Wind Walker (68 page)

Those nights during the great peace council in the valley of the North Platte were given over to feasting and dancing. One hell of a feast and a lot of nonstop dancing.

Because no buffalo roamed anywhere close to that great overland road by the end of a busy, bustling emigrant season, the tribal bands had depleted their supplies of fresh meat days ago. In fact, to Titus Bass’s way of thinking, it stood to reason that this sad business with the great buffalo herd having been split in two by the white tide sweeping west to the shining sea had to be the sorest spot for these nomadic Indians of the plains. Not only did the shaggy beasts refuse to wander close to the Oregon and Mormon trails, but most of the abundant game in the region had either been killed off or driven away, miles and miles to the north or the south of this great migration highway. Too, there wasn’t much for the ponies of those wandering bands of brown-skinned hunters to graze on either—not after the oxen, mules, and horses of the white sojourners had cropped every edible shoot right down to the ground, starting with the first train through in early spring and running right on through until the last wagons had rattled through late in the summer.

For white and red alike, a glorious era had come and gone by that autumn of 1851. There were now, and forever would
be, two great buffalo herds. But even put together their numbers came nowhere near the infinite black multitude that had once blanketed this endless and incomprehensible buffalo palace.

It wasn’t long before the bands ran out of their supply of dried meat and they took to making a dent in the dog population. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho all had long favored the canine—the younger the pup, the better. So too was dog a delicacy with the Crow delegates. But not among the Shoshone. They did not eat dog. Instead, Washakie’s Snake representatives sacrificed one of their fine young ponies each day. With tens of thousands of horses grazing the bottomland and hillsides, no one was about to go hungry as the Laramie peace council crawled toward a final agreement.

Just as each day’s parley had begun, that final morning Superintendent D. D. Mitchell had the cannon fired promptly at 9:00 a.m., his signal for the delegates to assemble at the treaty grounds. Again the Sioux made a grand and showy entrance when they crossed the river. In the lead rode an ancient warrior. Tied to a long staff carried above his head fluttered a faded and worn American flag.

“That ol’ fella claims he got that flag from the redheaded chief, Clark,” Thomas Fitzpatrick explained to Scratch.

“St. Louie’s William Clark?” Titus asked.

“Him and Lewis took the Corps of Discovery all the way to the Pacific Ocean back in 1804, thereabouts.”

That had shaken loose a little memory for him. “I ’member him from St. Louie. Injun agent for some time after his outfit come back from the far salt ocean—agent while I lived there.”

While each delegation approached the site in a grand procession, the proud horsemen—who had tied up the manes and tails of their ponies, coloring the animals with earth paints and dyes—all pounded on handheld drums and sang their noisiest national songs, doing their best to outsing every other throat. Every delegate wore his finest, draping himself with all the colorful trappings he owned. But none of the delegates who entered the treaty grounds could bring a weapon.
Superintendent Mitchell held fast to his edict that no man would be allowed a role in the peace talks if he carried a means of making war. Following the horsemen came the great throngs of women and children on foot, streaming across the river and up the banks, all of them painted fiercely and wearing their showiest ceremonial clothing for these auspicious talks of peace on the High Plains. At the end of each day, many of the government officials and reporters, who had come west for this treaty council, remarked on their surprise at the courteous and peaceful conduct of the children throughout the lengthy speeches and formal ceremonies in the late-summer heat.

Since Mitchell himself was an old beaver man, he knew how important was the giving of presents to these red delegates. So every evening he hosted a dinner at his camp, during which the superintendent handed out little packets of vermilion and twists of tobacco, until he had no more to give. In every village the young men paraded about, expecting to be noticed by the young women. But those girls did their very best to attract the warriors: greasing their hair, coloring the part with vermilion, draping themselves with the gaudiest bead- or quillwork, wrapping their arms and wrists with coils of brass wire, looping every finger with a bright ring, all to catch the eye of a particular young man.

But when Mitchell had called the council to order each morning, the clamoring hubbub fell silent and an air of solemn dignity descended upon the valley of Horse Creek that September of 1851. Only the chiefs and their important counselors moved forward to sit in the council arena itself. Since the Sioux were the most numerous tribe present for the talks, their headmen filled both the north and west sides of the treaty ground. The Cheyenne were assigned to sit next to them on the south side of the circle, while the Arapaho were situated beside them. The enemy peoples, both Shoshone and Crow, completed the eastern side of the great open circle.

The morning after Robert Meldrum arrived with his Crow, September 11, the ceremonies were largely consumed
with welcoming these thirty-eight delegates from the north. As Chief Pretty On Top and Takes Horse rode up, the last to arrive so they could make a showy entrance, an eastern reporter named B. Gratz Brown found himself so impressed with their grand entrance that he came over to kneel beside Agent Fitzpatrick, who was seated on a robe.

“That is the finest delegation of Indians we have seen!” Brown gushed his praise to the other white men as the Crow approached and dismounted. “Look at them! They make a most splendid appearance with their beautiful mounts and trappings. From everything I can see, these Crow ride better, hold their seats more gracefully, and are dressed much more lavishly—but with finer taste—than any of these others who are here!”

That evening of the eleventh, Alexander Culbertson, trader for the American Fur Company and agent at Fort Union on the high Missouri, had arrived with Father Pierre DeSmet and a mixed delegation of thirty-two Assiniboine, Crow, Minnetaree, and Arikara chiefs. The appearance of the much respected black-robe caused quite a stir among the camps, and was warmly welcomed by longtime friends Fitzpatrick, Bridger, and Robert Campbell—now a wealthy St. Louis merchant—three old fur men who had met DeSmet years ago in the heyday of the beaver trade. Starting out from St. Louis immediately after plans for the treaty council had been laid, DeSmet took a steamboat up the Missouri to Fort Union, where he joined Culbertson, who had been given the honorary title of “colonel” on the northern prairies, along with those Indians the trader had chosen to make the journey south with them. Taking a circuitous route on horseback, the party made its way overland almost to Independence Rock before striking the Oregon Trail, then marched east to Fort Laramie.

With other details of the treaty finally put to rest, September 12 was devoted to intense discussions of tribal boundaries the white man wanted demarcated on those large maps Mitchell unfurled across his tables. Trouble was, as Scratch saw right from the first speeches that Friday
morning, every one of these tribes boldly and unashamedly claimed more land than their neighbors wanted to allow. Even worse for the commissioners’ plans, none of these warrior bands cared a whit for fixed boundaries. From ancient times their traditional and nomadic way of life was itself completely antithetical to what the white men were now asking of them. A warrior culture had always wandered in the hunt of buffalo or the taking of horses, captives, and spoils, wherever they dared to go, no matter what tribe might claim that country.

That same evening of the twelfth, Agent Fitzpatrick and his wife, Margaret, presented their half-breed infant son, Andrew Jackson Fitzpatrick, to Father DeSmet for baptism by firelight. And the rest of that night proved to be no different from any other during the great council: Scratch found it hard to fall asleep, and if he did, to stay asleep, what with the drums and singing, yelps and shrieks coming from every camp. On the thirteenth followed another day of heated debate on the matter of tribal boundaries, but all matters of business were suspended for September 14—a “powerful medicine day,” as the white men explained to the Indians. DeSmet made use of the vacated council arbor that Sunday, calling to him all those who wished to attend a special religious service he conducted at midday. At the end of the mass, eight more half-breed children were brought forward for baptism, along with five adults who also wished to receive this holiest of blessings from the renowned black-robe.

For another two days those territorial debates raged on, until three of the old fur men stepped in to prove their worth in this weighty process. In their youth they had crossed most every river and stream, mountain range and pass, in those trackless regions claimed by one tribe or another. Fitzpatrick, Bridger, and Robert Campbell too talked and wheedled and argued their position nonstop, until by the evening of the sixteenth the tribes had relented and Superintendent Mitchell could finally ink the lines across his great maps, tribal divisions and territories that the mighty warrior bands had agreed to. The following morning, the seventeenth, the delegates
gathered to watch Mitchell, then Fitzpatrick, sign the historic document. That done, they began the most solemn process of all, as the chiefs and headmen of each band came forward in small groups to affix their marks, each one a crude cross, inscribed beside their names printed on the white man’s treaty. When all the Indians had completed the ceremony, the remaining government officials gathered to add their signatures as witnesses to the compact.

“I reckon you ought’n sign too,” Fitzpatrick whispered to Bass as Robert Meldrum got to his feet and joined the other white dignitaries at the table.

Shaking his head, Titus declared, “Been so long, I don’t know if I’d ’member how to write my name, Tom. ’Sides that, this here’s a day for others to shine. I ain’t done nothin’ to make this treaty, not the way you an’ Bridger worked. It’s your day to stand in the sun, Tom Fitzpatrick!”

“We still got one matter to attend to,” the white-haired agent announced as the last of the witnesses stepped back from the table.

Mitchell inquired, “What’s that, Major Fitzpatrick?”

“This business between the Cheyennes and the Snakes.”

Staring down at his treaty for a long moment, the superintendent asked, “Do those killings really matter now that both tribes have signed this document?”

Fitzpatrick leaned on the table with both hands, glaring at Mitchell, and said with firmness, “That there paper ain’t worth spit … if these tribes don’t make things right in their hearts for one another.”

After a long sigh, Mitchell asked, “How do you suggest we call for a reconciliation between them after the Cheyennes wantonly killed two of Washakie’s delegates?”

“It’s all up to the Cheyennes,” the agent explained. “So I figger John Smith has to be the one to convince them Cheyennes they’ve got to cover the bodies.”

“C-cover the bodies?” Mitchell repeated. “What do you mean by that?”

“That’s Injun term for the killers making gifts to the relations of the ones they killed,” Fitzpatrick explained as he
waved the Cheyenne squaw-man over to his side. “John, you think you can get them chiefs to understand what they got to do to make things right with the Snakes?”

Smith gnawed on the inside of his cheek a moment, then nodded. “I’ll give it my best try, Fitz.”

By late that afternoon, Smith had convinced the Cheyenne delegates that their best interests lay in settling this grave matter of taking those two Shoshone scalps. Four riders accompanied the white squaw-man to visit Bridger and Washakie in the Snake camp, bringing their invitation to attend a feast. Knowing that the Shoshone did not eat dog, the Cheyenne roasted a pair of young ponies that evening, along with some boiled and crushed corn. On into the night the speeches were made by both tribes, then the pipe was lit and passed around the fire as more than a hundred of the headmen of both bands smoked to their reconciliation. Only then could the presents be brought forth. Cheyenne women were called forward, carrying blankets for the relatives of the two dead Shoshone in way of apology. By accepting the blankets, the Shoshone acknowledged that they accepted this personal expression of regret. And the matter was buried.