Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/17

Rh swim like white men, but with an overhanded stroke, "dog-fashion," they said. Those Indians were friendly and accommodating. They told us we would soon reach the country of the Cheyennes and Pawnees, and that they were had Indians.

One afternoon, when the sun seemed to be about three hours high, and we were traveling along at an ox-team gait, over a level prairie, John East, a good, honest man, also from Missouri, who was walking and driving his team, was told that we were then crossing the Missouri line, whereupon, he turned about facing the east, pulled off his slouched hat, and waving it above his head said, "Farewell to America!"

I think it was the second day after we had crossed the Caw River, we met a war party of Caws, marching afoot, about a hundred of them, painted and feathered, and armed with bows, spears, war-clubs, tomahawks and knives. Some were wounded and limping, some with blood on faces, arms in slings, and bandages around their heads. They seemed to be tired and in a hurry. They told us they had been out on a buffalo hunt and had been attacked by a war party of the Pawnees, and had a fight with them, but that they had defeated the Pawnees and killed many of them. That evening or the next, we reached the battle ground, and went into camp. Several dead Indians were found, and I heard men say they were Caws. If they were, the Caws were defeated, else they would not have left their dead.

There was a Mexican in the train, who cut off an Indian's hand at the wrist and hung it on a stake about three feet high in the encampment. I saw it hanging there myself, and was afraid of it, for I saw it was a man's hand. An indignation meeting was the result of this ghastly exhibition, and the Mexican was compelled to leave the company.

On this long journey there were many days of marching and camping, of which I have no recollection. Often, I remember, in the afternoon we were traveling toward the setting sun, and that is all I can recall of the day or days; and I can not remember places in the order in which we came to them, but the next that comes to my mind is Ash Hollow, which appeared to be only a depression in the usually level plain, where were scattered ash timber trees. It appears to me now that after we crossed Ash Hollow a prairie stretched away to the west,