nemy than Crow or Cree has lately come in
contact with the Blackfeet--an enemy before whom all his stratagem, all
his skill with lance or arrow, all his dexterity of horsemanship is of no
avail. The "Moka-manus" (the Big-knives), the white men, have pushed up
the great Missouri River into the heart of the Blackfeet country, the
fire-canoes have forced their way along the muddy waters, and behind them
a long chain of armed posts have arisen to hold in check the wild roving
races of Dakota and the Montana. It is a useless struggle that which
these Indians wage against their latest and most deadly enemy, but
nevertheless it is one in which the sympathy of any brave heart must lie
on the side of the savage. Here, at the head-waters of the great River
Missouri which finds its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico-here, pent up
against the barriers of the "Mountains of the Setting Sun," the Blackfeet
offer a last despairing struggle to the ever-increasing tide that hems
them in. It is not yet two years since a certain citizen soldier of the
United States made a famous raid against a portion of this tribe at the
head-waters of the Missouri. It so happened that I had the opportunity of
hearing this raid described from the rival points of view of the Indian
and the white man, and, if possible, the brutality of the latter--brutality
which was gloried in--exceeded the relation of the former. Here is
the story of the raid as told me by a miner whose "pal" was present in
the scene. "It was a little afore day when the boys came upon two
redskins in a gulch near-away to the Sun River" (the Sun River flows into
the Missouri, and the forks lie below Benton). "They caught the darned
red devils and strapped them on a horse, and swore that if they didn't
just lead the way to their camp that they'd blow their b---- brains out;
and Jim Baker wasn't the coon to go under if he said he'd do it--no, you
bet he wasn't. So the red devils showed the trail, and soon the boys came
out on a wide gulch, and saw down below the lodges of the Pagans. Baker
just says, 'Now, boys, says he, 'thar's the devils, and just you go in
and clear them out. No darned prisoners, you know; Uncle Sam ain't agoin'
to keep prisoners, I guess. No darned squaws or young uns, but just
kill'em all, squaws and all; it's them squaws what breeds'em, and them
young uns will only be horse-thieves or hair-lifters when they grows up;
so just make a clean shave of the hull brood. Wall, mister,