University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

In the often vaunted regions of the Far West,
several hundred miles beyond the Mississippi, extends
a vast tract of uninhabited country, where
there is neither to be seen the log house of the
white man, nor the wigwam of the Indian. It
consists of great grassy plains, interspersed with
forests and groves, and clumps of trees, and watered
by the Arkansas, the grand Canadian, the
Red River, and all their tributary streams. Over
these fertile and verdant wastes still roam the
Elk, the Buffalo, and the wild horse, in all their
native freedom. These, in fact, are the hunting
grounds of the various tribes of the Far West.
Hither repair the Osage, the Creek, the Delaware
and other tribes that have linked themselves
with civilization, and live within the vicinity
of the white settlements. Here resort also,
the Pawnees, the Comanches, and other fierce,
and as yet independent tribes, the nomades of

the prairies, or the inhabitants of the skirts of
the Rocky Mountains. The regions I have mentioned
forms a debateable ground of these warring
and vindictive tribes; none of them presume
to erect a permanent habitation within its borders.
Their hunters and “Braves” repair thither
in numerous bodies during the season of game,
throw up their transient hunting camps, consisting
of light bowers, covered with bark and skins,
commit sad havoc among the innumerable herds
that graze the prairies, and having loaded themselves
with venison and buffalo meat, warily
retire from the dangerous neighbourhood.
These expeditions partake, always, of a warlike
character; the hunters are all armed for action,
offensive and defensive, and are bound to
incessant vigilance. Should they, in their excursions,
meet the hunters of an adverse tribe,
savage conflicts take place. Their encampments,
too, are always subject to be surprised
by wandering war parties, and their hunters,
when scattered in pursuit of game, to be captured
or massacred by lurking foes. Mouldering
skulls and skeletons, bleaching in some dark ravine,
or near the traces of a hunting camp, occasionally
mark the scene of a foregone act of
blood, and let the wanderer know the dangerous
nature of the region he is traversing. It is the purport
of the following pages to narrate a month's
excursion to these noted hunting grounds, through
a tract of country which had not as yet been explored
by white men.

It was early in October, 1832, that I arrived
at Fort Gibson, a frontier post of the Far West,
situated on the Neosho, or Grand River, near its
confluence with the Arkansas. I had been travelling
for a month past with a small party, from
St. Louis, up the banks of the Missouri, and
along the frontier line of agencies and missions,
that extends from the Missouri to the Arkansas.
Our party was headed by one of the commissioners
appointed by the government of the
United States to superintend the settlement of
the Indian tribes migrating from the east to the
west of the Mississippi. In the discharge of his
duties, he was thus visiting the various outposts
of civilization.

And here let me bear testimony to the merits
of this worthy leader of our little band. He was
a native of one of the towns of Connecticut, a
man in whom a course of legal practice and political
life had not been able to vitiate an innate
simplicity and benevolence of heart. The greater
part of his days had been passed in the bosom
of his family and the society of deacons, elders,
and select men, on the peaceful banks of the Connecticut;
when suddenly he had been called to
mount his steed, shoulder his rifle, and mingle

among stark hunters, back woodsmen, and naked
savages, on the trackless wilds of the Far West.

Another of my fellow travellers was Mr. L—,
an Englishman by birth, but descended from a
foreign stock; and who had all the buoyancy
and accommodating spirit of a native of the Continent.
Having rambled over many countries,
he had become, to a certain degree, a citizen of
the world, easily adapting himself to any change.
He was a man of a thousand occupations; a
botanist, a geologist, a hunter of beetles and butterflies,
a musical amateur, a sketcher of no mean
pretensions, in short, a complete Virtuoso; added
to which, he was a very indefatigable, if not
always a very successful, sportsman. Never had
a man more irons in the fire, and, consequently,
never was man more busy or more cheerful.

My third fellow traveller was one who had accompanied
the former from Europe, and travelled
with him as his Telemachus; being apt,
like his prototype, to give occasional perplexity
and disquiet to his Mentor. He was a young
Swiss Count, scarce twenty-one years of age,
full of talent and spirit, but galliard in the extreme,
and prone to every kind of wild adventure.

Having made this mention of my comrades,
I must not pass over unnoticed, a personage
of inferior rank, but of all pervading and prevalent

importance: the squire, the groom, the
cook, the tent man, in a word, the factotum,
and, I may add, the universal meddler and marplot
of our party. This was a little swarthy,
meagre, French Creole, named Antoine, but familiarly
dubbed Tonish: a kind of Gil Blas of
the frontiers, who had passed a scrambling life,
sometimes among white men, sometimes among
Indians; sometimes in the employ of traders,
missionaries and Indian agents; sometimes mingling
with the Osage hunters. We picked him
up at St. Louis, near which he has a small farm,
an Indian wife, and a brood of half blood children.
According to his own account, however,
he had a wife in every tribe; in fact, if all this
little vagabond said of himself were to be believed,
he was without morals, without caste, without
creed, without country, and even without
language; for he spoke a jargon of mingled
French, English and Osage. He was, withal, a
notorious braggart, and a liar of the first water.
It was amusing to hear him vapour and gasconade
about his terrible exploits and hair-breadth
escapes in war and hunting. In the midst of
his volubility, he was prone to be seized by a
spasmodic gasping, as if the springs of his jaws
were suddenly unhinged; but I am apt to think
it was caused by some falsehood that stuck in
his throat, for I generally remarked that immediately
afterwards there bolted forth a lie of the
first magnitude.

Our route had been a pleasant one, quartering
ourselves, occasionally, at the widely separated
establishments of the Indian missionaries, but in
general camping out in the fine groves that border
the streams, and sleeping under cover of a
tent. During the latter part of our tour we had
pressed forward in hopes of arriving in time at
Fort Gibson, to accompany the Osage hunters
on their autumnal visit to the Buffalo prairies.
Indeed the imagination of the young Count had
become completely excited on the subject. The
grand scenery and wild habits of the prairies
had set his spirits madding, and the stories
that little Tonish told him of Indian braves and
Indian beauties, of hunting buffaloes and catching
wild horses, had set him all agog for a dash
into savage life. He was a bold and hard rider,
and longed to be scouring the hunting grounds.
It was amusing to hear his youthful anticipations
of all that he was to see, and do, and enjoy,
when mingling among the Indians and participating
in their hardy adventures; and it was
still more amusing to listen to the gasconadings
of little Tonish, who volunteered to be his faithful
squire in all his perilous undertakings; to
teach him how to catch the wild horses, bring
down the buffalo, and win the smiles of Indian

princesses;—“And if we can only get sight of
a prairie on fire!” said the young Count—“By
Gar, I'll set one on fire myself!” cried the little
Frenchman.