utah Indians
Treaty With The Shoshones, Bannacks, And Sheepeaters
Chickasaw Treaty Or Certificate
Page Images
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August 29, 1866 | Unratified.
TREATY WITH THE UINTAH AND YAMPA OR GRAND RIVER BANDS OF UTAH INDIANS, AUGUST 29, 1866.
Article 1
Page 705
The President of the United States of America, by Alexander Cummings, Governor of Colorado Territory, and Exofficio Supt Indian Affairs for the same Hon A.C. Hunt, and D.C. Oakes, U.S. Indian Agent duly authorized and appointed as Commissioners, for the purpose, of the one part, and the undersigned chiefs and warriors of the Uintah and Yampa or Grand River Bands of Utah Indians on the other part, have made and entered into the following Treaty of amity & friendship which, when ratified by the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall be binding on both parties, to, wit
ARTICLE 1.
There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Uintah and Yampa or Grand River bands of Utah Indians.
Page 706
It is the purpose of the United States Government, by some of the citizens thereof; to make a road or roads through the lands claimed by the Green River or (Yampa) and Uintah bands of Ute Indians. And in consideration of a present by the United States, of twenty five (25) head of cattle and sundry provisions, blankets clothing and other articles—the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged and the delivery witnessed by James Baker, Interpreter, Hon H. P. Bennett, and Brevet Major Lewis Thompson, U.S.A., the Indians aforesaid agree that they will not interfere with the construction of said roads, nor molest any persons engaged thereon, nor any stations or buildings or settlements which may be made, and will aid in protecting the persons travelling on the roads or employed upon them.
It is agreed by said Indians, in case of any violation of the provisions of this article, by any individual of the aforesaid band, or of any violence by any of them to any United States Citizen or white resident travelling through the lands claimed by them, that the individual guilty of said wrong shall be delivered up to the United States Authorities to be punished by the laws thereof.
The United States guarantees that, for any wrong done upon any of the aforesaid bands, by any citizen or white resident of the United States, the party guilty of the wrong shall be punished by the United States with the same penalties as though the wrong had been committed on a white citizen.
And in further consideration of the foregoing, the United States agrees to furnish to the aforesaid Indians with twenty five (25) horses, with saddles, bridles, and blankets for each complete on the ratification of this treaty. And annually thereafter blankets and stock either horses, cattle or sheep, to the value of five thousand ($5000) dollars, and provisions to the value of three thousand (3000) dollars, this annuity to continue until some arrangement is made with the tribe for their permanent settlement.
In Testimony Whereof the said Commissioners, as aforesaid, and the said Chiefs anal Warriors of the said Bands of Utah Indians have hereunto set their hands and seals at the Hot Sulphur Springs as aforesaid, on this Twenty Ninth day of August, A.D. One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Six.
ALEXANDER CUMMINGS [SEAL]
Gov. C.T. and Sup Ind Affr's and Commissioner
M HUNT [SEAL]
Commissioner
DANIEL C. OAKES [SEAL]
Indian Agent and Commissioner
SA-GA-WICH, or, BUZZARD his x mark [SEAL]
JACK, or ONE NAME his x mark [SEAL]
PA-END or HIGH his x mark [SEAL]
SA-PACH or WHITE his x mark [SEAL]
UN-CA-CHEP, RED LODGE POLE his x mark [SEAL]
NEVADA or SNOW his x mark [SEAL]
SACH-WA-TSCHWHICH, BLUE RIVER, his x mark [SEAL]
PA-HA-PITCH, or SWIMMER his x mark [SEAL]
YA-HA-ME-NA, PRICKLY PEAR his x mark [SEAL]
PAN-QUI-TO, or MINNOW his x mark [SEAL]
TA-HA-KEN, WASHINGTON his x mark [SEAL]
Witnesses to the Treaty and signatures.
JOEL BEEKER,
HIRAM P. BENNET,
LEWIS THOMPSON
Br. Major, U.S. Army,
Interpreter.
JOEL BEEKER.
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-95-
G.P.A. Healy - American English Artist
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
Chapter XIII
AT THE WHITE HOUSE, 1842
IT WAS April again-- April, 1842--and George Healy once
more stood leaning against the rail of a ship, plunged into
memories of the past while his eyes turned oceanward toward
the future. Louisa had not accompanied him to Liverpool--eager
though she had been to see him settled in his cabin on the Cale
donia--because the new baby required her continued presence
in London. So George had left her with little two-year-old Arthur
and two-month-old Agnes in the care of her mother.
Healy's thoughts turned to those earlier Aprils, momentous
milestones in his exciting twenty-eight years of life. In 1830,
twelve years before--was it April, that month of nature's promise
that so often presaged new unfoldings in his career?--Mr. Sully
was in Boston to paint Colonel Perkins, and Healy, only sixteen
then, had opened his heart to the older artist, whose encourage
ment had hastened the day of George's great decision.
Then in April, 1834, after his success with the Tuckers and
lovely Mrs. Otis, he had found himself on his way to France: his
first view of New York, his first ocean crossing, Paris, a new life,
new comradeships, and art as he had dreamed it. . . . Two years
later, in April, 1836, he was in England with the Faulkners. And
now, in 1842, after an absence of eight years Healy was on his way
back to America--on a mission for the King of France.
Eight years! Much had occurred in that time: his father's death
soon after he left; then two years later his mother's; and lately
the loss of his brother John, who had not let them know how ill
Publication Information: Book Title: G.P.A. Healy, American Artist: An Intimate Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century. Contributors: Marie Mare De - author. Publisher: McKay. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1954. Page Number: 95.
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Category: Frontier Life
Death date: March 14, 1885
Years in state: 1856-1885
State contribution: Leader of Pawnee Scouts; helped provide protection for travelers on the trails; helped open state to white settlement.
National contribution: Under U.S. Army generals, led Pawnee scouts against Cheyenne and Sioux.
Major Frank Joshua North, the organizer and leader of the well-known Pawnee Scouts Army unit, was born in New York state in 1840. The family moved first to Ohio and later to Omaha in Nebraska territory in 1856. Several years later, after the death of his father, North moved in 1858 with his family to Platte County. To help support his family, young North found work as a clerk in the trader's store at the Pawnee Agency. He soon learned the Pawnee language and became an interpreter.
In 1864 he was employed by the U.S. Army to organize and lead a company of Pawnee Scouts against bands of Indians who were resisting the government. The next year he was made a captain in the army and was placed in command of the scouts. From 1865-1877 North and the Pawnee Scouts served in Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming.
North and the Pawnee Scouts saw action under General Patrick Conner in the Powder River Expedition of 1865. Following this battle, the Pawnee gave Captain North the name "Pani Le-Shar" (Chief of the Pawnee) as a special tribute. During 1867 and 1868 Captain North and four scout companies acted as guards for Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. He led the Pawnee Scouts in the Battle of Summit Springs, under Major General E. A. Carr in 1869.
North was promoted to major, put in charge of a scout battalion, and served under General George Crook in an expedition on the Big Horn in 1876-77.
Major North retired from army service in 1877. He served in the state house of representatives in 1882-83. North, along with Buffalo Bill Cody, and his brother, Luther North, actively managed a ranch located on the Dismal River north of North Platte, the first ranch to have its headquarters in the Sand Hills.
North is also listed as a performer in Buffalo Bill's 1883 "Wild West" show. He was known as the best revolver shot on the Plains.
North died at his home in Columbus, Nebraska on March 14, 1885. He was named to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in 1958.
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Going to Europe in 1835 Healy studied under Baron Gros in Paris and in Rome. He received a third-class medal in Paris in 1840, and one of the second class in 1855, when he exhibited his "Franklin urging the claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI."
Among his portraits of eminent men are those of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Guyot, Seward, Louis Philippe, and the presidents of the United States from J. Q. Adams to Grant--this series being painted for the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.. Healy also painted a very famous presidential portrait of Abraham Lincoln in 1877. This painting was based on one that he did in 1868 and scketches in 1864.
His large group, Webster replying to Hayne, containing 180 portraits, is in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day. He died in Chicago, Illinois, on 24 June 1894.
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ON MARIANO MEDINA -
http://books.google.com/books?id=rowboQsADH4C&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=Mariano+Medino&source=bl&ots=Xevkz7d2zS&sig=o3BneMkOrbOOg8_Wq8xVQfGdiks&hl=en&ei=n_rhSa72EZjNlQejsrzgDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPA11,M1
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for pics http://www.sittingbull.org/
Chief Sitting Bull
1831-1890
Hunkpapa Sioux Leader and Medicine Man
SITTING BULL, Sioux chief, born about 1837. He was the principal chief of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and friendly Indians, refusing to be transported to the Indian territory. In June, 1876, they defeated and massacred Gen. George A. Custer's advance party of Gen. Alfred H. Terry's column, which was sent against them, on Little Big Horn River. They were pursued northward by General Terry.
Sitting Bull, with a part of his band, made his escape into British Territory, and, through the mediation of Dominion officials, surrendered on a promise of pardon in 1880. In July and August, 1888, in a conference at Standing Rock, Dakota, he influenced his tribe to refuse to relinquish Indian lands.
He died in 1890 when followers tried to rescue him from the reservation police.
TATANKA IYOTAKA
By: ~Anonymous Lakota
Saturday, December 15th, 2002 was the 112th Memorial anniversary of the assassination of Tatanka Iyotaka, more commonly known as Sitting Bull. This inspirational leader was murdered deep within Lakota Nation territory, a vast area encompassing much of the central and northern Great Plains. Tatanka Iyotaka in his day was one of the most influential leaders on the prairie. Today, he is the most recognizable Indian in the world.
Tatanka Iyotaka was not impressed by white society and their version of civilization. He was shocked and saddened to see the number of homeless people living on the streets of American cities. He gave money to hungry white people many times when he was in the large cities.
He counseled his people to be wary of what they accept from white culture. He saw some things which might benefit his people; but cautioned Indian people to accept only those things that were useful to us, and to leave everything else alone. Tatanka Iyotaka was a man of clear vision and pure motivation.
As is often the case with extraordinary people, Tatanka Iyotaka was murdered by his own people. The colonial force set the weak of his own race against him. A tactic they continue to use. Indian police today carry on the tradition started by the assassins of Tatanka Iyotaka and Tasunke Witko. Indian police harassing, arresting, even killing other Indian people keeps the colony in control. Seeing that their paychecks, just like those of the elected tribal/band councilors, come from the colonial government points to that quite clearly.
The unrelenting love for his land and his people caused the enemies of the Lakota to fear Tatanka Iyotaka. The Hunkpapa Oyate and the Titonwan Lakota had many powerful leaders, but Tatanka Iyotaka will forever remain the icon of traditional, full-blood strength and dignity.
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Info courtesy of http://www.geocities.com/pegmihedu/standingbear.html STANDING BEAR
Prologue: During the 1800's the United States government established Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, and Indians from different tribes moved on to it. Some tribes, however, settled on land that was reserved for them in other parts of the country as part of treaty agreements. Sometimes a treaty was broken and a tribe was forced to move. An important event that was to effect all Indians was the Supreme Court case of Standing Bear vs. Crook..........
Standing Bear was a chief of the Ponca Indians, a small peaceful tribe. The Poncas had migrated from the east and settled in the lowland of the Missouri River Valley on a reservation that the United States had given them by treaty in 1858. In January, 1877, the government ordered the Poncas to move to Indian Territory in Oklahoma because their reservation had been included in land given to another tribe by treaty. Standing Bear did not think it was right for his people to have to leave their reservation. In spite of his protests, he and a group of other chiefs were taken south to Indian Territory to choose a new place for the tribe to live.
Standing Bear and the other chiefs did not like the land and refused to choose a place. They asked to be returned to their reservation but they were told they had to stay in Indian Territory and were left there with no interpreter or money. Standing Bear and the other chiefs started walking back to their reservation in the north. When they reached the Otoe Indian Reservation in Southern Nebraska, they were given horses and food. Then they continue north, stopping briefly at the Omaha Indian reservation. During their journey, they sent a telegram to the president of the United States asking for his help. After returning to his reservation, Standing Bear continued to object to moving his people.
In May, however, the tribe was forced to leave their reservation and go to Indian Territory leaving behind their farm equipment, livestock, houses, and most of their household goods. The new land was difficult to farm and the winters were severe. Many Indians died of hunger, disease, and exposure. Standing Bear I asked to return to his old reservation but his request was denied. He and a group of other Indians went to see the President of the United States and were told they had to stay in Indian Territory, but that they would be given better land and their belongings would be sent to them.
During their second winter in Indian Territory, more Indians died, including all but one of Standing Bear's children. In January 1879, Standing Bear decided to take some of his people back to their old reservation before they all perished. Accompanied by his wife and child, and several men with their wives and children, Standing Bear set out for the north. In the middle of March, they arrived at the Omaha Reservation, destitute and starving. The Omahas welcomed the Poncas and gave them food and shelter and land on which to plant seed. When the government heard that the Poncas were living on the Omaha reservation, orders were sent to General George Crook to return them to Indian Territory.
General Crook had dealt with Indians for many years and was aware that they were sometimes treated unfairly. It was with reluctance, therefore, that he sent soldiers to arrest Standing Bear and his followers and bring them to Fort Omaha. General Crook listened to Standing Bear's story about the unjust treatment of the Ponca tribe. He was sympathetic with Standing Bear and because several of the Poncas were sick he held up the orders to return them to Indian Territory.
This delay gave the assistant-editor of a newspaper in Omaha time to publish the plight of the Ponca Indians in newspapers across the country. He decided to see if Indians had any rights and was able to convince two prominent lawyers to volunteer their services and represent Standing Bear in a suit against the government. On April 8, 1879, a Writ of Habeas Corpus was filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska.
The hearing began on May 1, 1879 in Lincoln, Nebraska and lasted two days and one evening. A United States District attorney represented General Crook. The first person to testify was the interpreter for Standing Bear. He answered questions about the condition of the Poncas when they arrived at the Omaha reservation, and said that although many were sick those who were able were working. He also said they no longer had a chief and wanted to live as white men. The next person to testify was the officer who arrested Standing Bear and his followers. He answered questions about the condition of the Poncas at the time of their arrest. Standing Bear was the third and last person to testify. He answered questions about the events of the two years previous to his arrest. No testimony was given on behalf of General Crook.
In his closing statement, one of Standing Bear's attorneys gave several reasons why the government could not claim title to the Ponca land. He also claimed that there was no law for the removal of the Poncas to Indian Territory. The attorney for General Crook claimed that Standing Bear was not entitled to the protection of the Writ of Habeas Corpus because he was not a person under the law. The other attorney for Standing Bear claimed that the writ applied to every human being and that the position taken by the government undermined the very foundation of human liberty. Standing Bear was then allowed to speak on his own behalf and pleaded with great emotion for fair treatment of his people. The courtroom was filled with many who were sympathetic with the Indians, and Standing Bear received continual rounds of applause. At the conclusion of his speech, court was adjourned.
On May 12, the Judge Elmer Dundy filed his decision. He had been impressed with what Standing Bear said and ruled in his favor. He stated an Indian was a person within the meaning of the law and had the right to a writ of habeas corpus. He further stated that although General Crook had the right to remove Standing Bear and his followers from the Omaha reservation, he did not have the right to force them to move to Indian Territory and they were being held in violation of the law. He then ordered that they be released.
A few days later, General Crook received orders from the government to release Standing Bear and his followers, and they went to live on the Omaha reservation. The Ponca Indians who were still in Indian Territory sued to be reunited with Standing Bear. Their suit was denied and the tribe was split apart.
The chief of the Omaha tribe and his daughter, Susette LaFlesche, a teacher at the government school on the Omha reservation, had become involved in Standing Bear's struggle for justice. They arranged for him to tell his story in the east where he won the attention and sympathy of many important people. The government was asked to investigate and confirmed Standing Bear's story. In 1881 better lands were given to those Indians who stayed in Indian Territory and payment was made to those who had lost property. A home was provided for Standing Bear and his followers at their old reservation. Standing Bear died in 1908 and was buried on a hill overlooking the village site of his ancestors.
A twenty-two foot statue of Standing Bear stands just south of Ponca City in Northern Oklahoma.
In 1978 Standing Bear was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
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as Remembered by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman)
If any people ever fought for liberty and justice, it was the Cheyennes. If any ever demonstrated their physical and moral courage beyond cavil, it was this race of purely American heroes, among whom Little Wolf was a leader.
I knew the chief personally very well. As a young doctor, I was sent to the Pine Ridge agency in 1890, as government physician to the Sioux and the Northern Cheyennes. While I heard from his own lips of that gallant dash of his people from their southern exile to their northern home, I prefer that Americans should read of it in Doctor George Bird Grinnell's book, "The Fighting Cheyennes." No account could be clearer or simpler; and then too, the author cannot be charged with a bias in favor of his own race.
At the time that I knew him, Little Wolf was a handsome man, with the native dignity and gentleness, musical voice, and pleasant address of so many brave leaders of his people. One day when he was dining with us at our home on the reservation, I asked him, as I had a habit of doing, for some reminiscences of his early life. He was rather reluctant to speak, but a friend who was present contributed the following:
"Perhaps I can tell you why it is that he has been a lucky man all his life. When quite a small boy, the tribe was one winter in want of food, and his good mother had saved a small piece of buffalo meat, which she solemnly brought forth and placed before him with the remark: 'My son must be patient, for when he grows up he will know even harder times than this.'
"He had eaten nothing all day and was pretty hungry, but before he could lay hands on the meat a starving dog snatched it and bolted from the teepee. The mother ran after the dog and brought him back for punishment. She tied him to a post and was about to whip him when the boy interfered. 'Don't hurt him, mother!' he cried; 'he took the meat because he was hungrier than I am!'"
I was told of another kind act of his under trying circumstances. While still a youth, he was caught out with a party of buffalo hunters in a blinding blizzard. They were compelled to lie down side by side in the snowdrifts, and it was a day and a night before they could get out. The weather turned very cold, and when the men arose they were in danger of freezing. Little Wolf pressed his fine buffalo robe upon an old man who was shaking with a chill and himself took the other's thin blanket.
As a full-grown young man, he was attracted by a maiden of his tribe, and according to the custom then in vogue the pair disappeared. When they returned to the camp as man and wife, behold! there was great excitement over the affair. It seemed that a certain chief had given many presents and paid unmistakable court to the maid with the intention of marrying her, and her parents had accepted the presents, which meant consent so far as they were concerned. But the girl herself had not given consent.
The resentment of the disappointed suitor was great. It was reported in the village that he had openly declared that the young man who defied and insulted him must expect to be punished. As soon as Little Wolf heard of the threats, he told his father and friends that he had done only what it is every man's privilege to do.
"Tell the chief," said he, "to come out with any weapon he pleases, and I will meet him within the circle of lodges. He shall either do this or eat his words. The woman is not his. Her people accepted his gifts against her wishes. Her heart is mine."
The chief apologized, and thus avoided the inevitable duel, which would have been a fight to the death.
The early life of Little Wolf offered many examples of the dashing bravery characteristic of the Cheyennes, and inspired the younger men to win laurels for themselves. He was still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, when the most trying crisis in the history of his people came upon them. As I know and as Doctor Grinnell's book amply corroborates, he was the general who largely guided and defended them in that tragic flight from the Indian Territory to their northern home. I will not discuss the justice of their cause: I prefer to quote Doctor Grinnell, lest it appear that I am in any way exaggerating the facts.
"They had come," he writes, "from the high, dry country of Montana and North Dakota to the hot and humid Indian Territory. They had come from a country where buffalo and other game were still plentiful to a land where the game had been exterminated. Immediately on their arrival they were attacked by fever and ague, a disease wholly new to them. Food was scanty, and they began to starve. The agent testified before a committee of the Senate that he never received supplies to subsist the Indians for more than nine months in each year. These people were meat-eaters, but the beef furnished them by the government inspectors was no more than skin and bone. The agent in describing their sufferings said: 'They have lived and that is about all.'
"The Indians endured this for about a year, and then their patience gave out. They left the agency to which they had been sent and started north. Though troops were camped close to them, they attempted no concealment of their purpose. Instead, they openly announced that they intended to return to their own country.
We have heard much in past years of the march of the Nez Perces under Chief Joseph, but little is remembered of the Dull Knife outbreak and the march to the north led by Little Wolf. The story of the journey has not been told, but in the traditions of the old army this campaign was notable, and old men who were stationed on the plains forty years ago are apt to tell you, if you ask them, that there never was such another journey since the Greeks marched to the sea. . . .
"The fugitives pressed constantly northward undaunted, while orders were flying over the wires, and special trains were carrying men and horses to cut them off at all probable points on the different railway lines they must cross. Of the three hundred Indians, sixty or seventy were fighting men -- the rest old men, women, and children. An army officer once told me that thirteen thousand troops were hurrying over the country to capture or kill these few poor people who had left the fever-stricken South, and in the face of every obstacle were steadily marching northward.
"The War Department set all its resources in operation against them, yet they kept on. If troops attacked them, they stopped and fought until they had driven off the soldiers, and then started north again. Sometimes they did not even stop, but marched along, fighting as they marched. For the most part they tried -- and with success -- to avoid conflicts, and had but four real hard fights, in which they lost half a dozen men killed and about as many wounded."
It must not be overlooked that the appeal to justice had first been tried before taking this desperate step. Little Wolf had gone to the agent about the middle of the summer and said to him: "This is not a good country for us, and we wish to return to our home in the mountains where we were always well. If you have not the power to give permission, let some of us go to Washington and tell them there how it is, or do you write to Washington and get permission for us to go back."
"Stay one more year," replied the agent, "and then we will see what we can do for you. "No," said Little Wolf. "Before another year there will be none left to travel north. We must go now."
Soon after this it was found that three of the Indians had disappeared and the chief was ordered to surrender ten men as hostages for their return. He refused. "Three men," said he, "who are traveling over wild country can hide so that they cannot be found. You would never get back these three, and you would keep my men prisoners always." The agent then threatened if the ten men were not given up to withhold their rations and starve the entire tribe into submission. He forgot that he was addressing a Cheyenne. These people had not understood that they were prisoners when they agreed to friendly relations with the government and came upon the reservation. Little Wolf stood up and shook hands with all present before making his final deliberate address.
"Listen, my friends, I am a friend of the white people and have been so for a long time. I do not want to see blood spilt about this agency. I am going north to my own country. If you are going to send your soldiers after me, I wish you would let us get a little distance away. Then if you want to fight, I will fight you, and we can make the ground bloody at that place."
The Cheyenne was not bluffing. He said just what he meant, and I presume the agent took the hint, for although the military were there they did not undertake to prevent the Indians' departure. Next morning the teepees were pulled down early and quickly. Toward evening of the second day, the scouts signaled the approach of troops. Little Wolf called his men together and advised them under no circumstances to fire until fired upon. An Arapahoe scout was sent to them with a message. "If you surrender now, you will get your rations and be well treated." After what they had endured, it was impossible not to hear such a promise with contempt. Said Little Wolf: "We are going back to our own country. We do not want to fight." He was riding still nearer when the soldiers fired, and at a signal the Cheyennes made a charge. They succeeded in holding off the troops for two days, with only five men wounded and none killed, and when the military retreated the Indians continued northward carrying their wounded.
This sort of thing was repeated again and again. Meanwhile Little Wolf held his men under perfect control. There were practically no depredations. They secured some boxes of ammunition left behind by retreating troops, and at one point the young men were eager to follow and destroy an entire command who were apparently at their mercy, but their leader withheld them. They had now reached the buffalo country, and he always kept his main object in sight. He was extraordinarily calm. Doctor Grinnell was told by one of his men years afterward: "Little Wolf did not seem like a human being. He seemed like a bear." It is true that a man of his type in a crisis becomes spiritually transformed and moves as one in a dream.
At the Running Water the band divided, Dull Knife going toward Red Cloud agency. He was near Fort Robinson when he surrendered and met his sad fate. Little Wolf remained all winter in the Sand Hills, where there was plenty of game and no white men. Later he went to Montana and then to Pine Ridge, where he and his people remained in peace until they were removed to Lame Deer, Montana, and there he spent the remainder of his days. There is a clear sky beyond the clouds of racial prejudice, and in that final Court of Honor a noble soul like that of Little Wolf has a place.
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Chief Ouray Historical Ute Leader
Ignacio, Colorado
He was a man of peace at a time of war between Indians and whites.
Chief Ouray of the Tabeguache band led the Southern Ute Tribe during the mid 1800's - a time of great social and political change, a time when a proud people were uprooted and forced to accept resettlement.
Yet, he is revered today as one of the Ute's greatest leaders - patient, diplomatic and unwavering in his friendship toward the whites.
Ouray, perhaps one of the greatest chiefs of the Uncompahgre band of Utes, was born in Taos, New Mexico, in 1833. His mother was a member of the Uncompahgre band and his father, Guera Murah, was half Jicarilla Apache. While a youngster near Taos pueblo, he learned to speak both Spanish and English, but preferred Spanish as it was dominant in that area. Only later did he learn Ute and Apache.
At the age of 18 he gave up his work as a sheepherder and came to Colorado to become a full-fledged member of the Tabeguache band of Utes in which his father, in spite of his Apache blood, had become a leader. From then until 1860 he lived like all Utes, hunting, fighting the Plains Indians, and visiting with other Ute bands.
Ouray lived until August 24, 1880, and was considered an eminently great leader. He directed his powers and energies to the task of solving the many problems arising from the coming of the white men. Illness overcame him on a visit to the Southern Utes and he died on the east bank of the Pine River near the present agency. He was secretly buried in the rocks two miles south of the town of Ignacio. Forty-five years later, most of his bones were recovered and re-interred in the cemetery southeast of the agency and the grave appropriately marked.
Ouray is noted mostly for his unwavering friendship for the whites with whom he always kept faith and whose interests he protected even on trying occasions. When he visited Washington. D.C. in 1880, President Hayes called him "the most intellectual man I've ever conversed with." He was about five feet seven inches tall, and as he grew older he became quite portly. His manner was refined and polished, his face stern and dignified in repose but lighting up pleasantly when he talked. He ordinarily wore the white man's broadcloth and boots, but he never cut off his long hair which he wore in two braids that hung on his chest in the Ute fashion.
Information from the article Chief Ouray Day, by the Southern Ute Drum
The Stobie Clan originated from Stobo Village near Peebles in the borders of Scotland their stronghold which is now a luxury health spa.
From Edinburgh by road:
Take the A703 to Peebles; go through Peebles, following the A72 to Glasgow.
After four miles turn left at the signpost to Stobo.
Follow the B712 and the main gates for Stobo Castle are to your right two miles down the road.
From Glasgow by road:
Take the A721 to Peebles, join the A72 Blyth Bridge.
Follow the A72 and turn right at the signpost for Stobo.
Follow the B712 for two miles, and you’ll see the entrance gates on your right.***************************************************************
Ironicly Mountain Charlie 1845 to 1931 outlived them all..
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