While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Washakie, A Shoshone Chief, the Friend of the
White Man
The Shoshone Indians
lived long ago in the Rocky Mountains, but they have gradually moved westward until now
they live on the western side, where there are two wonderful springs which send water
eastward and westward to flow into our two great oceans. The water from one flows through
the Yellowstone Park to the Missouri River, the cascades, flows smoothly for one hundred
and fifty miles till it reaches the Pacific Ocean.
Because these Indians live long the banks of the winding Snake
River, they are sometimes called "Snakes," but Shoshone is their Indian name.
As long ago as 1636 Washington Irving tells us that Captain
Bonneville met Shoshone Indians on his way to the Pacific Coast. Even then the chiefs came
together, smoked the peace pipe, burying their tomahawks and made up their minds to be
good, peaceable Indians.
A tribe of
Indians usually takes its character from the
head chief. If he is a man who cares for his
people, thinks for them, and leads them,
then they follow and do what he says.
Washakie was such a chief, and his people loved and followed him.
He had a large country, four hundred miles square, called the wind River Reservation, and
here he grouped his Indians in small villages about a beautiful spring of hot water which
always took off this outer fur coat, which he did not need except in the open air.
The country where these Indians lived was very cold indeed. One
of the stage-drivers, John Hanson, always tied shawls around his legs before he started on
a trip, and he told me once that Bill Snooks, who drove the stage before he took it, froze
both his legs when it was thirty degrees below zero, and that was nothing unusual; so the
Indians were glad to wear furs to keep them warm.
Now there was a great deal of gold in the mountains where these Indians lived, and Sioux,
Shoshones, Cheyennes, Crows, and others all agreed to sell their land, which was valuable
for mining, to our government, and go where there was no gold, but good water and plenty
of game.
"Washington" agreed to pay the Indians for their land, and they moved away as
they had promised, but the money did not come. The Indians all around Washakie had been
sometimes friends to the white men and sometimes not, but when the money did not come they
were ready to fight. They said: "You white men do not keep your promises."
Washakie was the only one who seemed to understand that Washington was far away, and that
the money must be voted by Congress before it could be paid. He would not fight, so the
other Indians were angry with him, and a band of Crows attacked Washakie and his Indians.
-Now Washakie was a friend to white men, but he met the Crows in battle, drove them
northward, and they were glad to run away as fast as they could, leaving their lodge poles
behind them; so you see he could fight when he had to.
I often met this good Chief and we were fast friends. Once when I went through the
Yellowstone Park he told me of his latest battle. The Sioux Indians had been
determined to break the power of the Shoshones, to defeat them in
battle, and carry them off captive. Led by young Red Cloud, the son of the famous war
chief, a band of Sioux came upon Washakie, but he had so drilled his men that they held
every pass through the mountains, and fought so hard that the Sioux were obliged to give
up, particularly as their young chief, Red Cloud, fell in the last attack. Washakie
received praise from the Indian department for the ability with which he kept his Indians
together, and the help he gave our officers and soldiers.
He was always glad to see me, and in the Yellowstone Park sent Shoshone Jack with a band
of Indians to ride just out of sight on all sides of us as a guard. We were as safe in
that wild country with them around us as we would have been anywhere else in
America.
When Washakie was old, and his hair was very white, his eldest son, Washakie, was killed,
not in battle but in a drinking-place. Some one gave him whisky, and when he was drunk he had a fight with a white man and was killed. Then the old Chief Washakie
covered his head and refused to be comforted. He said: "My Indians have always been
good. They are not lazy like the Arapahoe who drink whisky. [The Shoshones have a great
contempt for the Arapahoe.] And my son is dead. For him to die in battle would have made
me sad, but for him to die like an Arapahoe Indian breaks my heart." For a long time
he grieved, and ever afterward kept his head covered to remind himself and his friends of
his deep sorrow, not because his son was gone, but because he had passed away in disgrace,
as no Shoshone Indian should, to the Spirit Land.
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