Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/155

Rh the party who had killed our missing friends, and our convictions were substantiated subsequently by recognizing several weapons in their possession which had formerly belonged to our braves; indeed, some of our women prisoners acknowledged that our departed brethren had killed many of their people.

The Crows treat the women whom they take prisoners much better than other tribes do. They do not impose upon them a harder lot than their own women endure, and they allow them to marry into the tribe, after which they are in equal fellowship with them. On finding themselves captives, they generally mourn a day or two, but their grief quickly subsides, and they seem to care no farther for their violent removal from their own people.

At this time the Crows were incessantly at war with all the tribes within their reach, with the exception of the Snakes and the Flat Heads; and they did not escape frequent ruptures with them, brought about by the Indian's universal obtuseness as to all law relating to the right of property in horses.

The Crows could raise an army of sixteen thousand warriors, and, although there were tribes much more numerous, there were none could match them in an open fight. The Camanches and Apaches have tilted lances with them repeatedly, and invariably to their discomfiture. If the Crows ever suffered defeat, it was when overwhelmed by numbers. One principal cause of their marked superiority was their plentiful supply of guns and ammunition, which the whites always more readily exchanged to them on account of their well-proved fidelity to the white man. When other tribes were constrained to leave their fire-arms in their lodges for want of ammunition, the Crows would have plenty, and could use their arms with great effect against an enemy which had only bow and arrows to shoot with. Farther, they were the most expert horsemen of any Indian tribe, notwithstanding the great name bestowed upon the Camanches and Apaches—those two great terrors of Northern Mexico. I have seen them all, and consider myself in a position to judge, although some, perhaps, will say that I am prejudiced in favour of the Crows, seeing that I am one myself.