26 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 14, 1905. 
A Buffalo Hunt] with the Comanches 
(Continued from i>age 5 ) 
The squaws do all the work in camp, and a hard part 
of it at times is carrying in the wood. They often have to 
go a mile or more for it, then carry a load that would be 
heavy enough for a pack mule. When that had to be 
done, I always made the chief send ponies to pack it on. 
The chief had a full sized ax here that no one used; 
the squaws could not; they had their small axes; sO' I 
got it and sharpened it up, cut down all the dead trees 
near camp, then set the boys to carrying it in; they 
would do it for me, but would not touch it for their 
mothers or sisters ; and when the squaws were busy, as 
they generally were, I had the boys carry water for them 
also. When I first came here I made the announcement 
that no squaw must be whipped any more. The Comanche 
does not abuse his women as some Indians do ; but a man 
would give his squaw a blow at times when she did not 
suit him. When 1 saw it, I would say : "Stop this, my 
brother. You are a Comanche; let the Cheyennes fight 
squaws; the Cheyennes are dogs. You should only fight 
men." With most of these tribes a squaw will cook a 
meal, then stand while the men and boys eat, then eat 
what is left herself; but a Comanche squaw sits down 
and eats when the men do. 
They have a great respect for the "talking leaves ;" any- 
thing that is written or printed is a talking leaf. I have . 
known a squaw tO' carry around a paper that she had 
found for six months until she had a chance to show it to 
me for me to make it talk. And when I did so, and she 
found that it was only an order from the agent to his 
blacksmith for him to put a lock on some door, she was 
disappointed. While in this camp the chief's squaw one 
evening took a small package out of her work-bag, and 
calling ni the colored boy told him something to tell me. 
He translated everything literally, and asked, "Your sister 
has the talking leaves here. Can they talk to you?" 
"Yes; tell her they can if they speak Americana or 
Mexicana." ■ I read Spanish also. She unrolled a piece of 
buckskin, then took out a book without a cover and 
handed it to me. It was the "Swiss Family Robinson," a 
book written in imitation of "Robinson Crusoe." "Yes," 
I told her, "this talks to me." 
"Then make it talk to us," she said; and calling in as 
many of the men and boys as this lodge would hold, she 
told them to^ sit down and keep still while I made those 
leaves talk. I read a few chapters each night, while the 
negro boy translated it, until we had it all. Anything in it 
that they could not understand I turned into something 
which they could ; as a big canoe for a ship, a squirrel for 
a monkey, and so on. 
Then they wanted to know if I had seen the talking 
leaves in which "the man above" talks to us — the Bible. 
"Yes," I told them, "we all see it." 
"Did we all do what He tells us to do in it?" 
. "No, not often," I told them. 
"Then He kills you, don't He?" 
"No, not always; He has not killed me yet." And the 
boys would laugh. 
The Indians are supposed to be a silent set of people, 
but when among themselves they are talking all the time, 
and a lot of squaws could talk a set of white women blind. 
They have a large number of traditions that they repeat 
over and over again at their cam.p-fires at night; and 
some of the men would always have a new story to tell ; 
generally about something that had happened to him 
"many moons ago," when he came to give a date for it. 
One of our men named Kiowa — he was the bow-maker, 
and was a practical joker also — told one night about one 
of his exploits that will serve to illustrate the caliber 
of their stories. 
"Many moons ago," he said, "I went to hunt the ante- 
lope, but did not find him. He was not at home then, so 
I started to go to my lodge, and when I was riding across 
the prairie I saw a man walking fast a long distance away. 
Then I galloped toward him. 'That is a white man,' I 
says, 'and he has got tobacco ; I have none ; I want some.' 
After a while I came closer, and I see that this man is a 
buffalo soldier who walks a heap [a negro infantryman]. 
Then I says, 'Hello !' and the man looks at me now, then 
starts to run away. Now, this man has a gun; maybe 
he is scared, and maybe he will stop and shoot after a 
while; I don't know. Then soon he looks back at me; 
I am coming fast, and now he throws that gun down, then 
keeps on running. Then I get the gun._ I want to bring 
it to him ana get that tobacco. Then this man gets down 
on his knees and says, 'Oh, Mister Indian, don't shoot 
me.' Then I hold out his gun and say, 'No shoot — give 
me tobacco.' And he says, 'Yes, you go back and leave 
that gun there, then I give you tobacco.' So I laid his gun 
down, then go back; then he picks up his gun, then puts 
down a whole lot of tobacco, then runs again. I get much 
tobacco, then laugh." 
"That buffalo soldier might have shot you, Kiowa," I 
said. 
"No, he can't ; he got no cartridges. _ I see his belt is 
empty, so is his gun; he has shot all his cartridges away 
and hit nothing." 
They have a great respect for "The Man Above," and 
never mention Him without pointing upward. They have 
a superstition for about every day in the year. The chief 
kept his shield on a pole in front of his lodge, and was 
careful not to let any meat or dead animal touch it, for if 
it did he would die in a year. 
A Comanche would starve rather than eat a turkey that 
had its heart cooked with it; if he did, he would turn 
coward. He would freeze rather burn a stick that had 
ever been used as a lodge pole; if he did, he or his 
friends would die. I had seen other tribes burn them, 
and had burned them myself when destroying hostile 
camps, and I told them so. 
"Yes," they said, "it is good medicine for you, but not 
for us." 
They think that if a squaw who is with child sees an 
eagle, her baby, if a boy, will be born deformed. If a man 
or boy has a birth-mark and is asked about it, he will say, 
"My mother looked at the eagle." 
One afternoon while in a camp away west of this, I 
and the boys were shooting at a mark with arrows, when 
an eagle soared over camp, then turning again came back. 
All through camp could be seen squaws with their heads 
buried in their blankets ; they did not want to see this 
eagle. The chief's squaw came running to me with a 
rifle and begged me to shoot the eagle. As the bird was 
half a mile high, I could not very well ; but it would not 
do to tell her so. I could do anything, they thought. So 
I must get out of this scrape somehow. 
"I dare not shoot the eagle," I told her ; "he is my coat- 
of-arms, and He," pointing up, "has told me never to 
shoot the eagle. But I will make medicine now, and that 
eagle shall never harm the Comanche squaw any more 
forever." 
Ever since I had been here, I had noticed that two of 
the men were sick and could not hunt. We had a medi- 
cine man, or cne that acted as such; he was not a full- 
fl.edged medicine man — he could not make magic yet, he 
said; but this man could not cure them; his medicine was 
not right, the chief told me. I examined the men and 
saw that they had fever of some kind, and I gave them 
heavy doses of quinine. I knew that if it did not cure 
them it would not kill them. They were well in a week, 
and after this, when any of them were sick, I and not 
the medicine man got the call. 
The buffalo were plenty in this country yet, but I could 
see that they were thinning out fast now. When I first 
came to this country in 1865, they covered these plains 
in countless thousands. Now we had to hunt for them, 
and often could not find them. And just four years from 
now, in November, 1869, I and this old chief rode down 
and shot the last buffalo I have ever seen, except in cap- 
tivity, and one of the last, if not the very last, ever killed 
in the Northwest. I served out here for ten years after 
that, but never heard of another being taken. 
The Indians did not kill them off. I first met the buf- 
falo in 185s, when a boy of sixteen. I then came in con- 
tact with them on the Laramie Plains, and shot my first 
buffalo, and ever since then, except for the four years 
of the war of the Rebellion, I had been watching them 
closely, having been in the regular army on the frontier 
most of the time since then. 
They increased rather than diminished until the white 
hunters took after them. They, with their buffalo guns, 
shooting from stands, have finished the buffalo. 
One morning after we had been in camp here a week 
or more, the chief sent a party of men and boys out to 
the lake after salt, then sent the rest off to hunt. I had 
been at the salt lake already, and did not care to go again ; 
so the chief said that to-day he and I would go out and 
look at the country. I saddled up my mule to ride to- 
day, as he had not been doing anything lately, and I knew 
him 'to be a good riding animal. We had been out an 
hour when we crossed a wagon track that had been made 
the day before, and followed it and in a short time I 
saw that the men making the track were lost; they had 
been driving to all points of the compass, and not going 
anywhere. We trailed them at last to a small bunch of 
timber on a creek. They had camped here last night, but 
were gone now. Their fire was still smouldering, and they 
had left the carcass of a deer, not even having taken off 
the skin. The chief and I got down, and while I skirmed 
the deer (I wanted the hide to make buckskin), the chief 
examined the camp. He first blew their fire to see how 
long it had been since they had left, then looking around 
camp, said : "There were two of them ; they have been 
gone six hours." As it was only ten o'clock now, they 
had made an early start of it. 
They had built a rude bridge here to get their wagon 
across the creek, the bed of the creek being a quicksand ; 
then had dug down the bank beyond to get out of this on 
the other side. The chief wanted to know if we would 
follow them further. 
"Yes," I told him; "they are lost. I want to put them 
on the straight road again." 
We followed them, and in about an hour first got sight 
of them. They were on a ridge two miles away. There 
were two of them in a two-horse wagon, and one 
of them was driving, lashing his horses, while the 
other one stood on top of whatever the wagon was loaded 
with. I got off my mule and looked through the glass. 
The man standing up had a gun in his hands. The chief 
asked me if I knew them. 
"No; I can't see them good. They are too far off yet. 
Let us catch them." 
We soon got to within five hundred yards of them ; then 
I told the chief to stop. "The men may shoot. They are 
scared at us." 
"If they shoot at you, then I shoot — mebbe so quick," 
the chief told me, drawing his Winchester out of its case. 
I rode forward at a gallop now, swinging my hat, and 
they stopped their team. . _ - , / 
"We thought you were Indians," they told me. 
"We are, but we won't hurt you. We are Com.anches." 
I now called the chief, who came with his usual saluta- 
tion of "How !" 
The men told us that they had been lost for a week, 
and wanted to go to Fort Elliott. Did I think they were 
on the right road? 
"You might reach Elliott by going that way," I said, 
"but you will have to cross China first to get there. Fort 
■Elliott is just east of us, I think. I am sure it is not 
west, an any rate." Then I said to the chief : "They want 
Fort Elliott, chief — big houses on the Sweet Water; you 
savey the road?" 
The chief looked all over the country, then said : "Fort 
Elliott that way [pointing east] ; mebbe so, three sleeps, 
no more." 
"He says it is directly east, and only sixty miles," I 
told them. 
"Well, maybe he don't know," the driver said. 
"Maybe he don't. But if he were to tell me to go east 
I would go east. What this chief don't know about this 
country you or I are not likely to learn this year, at least. 
Now, you cannot drive straight east — the drains won't 
let you. But keep as near east as you can, or you may 
pass Elliott and not know it. Should you pass it to the 
north, you will then cross the wagon road to Camp Sup- 
ply, but if you pass so^uth of it then you may get lost as 
bad again as you are now." 
"Who were those Indians that we saw back there?" 
they asked. 
"They are ours. They won't hurt you." 
"Well, we did not want them about us. I reckon we 
drove too fast for them, though." 
"No, I reckon not. They saw that you did not want 
them, then stopped following you. There are ponies 
ridden by some of those men that could run down the 
best team you ever drove. You may meet them again; if 
you do, let them come up ; they won't hurt you." 
"I have no use for an Indian," the driver said. 
"And they have less use for you while you are killing 
off their buffalo ; but ours won't hurt you. I can't promise 
as much for the Cheyennes or Kiowas, though. You may 
meet them east of this. They may take your hides. They 
probably will if their escort is not present to stop them." 
Their wagon was loaded down with green buffalo hides. 
The chief wanted to know how much they got for them 
at Elliott, so I asked them. Seventy-five cents and a dol- 
lar, they told me, according to the size. These hides were 
bought to be tanned for leather. 
"Mebbe so one dollar for bull, seventy-five cents for 
cow, that is all," I told the chief. 
He was mad clear through now. "You heap damn fool ! 
You shoot all the buffalo, feed the wolf, then go sell hide 
for one dollar ! Go get lost ! I don't care." 
They said that they had eaten nothing for a week. 
"Why, the buffalO' are all around you; eat them, why 
don't you?" 
"We can't — we have no salt." 
"Well, you drove within a few miles of a salt lake yes- 
terday, when you were making all those figure 8's across 
the prairie back here, and it was nearer Elliott than this, 
had you only known it. You left a deer in camp; what 
was wrong with it?" 
"Nothing," but we could not eat it without salt." 
They wanted matches and tobacco. I gave them all 
the matches I had, and half my tobacco, and we left them. 
Whether they took the chief's advice and went and got 
lost again I never knew. 
On the way home this afternoon we ran across a bunch 
of buffalo, and I proposed that we shoot two of them and 
take their hides; we could not carry much meat. The 
chief was riding one of his common ponies, not a buffalo 
pony, and he thought that my mule was not fast enough. 
"He will run away from your pony," I told him. "You 
get a buffalO' and I'll get one. Let us take our saddles 
off and go barebacked." 
We piled our saddles and guns here, then mounting 
with only saddle blankets, ran down and shot two. We 
might have got more, but could not carry them. Then 
leaving the chief here to skin, I took my mule and his 
pony and going back got our saddles on, then came back 
again, and as I hated tO' leave all this meat here, I put 
both tongues and about 150 pounds of meat on my saddle 
and was going to take a hide also; but the chief said, 
"No, it is too much for the mule. He would not carry 
them." The mule could carry 300 pounds day after day, 
and had no more than that on him now. 
The wind had been blowing from the east all day, and 
just after dark we rode into a draw and stopped tO' water 
the horses, then on coming out on the other side the chief 
was going on with the wind in his face, but my mule kept 
pulling to the right. 
"Hold on, chief," I told him. Which way campo?" 
"This way," he said. "You lost, too?" 
"No, hut you are. The mule say this way. Maybe so 
the wind turn around. That way north. You feel cold 
wind?" 
The chief studied a moment, then said : "Me damn fool 
now, not you. Let mule go his way; you can't lose 
mule — he knows." 
He did know, and in less than a mile walked into our 
pony herd; the camp was just beyond them in this bot- 
tom. It was cold and getting colder very fast. While 
the chief and I were at supper, a man came in and tolc 
the chief that a party of curs with one of the chiefs 
TOules an(| a. sc^uaTj^ was out yet, T}ie chief tpld him to 
