Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/343



THE COLUMN IN MOTION—RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF BUFFALOES—THE SIGNAL CRY OF THE SCOUTS—THE FIGHT ON THE ROSEBUD—HOW THE KILLED WERE BURIED—SCALP DANCE—BUTCHERING A CHEYENNE—LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER ARRIVES—SENDING BACK THE WOUNDED.

On the 16th of June, by five o'clock in the morning, our whole command had broken camp and was on its way westward; we crossed Tongue River, finding a swift stream, rather muddy from recent rains, with a current twenty-five yards wide, and four feet deep; the bottom of hard-pan, but the banks on one side muddy and slippery.

The valley, as we saw it from the bluffs amid which we marched, presented a most beautiful appearance—green with juicy grasses, and dark with the foliage of cottonwood and willow. Its sinuosities encircled many park-like areas of meadow, bounded on the land side by bluffs of drift. The Indians at first marched on the flank, but soon passed the column and took the lead, the "medicine men" in front; one of the head "medicine men" of the Crows kept up a piteous chant, reciting the cruelties of their enemies and stimulating the young men to deeds of martial valor. In every possible way these savages reminded me of the descriptions I had read of the Bedouins.

Our course turned gradually to the northwest, and led us across several of the tributaries of the Tongue, or "Deje-ajie " as the Crows called it, each of these of good dimensions, and carrying the unusual flow due to the rapid melting of snow in the higher elevations. The fine grass seen close to the Tongue disappeared, and the country was rather more barren, with many prairie-dog villages. The soil was made up of sandstones, with a great amount of both clay and lime, shales and lignite, the latter burnt out. Some of the sandstone had been filled with pyrites, which had decomposed and left it in a vesicular state. There were a