6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[•TAN. 5, 1895. 
enthusiastic gunner will remain out all day, picking up 
the scattering' birds that come along. 
Marsh shooting is also very good here. A large pond 
lying directly back of the beach affords good opportunity 
to secure an occasional wild goose, as well as quite 
frequently black and teal duck, small birds — yellow 
legs, jack snipe and plovers — are also quite plenty in 
the^'r season. 
Partridge shooting is very good and an occasional 
woodcock or quail is found, as there is quite a heavy 
growth of woods near by. 
With all our experience in eating the various kinds 
of birds we have never eaten a "coot stew." The 
smaller birds are broiled, the large ones roasted, and if 
you want a really fine dish let us recommend a thor- 
oughly well cooked young grey coat or a more delicate 
black duck. But remember that three things are very 
necessary in cooking sea fowl : Plenty of salt, plenty of 
black pepper and plenty of onion, and then there will be no 
complaint of their tasting fishy. We seldom parboil a 
bird, as it is liable to leave the fle'h too dry; but 
depend rather on long and moderatey slow baking, keep- 
ing the bird well basted. The old farmers about here 
consider loons, which they parboil and then bake, a 
great dish, exceeding- to their taste even the domestic 
fowls ; but as a general thing the gunners do not care 
-for them. The coots sometimes bed off the coast here, 
and if left undisturbed for awhile afford great sport for 
the gunners and give excellent opportunity for some 
large bass. There is usually a ready market for all the 
birds and the fine feathers secure a ready sale, to say 
nothing of the delight derived from the sport itself. 
Portsmouth, K H. Mxlo. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The West of t^e Present and the Past. 
UNCLE BILL HAMILTON. 
Chicago, 111. Dec. 32. — He lives, as I have said 
before, by the side of the great Yellowstone, whose 
green waters whisper up all kinds of things to the cabin 
window, and over Uncle Bill Hamilton's little home 
floats a tattered flag. Uncle Bill is getting old now, 
beyond the limit set for the average man, but he is still 
straight as ?n arrow, and there is fire in him yet, if 
you only can tret him talking and thinking of the old 
times in the West. It is easier to set him to think than 
to get him to talk, but he was kind to us, and in his 
quiet fashion told us many things. One would be sorry 
to report him inaccurately in even the least detail, and 
if any word of what he told us is not said as he said it 
he will pardon the error, for the wish is really to give 
the readers of the Pobest and Stream: a little news about 
the life of a genuine old-timer, faithful in every respect 
and vaunting in no wise. Uncle Bill has had little 
newspaper talk made over him because he has never 
wanted it, but has sought to avoid it. As modest as a 
girl ought to be, he has set an example the direct 
opposite of that of most or many would-be old-timers, 
and has kept out of print all he could. He has never 
yet sent me that picture of himself which he promised, 
because he is afraid it would get printed, and probably 
it would. But while I ask him to exclude himself from 
the notoriety-loving class of ' ' Scouts, ' ' Wild West posers 
and long-haired people for whom he has so ready and 
thorough a contempt, I beg him also to exclude Forest 
and Stream from the general class of sensation-loving 
newspapers. Before the Forest and Stream family 
Uncle Bill can come and talk without reserve, because 
fhey are the right sort, and have no use for pretenders, 
■hut love a man of actual deeds. 
Hamilton's H'storv. 
In Uncle Bill's light hair, blue eyes and'florid com- 
plexion one can still see the Anglo-Saxon trace. The 
dare-devils of the forest, who followed the life for the 
adventure of it and not for the commercial gain mostly 
had Saxon in their ancestry, unchanged by generations, 
perhaps, of American ancestors. Uncle Bill was entitled 
to be called both American and English. That he was 
of English birth you could tell by his accent even to-day. 
That he was an American you could tell by his talk and 
by the tattered flag whose colors are never lowered 
from above his cabin on the Yellowstone. As a matter 
of fact. Bill Hamilton was born outside of America, of 
English parents, perhaps in England. He came to New 
Orleans more than 70 years ago, when he was a child 
two and a half years of age. There is a story that once 
he served in the English navy, but he says little of that, 
and probably got tired of it. At any rate, he drifted 
West, just as naturally as water runs down hill. At the 
tender age of twelve we find him out at a trading sta- 
tion, where Laramie now is. He was for a time a 
protege of Bill Williams, one of the border characters^ 
and Williams thought much of him. It was only a 
short time after his appearance at the post before the 
young Hamilton showed his great national aptitude for 
the "sign language" of. the Indians. (He has long been 
known as an authority on sign talk, and probably no 
white man ever surpassed him in facility in the 
unspoken language. ) " Mark my words, fellows, ' ' Bill 
Williams used to say/.' 'this boyj.s going to beat us all 
at the sign talk. " 
Hamilton as a Sign-Talker! 
He'did beat them all, r and became known to scientists 
who were interested in this strange and universal 
language of the American races. 
* "I once met in California years ago," said Bill 
Hamilton to me, "a scientific gentleman who had 
traveled a great deal in South America. He told me 
that he had learned the sign language of some of those 
tribes, and when I heard that I began to talk with him 
in the sign talk of the North American Indians. We 
found that we could converse pretty well, in fact, "get 
along and make ourselves perfectly understood. He 
told me that he thought the sign language must be uni- 
versal on both continents. 
'"' "There were more scientific men came and talked 
with me over this and some years ago they sent me up 
into British America to go among the tribes there and 
try to learn what was the beginning of this sign 
language, and where it came from. I found that I could 
talk with all those strange tribes, but I did not learn 
where the sign talk began. They would tell me. 'Our 
father had it, and their fathers gave it to them. ' 
Then fhev would make the sj>n nf 'ice,' and of 'dog,' 
and of 'sledare, ' and point to the Northwest and stretch 
points of the fingers of their opposite hands as far apart 
as they could and say, 'ee-ee-ee-ee. ' meaning a 'very 
long time. ' That was all they could say about it, but 
they seemed to think that the sign language came with 
their fathers across a frozen sea to the Northwest. " 
Even to-day, when Uncle Bill meets Indians with 
whom he wishes to converse be usually talks with his 
hands to t v em. It is an interesting sight to see them 
sit down thus, often for an hour or more, steadily talk- 
ing and never sayinsr a word. The rapid motions of 
the arms, hands and fingers are graceful and interesting 
to the last deeree. If you will notice Uncle Bill when 
you speak with him you will see that he uses a great 
many gestures, especially for a quiet and self -restrained 
man. Undoubtedly this is a survival of habit from 
the old days, when he traded and talked with his 
fingers so long and so generally. I can refer all scientists 
interested in this fascinatinsr studv to Uncle Bill Ham- 
ilton, who is to-day no doubt the best aivthority on the 
sign speech of the American tribes. 
In those old days Bill Hamilton came to be an Indian 
in every respect of practice and habit. He lived with 
them, rode with them, hunted with them and followed 
their customs in every way, even to those of costume. 
He was widely known among the various Indian tribes, 
and universallv respected by them. The Indians always 
said he was the only white man they ever knew, who 
could ride over the plains day in and day out, naked 
except for "the. breech-clout, and" never be burned or 
blistered by the sun. 
Hamilton as Explorer, 
Uncle Bill was on the niacins sixty years ago, and 
that means a great deal. What days those must have 
been ! How puny are the deeds of our hunters to-day> 
how narrow the "-wilderness" in which they perform! 
California in '49 Uncle Bill took in as an incident, but 
he cared little for gold. He pushed on to the wilder 
North, and always respected and trusted bv those who 
knew him, notably by the officers of the U. S. Armv, 
he fTled various terms as scout, guide and hunter. He 
was emnloved by the army commandant then stationed 
at the chief Oregon post to cross the Boekies to the east 
and thence go north in order to feel the disposition of 
the. tribes (of what is now Montana), whether friendly 
or hostile. Bill had with him one companion whose 
name I have not now with me. These two men. abso- 
lutely alone, away back in the days before Montana had 
been dreamed of as a gold field, crossed the continental 
range, working over the rough Coeur D'Alenes and 
thence southwest, working east of the range as low 
down as what is now called Gold Creek. They crossed 
the rich erold fields which were later developed, but 
knew nothing of gold, cared nothinsr for it. Then 
they went north, keeping east of the Rockies, getting 
beyond the St. Mary's country, well up into the British 
possessions. Thev had loner since developed the dispo- 
sition of the tribes and found them about all full of 
fight and scarce of friendship. From their nortbern- 
most'point thev went back southeast. "Erom there to 
Lake Pend d 'Orei lie. " said Uni^e Bill, "we had a 
hard" time. We "^st about all" we had and barely made 
the lake. We had an Indian fight every day. We got 
so used to it that we looked on it as a matter of course. 
I don't know how men came through such trips, but 
thev did in those days. We shot and ran ourselves out 
of the country. Of course, we were fine rifle shots, 
and the Indians never were as brave as some writers 
have made them out to be. I never went much on the 
'heroic bravery of the red 'man' that we read about and 
never did like Injuns r much, anvhow. " In this way 
at least, Hamilton got to Lake Pend d 'Oreille, though 
I believe his friend was killed before that. Hamilton 
got through all right, after crossing the lake and made 
to his 'commanding officer a report which was of the 
greatest value and which governed army action very 
largely. Together Uncle Bill and I hung over a big 
map while he traced with his loner forefinger the line of 
his path in those old, old days, talking to me the while 
in his low, monotonous, even tone of voice, as if we 
were speaking of a journey some one had made with a 
cow outfit the year before. I could feel a little of the thrill 
I used to feel when as a boy I read about Daniel Boone. 
As Frc-fer Sheriff, 
The whole of that great stretch of country betwee 11 
the Pacific coast and the Missouri river seems to hav 6 
been roamed in the old days bv these men of the wilde 1 * 
West, the West of the past. The hunter was here thi R 
year, perhaps the next year with a tribe far away. O^ 
course, Uncle Bill — who in those days wasn't Uncle 
Bill yet; — had varying fortunes. Sometimes he was 
rich, sometimes he was poor. His occupations often 
changed. He was what his environments demanded. 
But always he seemed to be respected as a square man, 
so say other old-timers who knew him, and always also 
feared as a man who would fight a-plenty when the 
time came. In course of time he came to be sheriff of 
Choteau County, Montana. He was sheriff in the 
wildest davs of old Fort Benton. There used to be so 
many Indians killed out there that the United States 
Government sent out a peace commission to inquire about 
it. That was in Bill's regime. The commission was a 
real nice" lot of men, and in great earnest about their 
mission. They were alUin full session one day when 
there was a great, cry of "Injuns" and a galloning of 
horses down" the street and much shooting. The pro- 
cession was led by Bill Hamilton in his favorite cos- 
tume — that is to say, nothing at r all — who* was riding 
bareback and pining for a fight. They do say that the 
Indian fight was bogus, got up to scare the commis- 
sioners out. "And some do say that the commissioners 
were candidly told that 'they would be hung if they 
stayed. On these points Uncle Bill r saith not. Any- 
how, the "commission adjourned, and the steamer!was 
very soon carrying them back down the river. 
Bill Hamilton's Duel. 
I suppose no human being ever had a grander physi- 
cal constitution than Bill Hamilton, and greater natural 
powers of endurance. His feats, in this line axe quoted 
even to-day along the Yellowstone. It was a favorite 
thing for him to straighten up, after a whirl with the 
boys, by getting into a redhot sweat, then stripping 
naked and jumping through a hole in the ice into the 
river (a very good way, I should think). This he 
learned of the Indians, but he was the only white man 
who kept it up as a pleasant pastime, and the old-time 
men speak of him now with a shiver. Once a man, an 
Englishman, I believe it was, anyhow some stranger 
who had rather stilted ideas about affairs of honor, got 
offended at some prank of Bill and challenged him to 
fight a duel. In a country where duels usually began 
synchronously with the challenge this struck Bill as 
being rather funny, and he accepted promptly; naming 
the conditions himself. The contestants were to fight 
that night by moonlight in the street. Both were to be 
stark naked and were to fight with swords or knives if 
swords could not be found. Before fighting each man 
was to jump four times, naked, through the ice into 
the Missouri river (it was in the winter), four holes 
having been cut for each man. The entire town turned 
out to see the fight. The challenger was game and 
stripped and took the plunge into the icy bath, the 
water catching him above the waist. The first dip was 
enough to take all the fight out of him, and he crawled 
out, shivering. 
"Git into your next hole!" shouted Bill, 
who was standing in the water with his head just 
showing over the ice. "Git in or I'll claim the fight !" 
' ' Then t-t-ake your old fight, ' ' chattered the other. 
"I w-w -won't fight t-t-this way to please no man!" 
So he broke and ran up the street in the moonlight, 
with Bill chasing him, swinging his sword around his 
head and uttering yells of triumph. This heroic battle 
has never before been described, but it is worthy of the 
wild days and the wild men of the past. You can't get 
Uncle Bill to talk much about that duel now, but he is 
older and more dignified nowadays. 
Pursuit of a ' Savidge." 
Another episode of the old days which I had to get 
from a friend of Bill (Liver-eating Johnson, another 
Montana character, of whom I must say something) still 
further illustrates the eccentric personal habits of Mr. 
Hamilton in the past. 
"We wuz all kind of having a good time at a saloon 
one evening, ' ' said Liver-eating Johnson, ' ' and Bill 
wuz, as usual when he wuz feelin' good, without no 
clothes on. He had crawled into a back room, sort of 
store room, and wuz fast asleep in there with his head 
sort of restin' on a cake of ice fer a piller. All at once 
in comes a bad man, with plenty of guns and a big jag. 
He begins to shoot around and make trouble and be real 
annoyin'. He runs about everybody out of the place 
and not wantin' to kill the feller nor see any of my 
friends get into trouble I steps back into the back 
room to wake Bill up. 'Bill,' says I, laying my 
hand on him and sort of laughin,' 'you better git up; 
they's a savidge out there that's shore bound to kill 
everybody round yer. ' Bill he didn't rightly understand 
me, ' I reckon, or else he woke kind, of dazed, not 
knowin' just what was goin' on. When I said that he 
just jumped up on to his feet at one motion and he 
grabs the first thing convenient, which happened to be 
a big cheese knife and out he goes on the full jump 
into" the other room where this yer bad man wuz. Well, 
when this feller sees what wuz comin' — a long, slim, 
naked man wavin' a long knife round his head — he wuz 
scared the worst I ever seed a man git scared. He just 
dropped his gun and run with Bill after him. 'Where 
is the savidge? Show me the savidge!' Bill wuz 
a-hollerin, ' 'I'll fix the blame savidge !' I thought I'd 
die a-laughin' at the way that feller run. I'll bet he 
thought he wuz among savidges hisself 1" 
Good Shot. 
Our friend W. J. Dixon writes from Cimarron, Kan. : 
' ' I killed a buck antelope that weighed 125 pounds 
after his entrails were removed. I shot at his heart 
and hit him in the ear, But I got him, wind was blow- 
ing hard. My horses are fat" and very unruly. I am 
going to Colorado now to eat chile and converse with 
Mexican ladies. . Tell the Hon. W. Mussey if he will 
go I will share both chile and conversation with him. 
A man told me he was one of the best men in camp 
he ever saw. ' ' 
■ It will be observed that Mr. Dixon is not losing any 
of the dead shot propensities of his earlier days. ' There 
-s no better place to hit an antelope than in theear. 
Another Man in the Mackenzie Country, 
Count V. E. de Sainville, of Paris, is a lucky man. 
He has had a wilderness experience of a very genuine sort 
up in the Mackenzie country and the wild northwest, 
and which will before many years be hard of duplica- 
tion. Before long the wealthy men of adventurous turn 
of mind will be advertising in Forest and Stream, 
"AVanted ; some Wild Country. " The newspaper which 
interviewed the traveler speaks of his experiences as fol- 
lows : 
Count do Sainville left Edmonton in 1888 and has spent the 
past six years in the Mackenzie territory, arrived at San Fran- 
cisco on Oct. 29 by the steam whaler Je.nnette. "I did not inten i 
to stay any length of time." said the Count, "hut when I got bo 
fur north' and found that so little was known of the country, I 
d cided to turn explorer. I had. the heat maps with me, but I 
found many inaccuracies in them. These I corrected aa I de- 
scended th« great river of the north, and my notes will 
make material changeB in the geography. I expected to find 
winters in the north long and wearisome, but I was mistaken. 
1 like them better each year. There is no more ideal place For a 
hunter than along the l orth coast of North America. I found 
plenty to do. Deer were plenty, and while not iraming I was 
studying lan 'ua e. I discovered that Esquimaux Lake is merely 
a chain of small lakes, beginning not far from the Mackeuzie 
River, about 300 miles s nth of the nrnulh, running in a north- 
easterly direction and emptying into the Arctic Ocean near Cape 
Bathurst. One summer I explored the delta at the mouth of 
the Mackenz : e and I found many inaccuracies in the maps and 
charts. The creat river itself i- some distance from the place 
assigned to it on the maps. New islands are beintrfnrmed at the 
mouth. When Mackenzie discovered the I'iver about 100 vears 
ago, he reported clear water north of Holket Island. Now he 
won'd have to pass many islands north of that island t<> find 
clear water. The river is" a tremendous stream-one of the 
groatestin the world. The quantitv of sedimen» itcarries down 
Fa enormous. One summer was spent in exploring the conn iry 
west Of the* Mackenzie. I started put as soon as the snow lelt 
the ground, with jwonatiyeB, and ascended the Peel Biy er as 
