Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/311

 the fight as her husband was firing out from the entrance to the lodge. She stated that this was the band of "Crazy Horse," who had with him a force of the Minneconjou Sioux, but that the forty new canvas lodges clustered together at the extremity by which we had entered belonged to some Cheyennes who had recently arrived from the "Red Cloud" Agency. Two lodges of Sioux had arrived from the same agency two days previously with the intention of trading with the Minneconjoux.

What with the cold threatening to freeze us, the explosions of the lodges sending the poles whirling through the air, and the leaden attentions which the enemy was once more sending in with deadly aim, our situation was by no means agreeable, and I may claim that the notes jotted down in my journal from which this narrative is condensed were taken under peculiar embarrassments. "Crazy Horse's" village was bountifully provided with all that a savage could desire, and much besides that a white man would not disdain to class among the comforts of life.

There was no great quantity of baled furs, which, no doubt, had been sent in to some of the posts or agencies to be traded off for the ammunition on hand, but there were many loose robes of buffalo, elk, bear, and beaver; many of these skins were of extra fine quality. Some of the buffalo robes were wondrously embroidered with porcupine quills and elaborately decorated with painted symbolism. One immense elk skin was found as large as two and a half army blankets; it was nicely tanned and elaborately ornamented. The couches in all the lodges were made of these valuable furs and peltries. Every squaw and every buck was provided with a good-sized valise of tanned buffalo, deer, elk, or pony hide, gaudily painted, and filled with fine clothes, those of the squaws being heavily embroidered with bead-work. Each family had similar trunks for carrying kitchen utensils and the various kinds of herbs that the plains' tribes prized so highly. There were war-bonnets, strikingly beautiful in appearance, formed of a head-band of red cloth or of beaver fur, from which depended another piece of red cloth which reached to the ground when the wearer was mounted, and covered him and the pony he rode. There was a crown of eagle feathers, and similar plumage was affixed to the tail-piece. Bells, ribbons, and other gew-gaws were also attached and occasionally I have noticed a pair of buffalo