route beyond the absence of Indians, which indicated that they were advised that armed forces were in their country, but the army officers never allowed the danger of an attack to be out of their minds, and guards by night and caution by day was the military order after Sioux City was passed, which marked the last of the white settlements. If actual war had existed with the Indians, the boats could, and probably would, have been ambushed from the shores of the river when near approach to them was unavoidable, and the fear of this was not out of the minds of some of us after we reached the "water that runs," River L'Eauquicourt. This tributary of the Missouri located legends of great pine forests, twins of the cedar imagery, which has been already mentioned, and had about the same foundation. One of the immediate results of the Harney expedition, of which the Missouri boat flotilla was a part, was the establishment of a large military garrison near the mouth of this river, which was named Ft. Randall. It was in connection with this military post that I first heard of Captain Nathaniel Lyon, of the Second infantry, whom I had never met, and of whom I may have something to say later on in this paper, or in a separate one on General Harney's Sioux camp and Major Howe's court martial in the autumn of 1855, after my return from the Pierre expedition. It may be stated here that Captain Lyon, without ever having seen me in his life, and only upon report from his brother officers at Ft. Pierre made an open fight for my appointment as post trader at Ft. Randall, of whose board of post administration he was a member. I was defeated as I remember by Captain Todd, of Sioux City, who had resigned his commission in the army to accept this place, and Major W. H. Wessels, my friend, gave the vote which elected him, because it was a part of the unwritten code in ante-war days in the army that an army officer resigning his command to take a post-tradership was entitled to the votes of his brother officers. Captain Lyon did not recognize the unwritten code. I was a pauper in those days, so to say, and did not know of my escape from a place, which was worth at least $100,000 a year until months after the event when Major Wessels told me the facts himself.

As we ascended the river, the battle of the boats with the narrow and shallow channels proved their unfitness for the service into which bad judgment had brought them. Terrific storms were encountered

at different times, which caused fears of disaster, since we found that the Indian country could blow harder winds and clap louder thunder than any other known region on earth. In the course of the long voyage, we passed in the vicinity of the "mauvais terre." In later years, it was to be my fortune to know, as an intimate friend, the distinguished geologist, Ferdinand V. Hayden, who achieved enduring fame by his labors in that desert region, and by his subsequent work as the author of the only United States geological survey of Nebraska that has ever been made. It befell me to be a personal witness of his labors. The first authentic discovery and report upon Rocky Mountain coal was when, during the construction of the Pacific railroad, Hayden brought into my editorial room of the Omaha Herald, upon his own narrow shoulders, a bag of this black but precious product, from the Rock Springs region, dumping its contents upon the floor. Over that shining heap of coal the eloquent scientist delivered an oration, which I regret to say, could not be produced in print in the absence of a competent reporter. It was full of predic tions of the immense future value of these coals to the Pacific railroad and the trans-Missouri country, which have since been realized an hundred fold as the great steam generator of the continental railway, and hearth-warmer of all the vast region through which the national highway passes. Professional disappointment arising in the injustice of the government, in my opinion, was the primary cause of poor Hayden's subsequent insanity and premature death.

I must close this recital. Ft. Pierre consisted of a stockade and rude buildings unassailable by the red enemy from without, when its gates were closed. Colonel Montgomery, Major Wessels, Surgeon Madison and others, made our welcome most cordial. Large numbers of Sioux had congregated for council, perhaps not less than 6,000 of them being in the neighborhood. Great talks" were had. I remember an impassioned speech from one of the gray haired heads of the tribes, who wore a blue coat and metal buttons, a relic of some former visit to Washington, by which I was much impressed. A finer body of men in physical stature and dignity of personal bearing I never saw in my life than I saw during my week's stay at Ft. Pierre in these untutored Sioux Indians. Agent Galpin of the fur company is remembered for his intelligence and kindness to me, and especially on account of his bright minded

Sioux wife, whose hospitality we enjoyed in his wigwam, which was furnished with the richest furs and decorated with several chidren of the half-breed brand of their mixed parentage. Mr. Galpin was an educated man, I think a collegiate. He sighed for return to civilization, but the ties which bound him to the freedom and other charms of the aboriginal life, made him a willing captive, and he died among the Sioux with whom he had long lived, and to whose many good qualities he never neglected a proper opportunity to pay just tribute.

It had been the intention to return from Ft. Pierre upon one of three or four government transports, but it happened that Mr. Charles Chouteau was in that country with his company's boat, the little "St. Mary" of sainted name. He landed from the upper river in good time, and we took passage on her for Omaha, with the once famous pilot, Joe Le Barge, as chief man at the wheel. Two things were assured by this circumstance which were most desirable, safety and speed on the down-the-river journey, and good company in a social way. I remember the middle-aged son of the Chouteau family of St. Louis as a tall, spare man whose manners were slightly Frenchy, and always polite. Le Barge was a short, stout, alert and energetic man, with an eye like an eagle, which had been trained by twenty years of service as a student of the mysterious and muddy waterways of the Missouri. The death of Joe Le Barge, the brown faced and black eyed pilot, two or three years ago, caused a pang of regret in the hearts of tens of thousands, who dwell along the banks of the great river, who knew and admired him in both his character and calling. The journey home took about a week's time, the boat stopping at all Indian villages to discharge small packages of presents and goods and to receive whatever there was for the fur company. The sight of Omaha again after the long, and sometimes dangerous absence, was gladdening, and the welcome. from friends, who seemed nearer to us than before this kind of separation, was both cheering and grateful."

THE MILITARY CAMP ON THE BIG SIOUX RIVER IN

1855.

BY GEORGE L. MILLER.

66

concerns an

This annexment to the Ft. Pierre expedition incident of the Indian campaign of General W. S. Harney in 1855, of which the battle of Ash Hollow was the bloody opening. I had accompanied the river expedition in June of that year to Ft. Pierre, as has been related in another paper, returning to Omaha in July. Gen. Harney had crossed with his main forces from the Platte river garrisons during the summer after having made his compacts of peace with the Sioux, for which his grab-all bargains with them at Ft. Laramie, and the big "talks" with Maj. Montgomery at Ft. Pierre, had paved the way. Reports of depredations, actual and threatened, of the Santee and other bands of Indians on the Iowa lines of advanced settlement in the vicinity of Sioux City, probably caused him to order considerable forces to the Big Sioux in the autumn of that year. Gen. Harney accompanied them in person and in command. I visited this camp several times during the latter months of the season, on business and pleasure, assisting Lieut. Plummer and other officers, in supplying the troops with needed subsistence from Council Bluffs and Omaha markets. I do not remember the number of troops that occupied that encampment. I should say that it was composed of cavalry and infantry, and perhaps some light artillery, that would be called a regiment in all; everything being in perfect military order, with Harney always a chief figure, not only on account of his high rank and reputation, but almost as much on account of his splendid physique and commanding presence.

It was here that I met Gen. Harney for the first time. I was afforded a good opportunity to study the character of one of the most eminent of the heroes of our earlier wars. His form was that of the ideal soldier; six feet four in height, as straight and erect as any Sioux chief that ever lived; brusque in manner; rough in mould and

mein, as in voice; proud of his name and his honest titles to distinction; harsh of speech, and in no way fastidious about his choice of adjectives to emphasize his commands or displeasure. He was yet so tender of heart, after all, that even a wronged army mule could arouse in him the most practical sympathy, as an incident will illustrate which I myself witnessed with my own delighted eyes, at the Big Sioux camp, as follows:

Gen. Harney was walking about the encampment on a beautiful morning after everybody had opened their eyes and their tents for another day of army life in that then wild and untamed locality. He was attended by an orderly who was leading his own favorite saddle mule at a respectful distance in the rear of his big master. The general was in citizens dress, as I remember. It was his habit to carry with him a riding whip when taking these casual "constitutionals" for exercise and observation, and he had it well in hand at the moment when he discovered a muleteer kicking and beating one of the army mules. In less time than it will take to tell the rest of the story, the "Hero of Chapultepec" had seized the mule-beater by the nape of the neck with one hand, and was giving him a savage horse-whipping with that handy riding whip in the other. There was considerable subdued comment over the incident, that served to bring out quiet remarks upon the character of Harney; and it also impressed me with that peculiarity of his nature which could permit him to shoot down not less than sixty Indians at Ash Hollow, including more than one woman, as a punishment for offences, which, in my belief, they never committed, without any compunctions of conscience or emotion of sympathy with human suffering, and yet, abuse of a mule could, and did, excite in him both sympathy and resentment, which was displayed by violence and by small and large blocks of profanity, that would make the average cowboy of the plains ashamed of the poverty of his choicest vocabulary. But, upon the whole, there was room to admire Gen. Harney for a great deal of personal manhood and military merit. I never regarded him as a great soldier, nor was he ever born for large commands. There were at least three younger men in the Sioux Camp in 1855 under Gen Harney's orders who were his superiors, from whom the country was destined to hear in later years out of the red centers and chaos of the civil war; men who shed their blood upon both sides of