The Knickerbocker | Page 9

that
have fallen from my brain during the last three years, but which from
want of quality in them or lack of energy in me, have failed to reach the
dignity of types and ink; I came across a diary kept while hunting
buffalo with the Sac and Fox Indians, some two hundred miles west of
the Mississippi, during the summer of 1842. Finding myself interested
in recurring to the incidents of that excursion, it occurred to me that
matter might be drawn therefrom which would not be without interest
to the public. I have therefore ventured to offer the following for
publication; it being an account of a night passed at the source of the
Checauque, when I did not deem my scalp worth five minute's purchase,
and when I cheerfully would have given ten years of an ordinary life to
have been under the humblest roof in the most desolate spot in the 'land
of steady habits.'
I have said that we were in the country of the Sioux. That our situation
may be understood, I would remark farther, that between the latter and
the confederated tribes of the Sac and Fox Indians, there has been for
the last forty years, and still exists, the most inveterate hostility; the two
parties never meeting without bloodshed. The Government of the

United States, in pursuance of that policy which guides its conduct
toward the various Indian tribes, for the preservation of peace between
these two nations, have laid out between them a strip of country forty
miles in width, denominated the 'Neutral Ground,' and on to which
neither nation is permitted to extend their hunting excursions.
On the occasion of which I write, the Sacs and Foxes, having been
disappointed in finding buffalo within their own limits, and perhaps
feeling quite as anxious to fall in with a band of Sioux as to obtain
game, had passed the 'Neutral Ground,' and were now several days'
journey into the country of their enemies.
For the last two days we had marched with the utmost circumspection;
our spies ranged the country for miles in advance and on either flank,
while at night we had sought some valley as a place of encampment,
where our fires could not be seen from a distance. Each day we had
perceived signs which indicated that small parties of Sioux had been
quite recently over the very ground we were travelling. The whites in
the company, numbering some eleven or twelve, had remonstrated with
the Indians, representing to them that they were transgressing the orders
of the government, and that should a hostile meeting take place they
would certainly incur the displeasure of their 'great father' at
Washington.
Heedless of our remonstrances they continued to advance until it
became evident that the Sioux and not buffalo were their object. The
truth was, they felt themselves in an excellent condition to meet their
ancient enemy. They numbered, beside old men and the young and
untried, three hundred and twenty-five warriors, mounted and armed
with rifles, many of them veterans who had seen service on the side of
Great Britain in her last war with this country, and most of whom had
served with Black Hawk in his brief but desperate contest with the
United States. Moreover, they placed some reliance on the whites who
accompanied them; all of whom, except my friend B----, of Kentucky,
one or two others and myself, were old frontier men, versed in the arts
of Indian warfare.
As for myself, I felt far from comfortable in the position in which I

found myself placed; hundreds of miles from any white settlement, and
expecting hourly to be forced into a conflict where no glory was to be
gained, and in which defeat would be certain death, while victory could
not fail to bring upon us the censure of our government. The idea of
offering up my scalp as a trophy to Sioux valor, and leaving my bones
to bleach on the wide prairie, with no prayer over my remains nor stone
to mark the spot of my sepulture, was far from comfortable. I thought
of the old church-yard amidst the green hills of New-England, where
repose the dust of my ancestors, and would much preferred to have
been gathered there, full of years, 'like a shock of corn fully ripe in its
season,' rather than to be cut down in the morning of life by the roving
Sioux, and my frame left a dainty morsel for the skulking wolf of the
prairie. I communicated my sentiments to B----, and found that his
views corresponded with mine. 'But,' said he, with the spirit of a
genuine Kentuckian, 'we are in for it, Harry, and we must fight; it will
not do to let these Indians see us