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In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
XXXI.—The Last of the Buffalo. 
WHEN spring came the Blackfeet and Bloods 
moved back into Canada in order to get their 
treaty money from the Government. They in- 
tended to return in the fall, but now crossed the 
line again. The Crees and Red Rivers re- 
mained with us. Our trade for the season footed 
up four thousand buffalo robes and about an 
equal number of deer, elk and antelope skins. 
For the robes we received $28,000, for the skins, 
some beaver and wolf pelts about $5,000 more. 
That was our banner season, and the biggest one 
Berry had ever experienced. It was remarkable 
in that it occurred when the buffalo were so near 
extermination. 
We were looking forward to a quiet summer, 
as usual, when orders came from the Sioux 
Agency Indian traders of Dacotah, and from 
firms in the Northwest Territory of Canada for 
pemmican and dried meat. The letters all had 
the same story to tell, “The buffalo are gone.” 
They said, “Send us as many tons of the stuff as 
you can for our trade.” The Crees and their half 
brothers were happy when we told them that we 
would buy all they could bring us, and they lost 
no time in beginning to hunt. Everything went 
that was meat—poor cows, old bulls and perhaps 
crippled horses. The meat was dried in wide, 
thin, flat sheets, and done up in rawhide thonged 
bales. Pemmican was made by pounding the 
dried meat into fragments and mixing it with 
tallow and grease extracted from the animal’s 
bones. It was packed into green hide, flat, oblong 
bags, and the covering shrunk so tightly over the 
mass as it dried that a package of it had the 
solidity and weight of a rock. I do not remem- 
ber how much of the stuff we got during the 
summer, literally cords and cords of the dried 
meat and hundreds of bags of pemmican, all of 
which we sold at a good profit. 
There came to our place one day in midsummer 
a tall, slender man, who from his face and the 
black, sharp, ended-up curling mustache he wore 
reminded one of pictures of the old-time 
Spanish cavaliers. He spoke English, pure Eng- 
lish, much better, indeed, than that of any white 
man around, better than many West Point grad- 
uates of the army. He introduced himself as 
William Jackson. The name seemed familiar, but 
I could not place him until he said that he was 
sometimes called Sik-si-kai-kwan—Blackfoot Man. 
Then I knew. How often I had heard old man 
Monroe mention him, his favorite grandson; of 
his bravery and kindness of heart. I couldn’t help 
shaking hands with him and saying; “I have long 
mnuped to meet you, Sik-si-kai-kwan; your grand- 
father has told me much about you.” Well, we 
became lasting friends; friends to the day of his 


death, and I hope that together we accomplished 
some measure of good in penance for our many 
sins. 
No one can make me believe that there is 
nothing in heredity. There was Jackson, for in- 
stance. On his mother’s side, he came from the 
Monroes, a notedly brave family of Scotch High- 
landers, and from the La Roches, a noble French 
family, some of whom early emigrated to 
America. His father, Thomas Jackson, had taken 
part in the Seminole and other Indian wars of 
1832; his great grandfathers on both. sides had 
fought in the Revolution. No wonder, then, that 
he took to war as a profession, enlisting at an 
early age as scout in the U. S. Army. 
The summer previous to his enlistment he made 
a name for himself by killing three Sioux. He 
and his mother went berrying in the breaks of 
the river north of Fort Union, and when four or 
five miles away they saw five Sioux sneaking 
down on them, following a deep coulée running 
parallel with the ridge upon which they were 
riding. The Sioux were just entering a big 
thicket and imagined that they and their horses 
had not been seen. Jackson kept on a little ways, 
gradually riding off to the west side of the ridge 
and out of sight of the enemy. Then he told 
his mother what he had seen, made her take his 
horse, which was the strongest and swiftest of the 
two, and told her to ride back to the fort for help 
as swiftly as she could. She cried and objected, 
saying that if he was to be killed she wanted to 
die with him. But he finally assured her that 
he could take care of himself for a time and she 
started back as fast as the horse could run. Jack- 
son at once went up to the top of the ridge, peer- 
ing over it very carefully. In a moment the 
Sioux mounted and burst out of the brush full 
tilt after his mother. There was his chance, and 
kneeling to get a more steady aim, he fired his 
Henry rifle a number of times, dropping two of 
the enemy. But that did not stop the others, who 
came swiftly up the ridge, so he mounted his 
horse and took the back trail. One of the horses 
the Sioux rode proved to be a better annimal than 
his, the other two not so swift. The rider of the 
former kept gaining on him, firing his muzzle- 
loader as fast as he could, and Jackson kept 
shooting back at short intervals, failing also to hit 
his foe. Finally, when the Sioux had lessened the 
gap between them to about a hundred yards, 
Jackson stopped his horse, and jumping off, knelt 
down and took a careful aim at his pursuer. He 
must have been a very brave Sioux, as he never 
stopped, but whipped his horse harder than ever. 
Jackson fired twice at him; the second shot hit 
him fairly in the breast and he instantly rolled off 
to the grounds where he lay perfectly still. Then 
Jackson remounted and rode on, the remaining 
two Sioux pursuing him for a half mile or so, 
when they stopped, seemed to talk together for a 

moment, and turned back to take care of their 
dead, 
Jackson was a favorite with the army officers, 
especially Generals Custer and Miles. On the 
morning of the battle of the Little Big Horn, 
June 25, 1876, he, with the other scouts, was de- 
tailed to accompany Major Reno. Had they ac- 
companied Custer, they would have undoubtedly 
shared his fate. As it was, they did what they 
could—at the expense of the lives of most of 
them—to save Reno and his command from utter 
annihilation, for when the Sioux charged, they 
held their ground for a time, to give the soldiers a 
chance to retreat across the river and up on the 
hill, where they were nearly overcome several 
times by the enemy. Jackson was finally cut off 
from the command with Lieutenant DeRudia, In- 
terpreter Guard, and a soldier. They lay in the 
thick brush all that day, and the next, and then 
when evening came ‘Jackson ventured out, took 
sufficient leggings and blankets from the enemy 
lying about, and when they had dressed them- 
selves in the leggings and moccasins, and wrapped 
blankets about themselves, he led them right 
through the watch fires of the Sioux to their 
comrades up on the hill. Only once were they 
accosted. “Who goes there?” asked some one 
sitting by a small fire roasting meat. 
Jackson, who spoke Sioux perfectly, replied, “It 
is only us, we’re going over here a little way.” 
“Well, go where you’re going,” said their ques- 
tioner. “I’m going to sit right here and eat some 
meat.” 
At the time he came to the store at Carroll, 
Jackson was trading with the Indians out near 
the Judith Mountains. I was sorry to part with 
him. I hardly expected to meet him again, but I 
did some years afterward, where al! of we 
“squaw men,” as we were called, were driven by 
the tenderfeet, the “pilgrims,” with their five-cent 
ways of doing business. 
Winter came again, and the Crees and Red 
River breeds were still with us, but the buffalo 
were not so plentiful as they had been the pre- 
vious winter. Their range was also smaller, ex- 
tending from the mouth of Judith River eastward 
to the Round Butte, on the north side of the 
Missouri, a distance of one hundred and twenty- 
five miles, and back from the river not more than 
forty miles. They were far more plentiful on the 
south side, between the Missouri and the Yellow- 
stone, but so were the hunters. They were 
hemmed in on the east by the Assinaboine and 
Yanktonais Sioux, on the south by the Crows, 
and a horde of white skin hunters that the 
Northern Pacific, then being constructed along 
the Yellowstone, had brought into the country. 
In the midst of the herds were our Crees and 
Red Rivers. The white hunters were the most 
destructive of all, and piled up more than one 
hundred thousand buffalo hides along the Yellow- 
