Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/420

410 torrents of rain. Half the tents blew down, and nearly the whole encampment was flooded with water eight inches deep. We were in a most uncomfortable predicament next morning, and nearly all wet. We this day met a war party of Osages and Kanzas Indians, consisting of about ninety warriors. They all rode ponies, were painted, and their heads shaven, and had one Pawnee scalp, with the ears still to it, and full of wampum. This scalp had tolerably long hair upon it, and they had divided it into some five or six different pieces, some with an ear to them, and some with part of the cheek. The Kanzas and Osages are the most miserable, cowardly, and dirty Indians we saw east of the Rocky Mountains. They annoyed us greatly by their continual begging. We gave this war party bread and meat, and a calf; they said they had eaten nothing for three days. Two of this party were wounded severely, one in the shoulder and the other in another part. They had killed but one Pawnee, who had wounded these two before he fell. The Kanzas Indians, however, did not steal from us, except perhaps a horse or two which were missing, but which might have escaped back to the Kanzas River. On the 7th we removed our encampment one half mile to a place we supposed to be dry; but in the night another severe storm of rain succeeded, and again flooded half the encampment. On the 8th we traveled five miles to a grove of green elm trees, and it again rained in torrents, but our encampment was upon high ground this time. P. H. Burnett this day resigned the command of the company in consequence of ill health. On the 9th the clouds dispersed, and we traveled five miles to find wood, where we dried our clothes. The company now separated into two parties, one under the command of Capt. Jesse Applegate, and the other reorganized by electing William Martin commander. Martin's company had about seventy-two wagons and one hundred and seventy-five men. On the 10th we met a company of four wagons from Fort Larimer [Laramie], with furs and peltries, going to Independence. They had with them several buffalo calves. As yet we saw no game of any kind, except a few straggling deer. This day Mr. Casan and others saw the corpse of an Indian in the prairie: his head had been cut off and was badly scalped, and left to be eaten up by the buzzards. This, no doubt, was the same Indian killed and scalped by the war party of the Osages and Kanzas. On the 11th we had a fall of rain in the evening, before dark, but none in the night. On the 12th the whole company were thrown into a state of great excitement by the news, which reached us, that Captain Gant and some others had killed a large buffalo. He was a venerable old bull, by himself, and was discovered by the hunters at about one mile distant; they run upon him with their horses and shot him with their large horse-pistols; seven balls were fired into him before he fell. The animal was not very fat, and was tough eating. He had, no doubt, been left here in the spring by other buffaloes. These