Oct. 3, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
529 
a journey, and as we must reach the Rio Ancho 
that night, we left the pleasant shade and went 
along the sand again. The tide had come up 
part way and we had to walk where the sand 
was softer; it gave poor support to the feet 
and walking was a burden. We kept plodding 
on, and after a hard day’s work came to the 
Rio Ancho and stood shouting to the canoeman 
to come and take us over. The river was low 
and we might have waded across, but no one 
cared to trust themselves in the mouth of the 
A BOUT the year 1836 a large war party 
started on foot to take horses from the 
Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches. Crow 
Chief carried the pipe. They started from the 
Black Hills. 
Before they started Crow Chief warned his 
young men saying, “Now, we are going a long 
way and each one of you ought to take fifteen 
or twenty pairs of moccasins. Take also an awl 
and sinews so that you can mend your mocca¬ 
sins, and take each one a hair rope as well as 
a rope of hide. On our way we will stop ac 
the Earth House (Ish'-i-im'-hai-yuh) [Bent’s Old 
Fort] and there we will get ammunition.” 
Colonel Bent knew 7 the fathers and relations 
of all the Cheyennes, and was accustomed to 
give credit to the young men for guns, ammuni¬ 
tion and goods of various sorts when they were 
starting out on war parties. On ■ their return 
they would pay him for the goods that they had 
had in horses and mules, or if by chance a 
young man who owed a debt was killed on his 
w^arpath, his relations would pay his debts for 
him. Old men used to tell their sons and 
nephews to stop on the way at the fort and get 
what they needed, telling Col. Bent that these 
older men would be responsible for the debts 
incurred in case the younger ones, for any rea¬ 
son, could not pay for what they had received. 
It w r as in the winter that this party started, 
and the whole Cheyenne camp was soon to move 
south to the Platte . River. The war party 
traveled southward, stopping at Fort William. 
There they stopped tw r o nights, and Long Chin 
and Bulls Going Together, two close friends, 
got from Col. Bent each a gun, a powder horn 
filled and fifty balls. For this Col. Bent charged 
them eleven robes, ten for the gun and one for 
the ammunition. At the fort they made covers 
for their guns from pieces of dressed buffalo 
hide, which they had brought along with them, 
to be used in makhig moccasins or for any other 
necessary purpose. 
From here they went on southward and at 
length came to the Antelope Hills. Soon after 
leaving the Fort, Crow Chief had said to his 
young men: “Now, from this time on, we do 
not vcant to have any shooting. We are getting 
into the enemy’s country and if we should fire 
a gun, those whom we are going against may 
hear it and may discover us.” 
They traveled southward until they had almost 
come to the Antelope Hills, on the South Cana- 
Rio Ancho even at low water. The canoeman, 
a great muscular negro, came and got us, and 
we stopped with him, but slept in the open, for 
the night promised to be fine. Immediately the 
camp was arranged, for on all the tropical coasts 
one dreads the mosquitoes, and the first thought 
is always to have a protection from them when 
night is coming on. To arrange our camp was 
easy. Poles were driven in the sand, mosquito 
tents were hung from them and we were ready, 
with' nothing to do but amuse ourselves. 
dian River, in what is now the State of Okla¬ 
homa. For some little time they had not killed 
any game and they were getting to feel pretty 
hungry. The main party was ahead, and Long 
Chin and Bulls Going Together were following 
along behind one day when suddenly up out of 
a ravine ran a herd of antelope, passing close 
to the two young men. They were so near that 
the temptation to kill something was too strong 
for them and each fired at the antelope. The 
one shot by Bulls Going Together was going so 
fast that when it fell, struck by the ball from 
his gun, it turned over and over two or three 
times. Long Chin’s shot broke the neck of an 
antelope. After they had dressed them, they 
tied the legs together and passing them over 
their heads, carried each the whole antelope for¬ 
ward to join the others of the party who had 
heard the shots and had stopped to see what 
was the matter. All were glad to get the meat 
and Crow Chief did not reprove them for hav¬ 
ing fired. 
The antelope were cut up and divided among 
the party, and they went forward. Soon after 
that, while passing through the thick black-jack 
timber, which formerly covered all that country, 
but which in later years was burnt off by the 
prairie fires, Long Chin and Bulls Going To¬ 
gether came to a great opening in the timber— 
a sort of park or meadow, in which stood a big 
fence which at first they did not understand. It 
was a great corral built to be used in catching 
wild horses. From each side of the opening 
of the corral, diverging wings stretched out a 
long way. The corral was not circular, but was 
oblong or oval, the opening being at one end. 
This shape must have been given it so as to 
permit the horses to crowd down to the other 
end. The fence was not made after the fashion 
of a white man’s fence, but. w r as a stockade 
formed of black-jack posts set on end in the 
ground and close together, and on the outside 
brush and limbs of trees were piled up against 
this stockade. The wings were made of brush 
heaped up high and wide, something that a horse 
could neither see nor jump over. There were 
signs in the corral that it had been used in the 
past, yet in many places the posts of the fence 
were rotted and falling down, so that it was 
evident that it had not been used for many 
years. 
The two Cheyennes wondered greatly at this, 
for they had never seen anything like it. They 
did not very clearly understand it, though they 
could see its purpose. 
Years afterward—after the peace had been 
made between the Kiowas and Comanches and 
the Cheyennes and Arapahos—the Kiowas told 
them that for many years they had used this 
corral for the purpose of catching horses; that in 
lines beyond the diverging wings men and women 
used to be stationed away out on the prairie on 
horseback, to make the wings still longer. Then 
some men would be sent far out on the prairie 
to start the horses and drive them within the 
wings, and the presence of the people kept them 
from turning off to either side, until they had 
come within the brush wings, w 7 hen they were 
hurried along toward the corral by those who 
were following them. Close to the entrance of 
the corral men were hidden, who, after the herd 
of horses had been driven in, should get up on 
their feet and stand in the opening of the cor¬ 
ral, where by waving their robes they would 
keep the horses from trying to break out again. 
Of the herd inclosed in the corral and kept 
there by the crowd of people who filled up the 
gate, the best young horses were roped and 
dragged out, and then tied to the tail of a mare, 
w 7 hile the older and more worthless animals were 
butchered for meat and hides. The hides were 
dressed by the Kiowas and used for all pur¬ 
poses for which skins of large animals are used; 
moccasins, lodge linings, lodge coverings and 
even for robes and sheets. 
The Kiowas added that each autumn it was 
their practice to burn off the grass about this 
corral in order to protect the stockade and the 
brush wings from prairie fires. Of course, if 
a fire running in the grass ever got among these 
wings the whole construction would be de¬ 
stroyed. 
From this place the party went on southward, 
crossing the Washita and looking for signs of 
camps of the Kiowas and Comanches. They found 
nothing, and at last Crow Chief said to them: 
“I think these people have all gone off to the 
Staked Plains too far for us to follow them, but 
there are other enemies not far off, the Wichitas. 
We will go and look for them.” 
Crow Chief had before this been to war 
against the Wichitas. 
After they had traveled a little way toward 
the Wichita Mountains they sent out two scouts, 
and when these returned they reported to Crow 
Chief that they had seen people running buf¬ 
falo. 
The party traveled toward the place where 
these buffalo hunters had been seen, and when 
they had come pretty close to it Crow Chief 
said to his young men, “Now, you wait here. I 
am carrying the pipe and I will go forward and 
try to find this camp and to see who the people 
are.” 
He went away and after a time came back 
and said: “My young men, we are lucky. These 
are a party of hunters from the Wichita village. 
They have been killing buffalo, and their horses 
are all scattered loose on the prairie. None of 
them are tied up in the village. Do not leave 
your things behind you, but come on with me 
and we will get around these horses and drive 
them off slowly, and when we get far enough 
away we will mount them and ride off. We 
w 7 ill take all the horses that they have; then 
they will not be able to follow 7 us and we shall 
not make ourselves tired riding bareback fast 
A Generous Leader 
By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL 
