60 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



General Geo. W. Wingate in their respective command of elevens, I took five of 

 the Irish team down to the Nation (Indian Territory then, but now Oklahoma, and 

 the rest of the world), and picked up a good manager, George H. Dorman, at 

 Hannibal, on the Missouri, and a couple of good guides at Chetopah, on the 

 Kansas line, and started for Cabin creek with Capt. Case and Bill Orme after deer. 

 We had been sidetracked from the "M. K. and T." at Shell City. Mo., after quail 

 and sage hens and others. We stopped over with Mr. O. Duck, but market gunners 

 were not after him. John Rigby, the Dublin gun maker, and Joe Milner, the home 

 stretcher at the 1,000-yard target, are now the only survivors of that party of 

 thirteen, at 75 and 80 years of age. While we waited two days at Chetopah a 

 painted gang of Cherokees rode into town and shot up the saloons at the railway 

 station, and made all passengers in the waiting room kneel down and say their 

 prayers. My riflemen from old Ireland galloped down from the town and ran 

 them off quick. While we were hunting deer among the swales of the rolling 

 prairie a big buck was hit, which ran two miles at least before he fell, and 

 although the hunters followed him on horseback, the buzzards had his eyes and 

 entrails out before they could reach him. They actually began to tear him while 

 he was yet alive. The carcass was black with the birds when the hunters came up ; 

 and the air was filled with hundreds, and more constantly arriving from all direc- 

 tions, although up to the moment of the fatal shot two or three only could be seen 

 aloft lazily quartering the sky. Perhaps the most mysterious feature of the whole 

 occurrence was that the birds should detect the predicament of the deer the 

 instant he was fatally wounded, and so follow him to the death ; and not only the 

 two or three birds of the vicinity, but the hundreds farther off and remote, who 

 must have either observed the deer from their distant points of view, or else noted 

 the unusual stir and direction of flight of their fellow buzzards. In either case, 

 the evidence is specially conclusive that they were keenly on the alert, and that 

 nothing within their scope of vision, however trifling, escaped their notice. 



By this time the frontier army posts and forts were beginning to fill up with 

 Indian captives, and down at Fort Sill Interpreter Jones gave me a large number 

 of Comanche photos, which I sold to the U. S. Government since 1900 for James 

 Mooney to use in writing up the wild Indians as they were. I have a couple of 

 large Prang's lithographs in glass and gilt frames in the ethnological gallery of our 

 new U. S. Museum, which shows two old trappers of the plains on horseback 

 covering their packs of furs from being captured by ten mounted Indians who 

 try to stampede their horses by shaking blankets, yelling and letting arrows fly. 

 They had no guns in those days and the trappers stood them, off with their rifles. 

 In 1877 Capt. R. R. Pratt and Interpreter G. F. Fox had Crazy Horse and his 

 family and some seventy Southwest Apaches and Comanches at Ft. Marion, St. 

 Augustine, in uniform. The smallest Indian, at the tail of the line, was named 

 "Matches," and he was a smart, cheerful match for any of them. He gave a little 

 by-play in the plaza and could shoot arrows and keep six in the air at once by 

 quick dexterity. My venturing among the wild redskins in the reservations was 

 a hazard in the seventies. But I could enjoy the association of Micmacs, Malicetes 

 and Mohawks at random in Canada, who furnished good voyageurs and bois du 

 coureurs for salmon fishers and moose hunters. While sitting in my office in 

 New York my first year Dr. W. F. Carver dropped in fresh from Dakota, where 

 he was born, and shot an Indian arrow into my ceiling overhead to show me how 

 he could shoot a buffalo through the heart on a run. Soon after he and A. Hi. 

 Bogardus had some by-play before the public, shooting glass balls, and Buffalo 

 Bill put up his first big show at Evastina, Staten Island. Those were great events. 



