March 5, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
309 
reckon she does not know but what she is a 
full-blooded Cheyenne. Yet if you look at her 
you can see the Irish in her face, and can see 
also that she is a white woman. 
The Winter When Many Horses Starved. 
The winter of the beginning of the year 1856 
was the severest ever known by the Cheyenne 
Indians. Its hardships are still well remem¬ 
bered, and every old man and old woman can 
recall that terrible season. For a long time the 
whole prairie was covered with ice, and the buf¬ 
falo and wild horses could not travel on it, but 
fell down and could not regain their footing. 
For that winter the Cheyennes have a name 
which, translated into English, means, ‘ when so 
many horses died from slipping down and not 
being able to get up.” 
In the beginning of this winter, but before* 
the bad weather came, a war party of about one 
hundred Cheyennes with some few Kiowas, went 
on the war path toward the Pawnee country. 
The leaders of this war party, who carried the 
war pipes, were Cheyennes. About half the party 
had horses and the other half went on foot. 
When the party had gotten as far as Beaver 
Creek it began to snow. The snow fed fast 
and soon covered up the whole land. It kept 
on snowing and they did not move, -but on the 
third day the snow ceased falling and the 
weather grew warm. That night it rained hard, 
and after- the rain the weather turned bitter 
cold. The next morning over all the prairie 
there was a covering of solid ice. No grass 
could be seen and the horses had nothing to eat. 
The leaders, those who carried the pipe, said 
to their young men: “We must go and find a 
better camping place,” and before long they all 
started. But as soon as they began to move, 
trouble began. No one dared ride a horse; 
everyone walked and those that had horses led 
them. Horses slipped down and could not get 
up again without being helped. They say that 
all over the prairie the ice was like glass. There 
was no trouble then to kill food, for the buffalo 
that had fallen down could not get up on their 
feet again, and all the Indians had to do was 
to walk up to one and shoot it. 
The men fell down almost as badly as the 
animals. A man named "Hears the Wolf,” who 
was a contrary, was carrying his "thunder bow.” 
He slipped on the ice, fell and broke the point 
off the bow. This was a great misfortune which 
seemed to portend very bad luck for him. 
The party did not go far to its new camping 
place and their position was not much improved 
by the change. They had food enough to eat, 
but they were obliged to build their, fires on top 
of the ice, for they had no way of cutting holes 
in the ice, since axes are never carried on the 
war path. In a little time after the fire was 
built, as the ice melted, the fire would sink down 
below the surface of the ice and presently it 
would be down at the bottom of a hole. They 
could not build war lodges in which to shelter 
themselves, for they had no way of making holes 
in the ice to receive the ends of the poles. They 
were obliged to sleep on the ice, for they could 
not get grass or weeds to make beds of. 
They soon turned about and began to make 
their way toward the village. Progress was slow 
and the suffering great. The Indians had plenty 
to eat from the buffalo that they killed, but the 
horses, having nothing to eat, slowly starved, 
and before the party got back to the village 
every horse had died. 
The Cheyennes say that their elbows and skins 
were all inflamed and raw from the heat ol 
the fires, which they sat so close to. Owing to 
the difficulty of traveling they could go but a 
short distance at a time. The weather was so 
cold they did not wash their hands nor faces, 
which grew black from the smoke and the colo. 
They greased their hands and faces with buf¬ 
falo fat so as to keep the skin from being cut 
to pieces by cold and by wind. 
At last this party got back to the village, hav¬ 
ing lost all their horses and suffered much. 
This same winter the Dog Soldiers, Ho tarn i- 
tan' iu, also had started on the war path from 
their camp on the South Platte River. They had 
gone as far as the Republican River when this 
storm came up. They had built war lodges under 
the bluff and stayed in them, and the war lodges 
and the people in them were covered with snow, 
as it drifted on them and over the bluff. The 
people almost starved to death here, as for four 
or five days they could not get out of their war 
lodges on account of the snow. I hey finally got 
out by crawling out of the tops of the war 
lodges through the smoke holes. When they got 
out, buffalo were all around them and many of 
them had fallen down and could not rise, so 
they went to killing buffalo and had plenty to eat. 
In the villages there was not so much suffer¬ 
ing as with these war parties and not so many 
horses died in the camps, for there was a better 
chance to take care of them, to cut down brush 
and cottonwood limbs, so that they might feed 
on them. But on the open prairie wild horses 
and buffalo were lying about everywhere, and 
none of them could get up. On the Smoky Hill 
River, two young men of the Hev'a taniu who 
went out to hunt buffalo, were caught out in the 
storm and both were frozen. After the storm 
was over, these young men were found close to 
the camp, but the snowstorm had been a blind¬ 
ing one, and the lodges could not be seen. This 
is remembered as the hardest winter ever known, 
and from this time counts are made so that peo¬ 
ple say such and such a thing happened so many 
winters after or before this hard winter. 
That winter a large war party of Northern 
and Southern Cheyennes started from the North 
Platte River to go against the Shoshones. Brave 
Wolf-Maple Tree—and Black Moccasin, North¬ 
ern Cheyennes, carried the pipes. Among the 
mountains the winds were not so cold as they 
were on the open prairie, but the snow was very 
deep. On the other hand this war party had 
plenty of wood to burn, cottonwood, cedar, pine 
and sage brush and sheltered places to stop at 
among tall willows. The snow did not turn to 
ice, as it did south of the Platte rivers. 
In these war parties which started out in the 
winter time, it was the custom that the men who 
wished to do so could go on horseback, and 
those who preferred to go on foot could walk. 
The horses that were in this war party could 
get some food in the mountains, for they ate 
sage brush and the tops of willows so that they 
lived. After the war party got into the moun¬ 
tains, scouts were sent out to look for enemies, 
and after a time came back and said that they 
had heard shooting in the mountains, but could 
not tell in what direction the firing was, for in 
the mountains it is hard to tell which way the 
sounds come from, on account of the echoes 
given back by the cliffs and the timber. Ihey 
sent out two more scouts to try and discover 
something. 
Brave Wolf, or Maple Tree, was a medicine 
man, and that day as he was looking at the sun 
and praying for help and success, he saw above 
him in the sky several scalps moving ’through 
the air toward the place where the sun set. 
Before sunset, the two scouts that had been 
sent out came running into camp and told their 
friends that they had found where some Utes 
had been killing buffalo, and to show that these 
were Utes they brought with them an arrow 
that a Ute had left after taking it out of a buf¬ 
falo. The scouts said that there was a plain 
trail on the snow leading toward the Ute camp, 
and that it was not very far to where the Utes 
had killed the buffalo, running them into a snow 
drift. The Cheyennes all started and before long 
they came to the place and found the trail of the 
Utes plain in the snow. Such a trail as this 
could not be missed even in the night. Ihe 
snow was so deep that they could only follow 
the trail made by the Utes in single file. Those 
who were mounted took the lead. 
The wind was blowing down the valley, com¬ 
ing from the direction toward which the trail 
led, and it was not long before the leaders stop¬ 
ped and said that they smelled a fire. All came 
together and crowded up, so as to hold a coun¬ 
cil to see what would best be done. Now all 
could smell the fire. By this time it was night. 
Presently they started on again and sent two 
or three men ahead to try to locate the Utes’ 
camp, while the main party was to go very 
slowly and to meet the scouts after they had 
come back from finding the camp. Before long 
the scouts returned and met the party and told 
them that this was a hunting party and not a 
village. The Utes had built small brush huts; 
they had no lodges with them. Their horses 
were all tied close to the huts. It was now late 
in the night, and they made ready to attack them. 
Out in front of the party the medicine men stood 
in a line, and those who wished to pledge them¬ 
selves to make some kind of a sacrifice when 
they got back to the camp stepped in front of 
the medicine men and told them what they would 
do; what kind of a sacrifice they would make. 
Some of them asked the Great Spirit to help 
them to count a coup and others to- help them 
get many horses. After they had finished their 
prayers, they all walked toward the camp. 
By this time the Utes were all sleeping. When 
the Cheyennes got near to the huts they all fired 
into them, and then rushed forward, some to¬ 
ward the horses to capture them and some to¬ 
ward the Utes to count coup. They found here 
only a few Utes and believed that some of them 
must have gone on ahead that evening, for the 
old camps showed a much larger party. 
This is the village where War Eagle was cap¬ 
tured, a Ute boy taken by the Northern Chey¬ 
ennes. This fight took place on the North Platte 
River where it goes into the mountains, and they 
killed here several men and women, for they 
took them by surprise. This success put a white 
feather in Brave Wolf’s head, for he had seen 
the scalps moving in the air. 
When this war party returned, the Northern 
and Southern Cheyennes were camped together 
on the South Platte River. Early in the morn¬ 
ing Brave Wolf and other leaders of this suc¬ 
cessful war party charged into the village with 
