14 AX AXdl.KR'S REMINISCENCES. 



Bob Stiles obtained leave for us to join Charley Bent's freighting outfit at 

 Westport, Missouri (now Independence), on condition that we would obey orders 

 and feed fair, because we were going through the Indian country, and some of 

 the reds were bad. There were some seventy wagons in the train, and a per- 

 sonnel of perhaps 120 men, of whom some forty were mounted as a horse guard 

 quite a formidable body. We were bound for Bent's Fort, on the upper Arkansas 

 (now the town of Williams), and were not out many days before we met up 

 with about 3,000 Comanches and Kiowas men, women and children, who had 

 been waiting for weeks at the Great Bend of the Arkansas River for annuities 

 from a tardy Indian agent, and were a-heap mad. I wrote up the story of that 

 lively adventure in the October issue of Harper's Magazine for 1857 ; so I need 

 not amplify here, except to say that to the long category of "Indians I have 

 met" we added the names of Yellow Bear, a friendly Arapaho, who was with 

 the Bent outfit, and Chief Shaved Head, of the Comanches, who came near having 

 his windpipe cut with a cheese knife in Bent's hands, when some of his mounted 

 warriors came charging down on us too near to be pleasant. The old fellow, you 

 see, had headed a charge of his warriors the day before, and his pony being 

 tough-bitted, carried him into our lines without his consent. He proved a valuable 

 hostage thereafter, and perhaps saved the day for us. Really, we had a running 

 fight of skirmishing, tactics and maneuvers for twenty miles, which lasted 

 four days. 



The experience, however, did not feaze me, and it was not many months 

 before I was on the Red River Trail, in Northern Minnesota, with George F. 

 Brott's party to open navigation between the headwaters of the Minnesota River 

 and the Red River of the North. That was in 1858, the first year of statehood, 

 and five years before the famous Sioux massacre. This was many years before 

 the ''Fishing Tourist" (1873) and "Sportsman's Gazetteer" (1877) brought the 

 angling literature of America to its climax, and was so attested by Baird, Gill 

 and Jordan at the time. 



How comprehensive and aptly Mr. Roosevelt's history has been presented in 

 bibliography may be ascertained by reference to the columns of the London Field 

 (three papers) for June and July, 1887, under the title of ''Angling Literature 

 of America," above given. The compiler, in his review of the period indicated, 

 submits to reviewers that "nothing like a comprehensive manual of angling was 

 published until 1864, when Thad. Norris' 'American Angler's Book' and Robert 

 B. Roosevelt's 'Game Fish of the North' both came out." 



That was during the year of the first lease of a Canadian salmon river, the 

 Nepisiguit. Roosevelt's book made especial reference to that famous stream in 

 its chapter on salmon fishing, itself a new revelation to the fraternity of fisher- 

 men. How to fish for salmon, the implements to be used, and a description of 

 the sport, had never been presented before. The volume was a godsend to anglers, 

 for it included the technology of angling, fly-fishing, tackle-making, entomology, 

 fish culture, camping out, etc. It described new devices, new methods, and new 

 fields of sport which had come into the purview during the sixteen years that 

 had intervened since the enterprising J. J. Brown had prepared his "American 

 Anglers' Guide" (1849). Moreover, it introduced to notice new species of fishes 

 not previously regarded for sport and identified others which had been in doubt. 

 The whole subject was in chaos at that time, scientifically considered. Experts 

 had not even quite determined whether a brook trout and a samlet (parr} were 



