eighty miles northwest of the main trading post. The latter party includes myself with its number.
Our purpose was to build houses in the vicinity of White river, and thus secure the trade of several villages of Brulés that had selected their winter quarters in the neighborhood, and were anxiously awaiting our arrival.
On the last of November we were under way with two carts freighted with goods and liquor, accompanied by only six whites, one negro, and an Indian.
Crossing the Platte opposite the Fort, we continued our course, west by north, over a broken and tumulous prairie, occasionally diversified by thick clusters of pines and furrowed by deep ravines, and abounding in diminutive valleys, whose tall, withered grass gave evidence of the rich soil producing it. To our left the high, frowning summits of the Black Hills began to show themselves in the long distance, like dark clouds, and planted their dense pine forests upon the broken ridges whose irregular courses invaded the cheerless prairie far eastward.
A ride of twenty miles brought us to Rawhide, where we passed the following night and day.
This creek traces its course over a broad sandy bed, through a wide valley of rich clayey loam, slightly timbered and luxuriant in grasses. Towards its head, it is shut in upon both sides by high pine hills; but, in passing on, these mural confines are exchanged for the prairies, and the creek finally debouches into the Platte.
An abundance of prelée and rushes afforded fine pasturage to our animals, and a kindly grove of dry cottonwood gave us requisite fuel for camp-fire.
Before leaving, we were joined by another Indian mounted upon a dark bay horse, the noblest animal of its kind I remember to have seen among the mountain tribes. It had been stolen from the Snakes during the past summer, as its present owner informed us, and he seemed not a little proud of the admiration we bestowed upon it.
The new comer proved Arketcheta-waka, (Medicine Soldier,) a brother of Bello-tunga, the brave referred to on a former occasion. Seating him self by the fire, he looked dejected and melancholy, and his face bore in dubitable evidence of a personal encounter with some one.
On enquiring the cause of this, we learned that he had left his father's lodge by reason of a quarrel he had had with his eldest brother, —the latter having struck him with a fire-brand and burnt his body in several places during a drunken spree, —he was now on his way to White river, there to await the suitable time for revenge, when he should kill his brother.
We told him this would not be right; —it was liquor that had done him the wrong, and not his brother; —liquor was bad!
He seemed to acknowledge the truth of our suggestions, and asked "why the pale-faces brought the fire-water to do the red man so much harm?" Our trader replied, "The whites want robes, and can get them for liquor when nothing else will do it."
The answer evidently perplexed him, while he sat gazing silently into the fire, with his arms akimbo upon his knees, and palms supporting his, chin, as if striving to work out to his own satisfaction this strange problem in morality.
