Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/35

Rh others, with their arms, were on the alert watching the wily Indian. Those days are still fresh in my memory, and it was then that I received, young as I was, the rudiments of my knowledge of the Indian character, which has been of such inestimable value to me in my subsequent adventures among them.

There were constant alarms in the neighbourhood of some of the block-houses, and hardly a day passed without the inhabitants being compelled to seek them for protection. As an illustration of our mode of life, I will relate an incident that befel me when about nine years old.

One day my father called me to him, and inquired of me whether I thought myself man enough to carry a sack of corn to the mill. The idea of riding a horse, and visiting town, possessed attractions which I could not resist, and I replied with a hearty affirmative. A sack of corn was accordingly deposited on the back of a gentle horse selected for the purpose, and "Young Jim" (as I was called) was placed upon the sack, and started for the mill two miles distant. About midway to the mill lived a neighbour having a large family of children, with whom I frequently joined in boyish sports. On my way I rode joyously up to the little fence which separated the house from the road, thinking to pass a word with my little playmates. What was my horror at discovering all the children, eight in number, from one to fourteen years of age, lying in various positions in the door-yard with their throats cut, their scalps torn off, and the warm life-blood still oozing from their gaping wounds! In the doorway lay their father, and near him their mother, in the same condition; they had all shared the same fate. I found myself soon back at my father's house, but without the sack of corn—how I managed to get it off I never discovered—and related the circumstances to my father. He immediately gave the alarm throughout the settlement, and a body of men started in pursuit of the savages who had perpetrated this fearful tragedy; my father, with ten of his own men, accompanying them. In two days the band returned, bringing with them eighteen Indian scalps; for the backwoodsman fought the savage in Indian style, and it was scalp for scalp between them.