Sept. 2d, 1890. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



187 



seen the women at work in the hay field. ''He work 

 pretty good. 'Merican woman be no good; he want to 

 put on he's fine clothes and eet round." 



Bidding good-bye to this red-skinned philosopber and 

 his friends, next morning found us early on the trail 

 whicb led nearly due north over an almost level country, 

 bigh and dry, dotted with lakes and plentifully sprinkled 

 with buffalo chips, but the buffalo, alas! were gone for- 

 ever. Occasional settlements of Indiana were found, 

 commonly of two or three tt-epees each, and invariably 

 located on the south or southeast shores of the lovely 

 little lakes which clotted the wide and fertile plain. The 

 reason f < r this is plain when it is remembered that the 

 autumn gales, which drove the prairie fires over all the 

 great Northwest, moved invariablv from northwest to 

 southeast, and while all the young timber growing on the 

 exposed ground was annually burned down to the roots, 

 a little grove of growing timber was often found on the 

 southeast shore of a lake where the lake itself had proved 

 a tire-break, and here the little cornfield of the Sioux 

 women was located, at the edge of the timber where the 

 gophers and ground squirrels had loosened the earth 

 enough to make cultivation with a hoe possible; and near 

 by the teepee was located in order that a never-ceasing 

 watch might be kept of the growing crop. 



With the very first indication of morning light, all the 

 little children and the very old people repaired to the 

 cornfield and climbed up on scaffolds, where little bowers 

 were erected on poles above the tops of the corn stalks, 

 and placed at short distances apart through the corn, and 

 here for the whole of the long summer day watch was 

 kept to protect the precious corn from marauding black- 

 birds; and the weird monotonous cry of the watchers, in 

 the cracked voice of age or the shrill note of childhood, 

 formed one of the most peculiar and striking phases of the 

 Avild life of the red man of the plains. 



The study of wild life among the Sioux was, to the 

 writer, one of ceaseless interest. One could not be long 

 indifferent to the spectacle of a people struggling against 

 adverse circumstances with the most dogged persistence, 

 when the terrible loss of the buffalo was only just begin- 

 ning to be felt, and when every pound of meat of what- 

 ever kind not needed for immediate use was carefully 

 husbanded for the coming of rigorous winter, with an 

 industry tiresome to contemplate; and all this with the 

 most pitiable ignorance of the superior methods of the 

 white people, together with a childish inability to adapt 

 themselves to their new surroundings. 



On our return we stopped for a day at Ootopaheeda, 

 and were invited to dine with a Sioux woman and her 

 daughter — who, by the way, was the best looking woman 

 we found among the Sioux people — and were feasted on 

 green corn, beans and potatoes, all boiled together; and 

 served up in the tidy teepee just as neatly and cleanly as 

 by the best white cook in America. After dinner the 

 good woman, whose husband was absent on the Big Sioux 

 Rivet, after first vainly trying to trade a span of ponies 

 for the voke of oxen which formed our team, led the way 

 back a few rods from the teepee to show us the cause of 

 her present trouble, and to ask our ad vice and help. Her 

 husband had bought a new wagon of the most utterly 

 worthies* type that ever met my eye; and on almost the 

 first trial of the new vehicle the "dish" in one of the hind 

 wheels had gone the wrong way; and the poor woman 

 had laid the wheel across two logs, and had piled logs 

 and chunks upon the hub to force it back into place 

 again. It was hard to meet the sorrowfully inquiring 

 look with the humiliating explanation that they had been 

 cheated; that the wretched wagon was utterly worthless. 

 But had the wretch who palmed off the "Cheap John" 

 affair upon the ignorant creatures been present, I ques- 

 tion very much if he would afterward havo reached civ- 

 ilization with a whole skin. 



The practice of the most rigid economy was every- 

 where apparent among the Indians. The teepees, made 

 of cloth — and indispensably necessary in their fall jour- 

 neyings from the summer grounds to the place selected 

 for winter quarters, and again during the spring migra- 

 tion back to the corn- raising ground, which as in the pres- 

 ent instance formed their summer home — were entirely 

 too precious and too difficult to replace to be exposed to 

 the weather and allowed to flap against the lodge poles, 

 while the summer wind3 wore them to rags; but they 

 were, instead, most carefully housed for coming need, 

 while the bark teepee which formed their summer home 

 was the most ingeniously constructed affair 1 have ever 

 found among the Indians. In my boyhood I had exam- 

 ined with admiration the winter teepeeR of wandering 

 bands of Omaha and Pawnee hunters, formed of bent 

 poles curiout-ly thatched with bundles of slender wild 

 cane which grew in the sloughs on the prairies of western 

 Iowa; yet here was a house still more roomy, comfort- 

 able, aud perfectly formed for a cosy summer house. A 

 row of posts, each the size of a man's thigh, set deeply 

 in the ground, in a circle about 18 or 20ft. in diameter, 

 and about 6ft. high, and from these po^ts short rafters 

 ran up to a circular opening in the center of the roof, 

 which was steep enough to shed rain perfectly; and this 

 opening, as in that of the cloth teepee, was the cbimnev 

 for the escape of the smoke of the fire beneath. Small 

 poles were now bent around the row of posts and the 

 rafters above at short distances apart, and the whole was 

 neatly covered with bark, stripped with wonderful dex- 

 terity and patience from the bhort trunks of the stunted 

 trees which grew along the lake shores, and lashed fast 

 to the structure in the name manner as were the rafters 

 and poles, by means of withes; and as the inside of the 

 bark was invariably turned toward the inside of the 

 lodge, the wal s of the strange structure were clean, and 

 the whole edifice was neat and tidy enough to form a 

 summer home for the most fastidous company bent upon 

 a pleasant summer outing. Of course this house could 

 be built only during the spring when the sap loosened the 

 bark of the growing trees, and one could easily tell 

 Whether Indians were camped within a radius of miles 

 by noticing the tree trunks in the small groves as he 

 passed along. 



Here, too, we found a degree of skill in the pursuit of 

 wildfowl exceeding anything we had ever before ob- 

 served. This, too, was bora of the stern parent necessity. 

 As ammunition carried far into the wilderness, hecomes 

 very valuable, and as in their case, both capital and 

 transportation were exceedingly limited, not a charge of 

 powder or load of shot were to be thrown away, 



They preferred shotguns with long^ barrels and about 

 JS-gaUge as giving the oest results with the small loads 

 they used, while they themselves endeavored to make up 



for the loss of power in the small load used by the most 

 consummate skill and cunning in their approach to the 

 game, which bad been rendered strangely wary by the 

 daily murderous hunting of those who proved their 

 ability to support their families by the chase of the water- 

 fowl alone. 



A lake or slough was aoproached at the time of day 

 when the waterfowl sought their food along the shore, 

 and selecting a bunch of grass or clump of weeds grow- 

 ing near the edge of the bank, while yet the hunter was 

 too far distant to see the water near the most distant 

 shore, he dr pped upon hands and kne^s and crawled 

 toward the lake, using the bunch of grass as a shield, and 

 reaching it peeped through, and without showing any 

 part of his person to a duck or goose at anv point on the 

 lake, scanned carefully the water near his own shore as far 

 as the shore was vi-ible, then marked with his e^e the point 

 where a curve in the shore hid the edge of the lake be- 

 yond from view, and crawling back in his trail to the 

 starting point of his crawling, rose up, and keeping out 

 of sight of all the lake water, walked around until op- 

 posite the point he had selected while creeping, and 

 again choosing some point of cover, repeated the process, 

 and continued this mode of operations until game was 

 observed at some point which could be approached closely 

 enough to make their slaughter with a carefully planned 

 pot-shot an absolute certainty. No amount of toil dis- 

 couraged, and no degree of exposure to the cold dews, 

 which hung from every grass blade and saturated his 

 clothing as he crept along, was sufficient to deter this 

 patient and persevering hunter; and the result of his day's 

 toil was solely and simply a question of whether there 

 were any ducks in the country or not. Assure him of this 

 fact and their death followed inevitably. 



I marveled much at the extreme wildness of the water- 

 fowl when first we reached the lake region inhabited by 

 the Sioux, yet when on our return we stopped at Oo-top- 

 a hee-da and the young Indian who had been my 

 brother's partner the year previous offered to go with us 

 on an el k hunt near the great pipe stone quarry, provided 

 we would stop over a day and give him time to hunt game 

 sufficient to last his family during his absence, and we 

 li»d agreed to do so, right there in the country daily 

 harried and shot over, where I would not have contracted 

 to kill a dozen ducks in the given time, the lynx-eyed 

 little fellow secured forty-two ducks that very day. Con- 

 tinuing on past the long string of lakes with the unpro- 

 nouncable names already given, we reached the shore of 

 a lake named Cha Nopa (or T wo Wood). Here my brother 

 had trapped the year before, and this, indeed, was the 

 most northern limit of his wanderings during the previous 

 year. 



This was the goal of our hopes, toward which the 

 wagon tongue had pointed for many days. 



An immense amount of fur had been gathered here 

 durmg the previous fall by the single white trapper and 

 many Indian comrades, and the supply of furred animals 

 at that time seemed so great that we anticipated a rich 

 harvest. But — 



"The best laid schemes 'o mice an 1 men 

 Gang aft aglee!" 



For a number of reasons, which would take long to ex- 

 plain and which would scarcelv be of interest to the 

 general reader, a trapping ground may be very productive 

 of fur one year and the very next year prove compara- 

 tively barren, and the following season be again pro- 

 ductive. 



At any rate, after having carefully examined all the 

 ground, we sat down in the teepee to hold a very sober 

 council, in the study of the very important question em- 

 bodied in the quaint phraseology of Uncle Remus, "what 

 us gwine to do?" Orin Belknap. 



BOSTON SPORTSMEN'S OUTINGS. 



THE game bird season opened in Massachusetts on the 

 15th, but so far no good bags are reported. The 

 quail, the results of the restocking, are hard to find, the 

 dense foliage still being on the trees and shrubs. Indeed, 

 this foliage is more dense than usual, the result of the 

 extremely rainy weather. In short, there have really been 

 but a couple of sunny days since open season began. E. 

 M. Gillam, of the Boston Advertiser, was out at Arling 

 ton Heights with dog and gun on Saturday, but succeeded 

 in finding no quail. Shore birds have not yet put in a 

 favorable appearance at any of the best gunning resorts 

 along the Massachusetts shore. The Piummer Brothers, 

 of the leather trade, were down at Nantucket for a week, 

 beginning with the open season. They had very little 

 Bu cess. The day they started for home they packed up 

 all their shells in disgust. Their guns they also packed. 

 While waiting f<>r the steamer the air was suddenly alive 

 with birds. Their tuns they could easily ha veunp icbed, 

 but not a single shell had either of them, their whole lot 

 being stowed away in their baggage and that baggage in 

 the hands of the baggage-master. The l e.-ult was the loss 

 of the finest flight of plover they bad seen for years. 

 Moral: Al ways keep both gun and shells handy until well 

 out of the brash. 



Lewis W. De Pass, assistant secretary of the Boston 

 Chamber of Commerce, is spending his vaca ion with 

 aog and gun. N. G. Manson, Jr., of Bellows & Manson, 

 with his friend Ned B.nner, of Cambridge, has returned 

 from his three weeks>' oudng at Richardson Lake, Me. 

 They had remarkably fine fishing. All were taken with 

 the fly. The string weighed 32lbs., and not a trout of 

 less than -Jib. was kept. After this time they scarcely 

 saved one of less weight than lib. They tell the full 

 story of how Mr. Bayard Th .ye.r got the yountr bear in 

 the vicinity of that lake, mentioned in the Forest and 

 Stream last week. It seems that Mr. Thayer, with one 

 of bi» guides, was partridge hunting in the neighborhood 

 of the Cranberry Bog. Mr. Thayer's gun was loaded, 

 both barrels, with fine shot. Suddenly the little bear 

 appeared in a tree This was too great a temptation for 

 the hunters, and one barrel badly wounded the youngster 

 in the paw. He came down out of the tree with a yell, 

 and as the guide was putting him out of his misery with 

 the axe, the old bear sudde tly appeared. She was up on 

 her bind feet in a moment, and was going for the hunters 

 in a manner that badly frightened them. The guide was 

 cautioning Mr, Thayer to make the most of his lemnining 

 cartridge, and if possible to get another into ihe gun, 

 when Thayer's foot tripped over a limb and he fell back- 

 ward, and off went the gun into the air. But with the 

 noise of the discharge and the smell of the powder the 

 enraged old bear was alarmed, and she made off into the 



' woods. To say that both the guide and Mr. Thayer were 

 badly frightened would be to tell a truth that either of 

 them would not care to deny. 



Fly-fishing has been remarkably good thus far in many 

 of the celeorated Maine trout waterp. The trout have 

 not generally been remarkable for size, and yet Mr. Os- 

 good, of Lowell, Mass., has taken a very fine trout at the 

 Upper Dam. This fish weighed 91bs. 2oz. Mr. N. G. 

 Manson, of Boston, saw the trout and has a drawing of 

 it. He says that the fish was taken fairly with the fly. 

 This is remarkable from the fact that such trout are hard 

 to lure to the fly. The fish was taken Sept. 3. A^out the 

 same time Dr. and Mrs. Sheldon, of Topeka. Kansas, 

 caught in one day at Camp Bemis fortv-two trout, the 

 whole weighing 20. bs. Some fortv more were taken near 

 the same place the next day. 



_ Large game is plenty in Maine, and considerable of it 

 is being killed out of season, too. The other day a friend 

 of the Forest and Stream was coming into Boston on 

 the steam train, when he saw only a seat or two away a 

 gentleman exhibiting a slug that had been fired in a rifle, 

 and he overheard the remark that the bullet came from 

 the body of a caribou that the gentleman had jotffc killed 

 m Maine. The first-mentioned gentleman could not 

 catch the name of the locality where the hunter had put 

 in his illegal work. A hunter who kills game out of 

 season in Maine and escapes the law is regarded by the 

 unthinking as a hero when he tells his story in Massa- 

 chusetts. 



A gentleman who has been on a fishing trip in the 

 Rmgeley region stopped on his way in at Andover, and 

 from thence went fishing in Roxburv Pond. He was 

 uietly fishing for bass, when, hearing a splashing in the 

 irection of the shore, be turned his head and saw, as he 

 thinks, a large moose. He did not appear to be alarmed, 

 but browsed around for a while and then disappeared in 

 the woods. But the opinion of hunters and guides of 

 that vicinity is that it was not a moose after all, but a 

 caribou instead. Several large ones of that species of 

 game have sometimes been seen in that vicinity, but 

 moose have not been seen for years. The gentleman had 

 never seen a live moose, and though he was quite confi- 

 dent, yet tracks examined later were like the tracks of 

 the caribou. Special. 

 Boston, Sept. 22. 



CALIFORNIA QUAIL. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In your i sue of Aug. 28 you invite information for the 

 Massachusetts Fibh and Game Protictive Association in 

 relation to California quail, with a view of their intro- 

 duction into Massachusetts, and while regretting that my 

 vi^ws will not be altogether favorable to the enterprise, 

 I hope they will not be entirely useless. My observations 

 of both varieties of California quail, during a residence 

 of twelve years in that State, lead me to think that neither 

 variety like ptrpetual snow even during the winter 

 months, and that the blue or valley quail will avoid snow 

 entirely if possible, and even the mountain quail will 

 seek the b tre t-pots under the hemlocks and other ever- 

 green trees wh. n the more exposed ground about them is 

 covered by snow. I have noticed also that when the 

 Nevada Mountains began being loaded with snow in the 

 early winter at an altitude of five or six thousand feet, 

 then the mountain quail would be more plenty lower 

 down at altitudes oi two and three thousand feet above 

 the sea level; even in sections lying two thousand feet 

 above sea level in California snow seldom falls more than 

 a few inches in depth, and then remains but a few days, 

 and the temperature is seldom lower than 20° or 30°. I 

 found that when the mountain quail were diiven down 

 the mountain to the foothills to an altitude of about two 

 thousand feet by the cold and snow, that then the same 

 causes would send most of the blue quail still fuither 

 down in the valleys entirely beyond the snow line. 



In view of the subject of changing the location of these 

 birds, one must remember that while in Massachusetts 

 the entire width of the State from north to south will 

 show but a slight aifference in temperature, while in 

 California a distance of two or three miles will often show 

 a difference of a thou and feet in altitude, and a corres- 

 ponding change in temperature; hence while in Ca.ifor- 

 nia the birds c-m easily procure a change, in Massachu- 

 setts they would be obliged to endure the constant rigors 

 of an Eaotern winter. While in California these birds 

 may change their locality partly to escape the cold and 

 snow, and pirlly the more readily to obtain food; the 

 first could not be well obviated in Massachusetts while 

 the latter could be well overcome by constant and judi- 

 cious feeding. 



The facts I have named in regard to the inclination of 

 these birds to escape the snow and excessive cold does 

 not conclu ively prove that they can not be acclimated 

 to endure both, for they are exceedingly vigorous and very 

 tenacious of life, especially the blue or valley quail. The 

 mountain quail wuuid be most likely to flourish among 

 hemlock or spruce groves, with an occibion <1 opening of 

 underbrush for cover, while the blue quail would require 

 the open country with an abundance of close, bru-hy 

 cover and patches of tall grass, which the bent grass of 

 the Eastern States would amply supply. I brought a 

 pair of the blue quail from Cilirornia nearly twenty five 

 years ago, intending to release them in my native town 

 in Connecticut, but when I got borne my mother insisted 

 on keeping tnem as pets, which she did for several years 

 in an ordinary wire cage, and they continued healthy 

 and cheerful until by accident the cage fell from an open 

 window and the shock seemed to prostrate them, f< r they 

 soon after died. They never laid while in captivity. I 

 earnestly hope the Massachusetts Association may make 

 the trial of acclimating these birds and racceed, for if 

 they do they will add a rare pleasure to their sport, for 

 both varieties are beautiful birds in every way, and the 

 mountain quail is the finest bird I ever had the pleasure 

 of bagging. A. 

 Haddam, Conn., Sept. 13, 



Forest ant> Stream, Hoi 2.H32. N. V. city, has deseripfcive IUus- 

 trated circulars of W. B. Leilligwell's book, "Wild Fowl Shoot- 

 ing," wMcb will be mailed rrae oo request. The book Is pro- 

 nounced by "Nanit." "Moan," -'Dick 8wiveH«r." "Sybillene" and 

 other competent authorities to be the best treaties on the subject 



wwat. 



