Cowboy song

All through that autumn of 1885, Roosevelt remained in the Bad Lands. With his whole being he reveled in the wild and care-free life; but the newspapers did not seem to be able to rise above the notion that he was in Dakota for political purposes:

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, it is rumored [remarked the Chicago Tribune] has an eye on politics in Dakota, and is making himself popular with the natives. He is bright, certainly, but Mr. Roosevelt will find the methods in Dakota quite different from those which gave him sudden prominence in New York. There is a great deal of breeziness in a Dakota convention, but it is not the breeziness of innocence. It is high art. The number of gentlemen who are in training for United States senatorships, when Dakota shall have acquired admission, is not limited, and each and every aspirant can pull a wire with a silent grace which is fascinating. If Mr. Roosevelt really likes politics, he will enjoy himself in Dakota.

If Roosevelt had any notion of entering the race for the senatorship in Dakota, he has left no record of it. Howard Eaton spoke to him once about it. He was interested and even a little stirred, it appeared, at the possibility of representing the frontier in the United States Senate as, half a century previous, Thomas H. Benton, of Tennessee, whom he greatly admired, had represented it. But the thought failed to take permanent hold of him. He was, moreover, thinking of himself in those days more as a writer than as a politician.

The autumn was not without excitement. A small band of Indians began here and there to set fire to the prairie grass, and before the cattlemen realized what was happening, thousands of acres of winter feed lay blackened and desolate.

This act of ruthless destruction was the climax of a war of reprisals which had been carried on relentlessly between the Indians and the white men since the first bold pioneer had entered the West Missouri country. There was endless trouble and bad blood between the races, which at intervals flared up in an outrage, the details of which were never told in print because they were as a rule unprintable. In the region between the Little Missouri and the Yellowstone, in the years 1884 and 1885, the wounds left by the wars, which had culminated in the death of Custer at the Little Big Horn, were still open and sore. In the conflict between white and red, the Indians were not always the ones who were most at fault. In many cases the robberies and other crimes which were committed were the acts of men maddened by starvation, for the ranges where they had hunted had been taken from them, and the reservations in many cases offered insufficient food. The agents of the Great White Father, moreover, were not always over-careful to give them all the cattle and the ponies which the Government was by treaty supposed to grant them. In consequence they "lifted" a cow or a calf where they could. The cattlemen, on their part, thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of might is right, regarded the Indians as a public enemy, and were disposed to treat their ponies and any other property which they might possess as legitimate prize of war. There was, in fact, during the middle eighties, open and undisguised warfare between red and white throughout the region whose eastern border was the Bad Lands. It was, moreover, a peculiarly atrocious warfare. Many white men shot whatever Indians they came upon like coyotes, on sight; others captured them, when they could, and, stripping off their clothes, whipped them till they bled. The Indians retaliated horribly, delivering their white captives to their squaws, who tortured them in every conceivable fashion, driving slivers up under their nails, burning them alive, and feeding them with flesh cut from their own bodies. Along the banks of the Little Missouri there were no outrages, for the Indians had been driven out of the country at the end of the seventies, and, save for occasional raids in the early eighties, had made little trouble; but at the edge of the Bad Lands there was a skirmish now and then, and in the winter of 1884 Schuyler Lebo, son of that odd Ulysses who had guided Roosevelt to the Big Horn Mountains, was shot in the leg by an Indian while he was hunting on Bullion Butte.

Roosevelt had a little adventure of his own with Indians that summer. He was traveling along the edge of the prairie on a solitary journey to the unexplored country north and east of the range on which his cattle grazed, and was crossing a narrow plateau when he suddenly saw a group of four or five Indians come up over the edge directly in front. As they saw him, they whipped their guns out of their slings, started their horses into a run, and came toward him at full speed.

He reined up instantly and dismounted.

The Indians came on, whooping and brandishing their weapons.

Roosevelt laid his gun across the saddle and waited.

It was possible [Roosevelt wrote subsequently] that the Indians were merely making a bluff and intended no mischief. But I did not like their actions, and I thought it likely that if I allowed them to get hold of me they would at least take my horse and rifle, and possibly kill me. So I waited until they were a hundred yards off and then drew a bead on the first. Indians—and, for the matter of that, white men—do not like to ride in on a man who is cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards, having altered their course as quickly as so many teal ducks.

At some distance the Indians halted and gathered evidently for a conference.

Thereupon one man came forward alone, making the peace sign first with his blanket and then with his open hand. Roosevelt let him come to within fifty yards. The Indian was waving a piece of soiled paper, his reservation pass.

"How! Me good Injun," he called.

"How!" Roosevelt answered. "I'm glad you are. But don't come any closer."

The Indian asked for sugar and tobacco. Roosevelt told him that he had none. Another Indian now began almost imperceptibly to approach. Roosevelt called to him to keep back, but the Indian paid no attention.

Roosevelt whipped up his gun once more, covering the spokesman. That individual burst into a volume of perfect Anglo-Saxon profanity; but he retired, which was what he was supposed to do. Roosevelt led the faithful Manitou off toward the plains. The Indians followed him at a distance for two miles or more, but as he reached the open country at last they vanished in the radiant dust of the prairie.

Indians were a familiar sight in Medora and about the ranch-houses up and down the Little Missouri. In groups of a half-dozen or over they were formidable, but singly they were harmless and rather pathetic creatures. Roosevelt's attitude toward the Indians as a race was unequivocal. He detested them for their cruelty, and even more for their emphasis on cruelty as a virtue to be carefully developed as a white man might develop a sense of chivalry; but he recognized the fact that they had rights as human beings and as members of tribes having treaty relations with the United States, and insisted in season and out of season that those rights be respected.

I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian [he said in the course of a lecture which he delivered in New York, during January, 1886]. I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked Sheridan for a cannon. "What! Do you want to kill my soldiers with it?" asked the general. "No," replied the chief, "want to kill the cowboy; kill soldier with a club."

It was characteristic of Roosevelt that, in spite of his detestation of the race, he should have been meticulously fair to the individual members of it who happened to cross his path. He made it a point, both at the Maltese Cross and at Elkhorn, that the Indians who drifted in and out at intervals should be treated as fairly as the whites, neither wronging them himself nor allowing others to wrong them.

Mrs. Maddox, the maker of the famous buckskin shirt, who was an extraordinary woman in more ways than one, had her own very individual notions concerning the rights of the Indians. When Roosevelt stopped at her shack one day, he found three Sioux Indians there, evidently trustworthy, self-respecting men. Mrs. Maddox explained to him that they had been resting there waiting for dinner, when a white man had come along and tried to run off with their horses. The Indians had caught the man, but, after retaking their horses and depriving him of his gun, had let him go.

"I don't see why they let him go," she exclaimed. "I don't believe in stealing Indians' horses any more than white folks', so I told 'em they could go along and hang him, I'd never cheep! Anyhow I won't charge them anything for their dinner," she concluded.

The psychology of the Indians was curious, and it took time occasionally for their better qualities to reveal themselves. As chairman of the Little Missouri Stock Association, Roosevelt on one occasion recovered two horses which had been stolen from an old Indian. The Indian took them, muttering something that sounded like "Um, um," and without a word or a gesture of gratitude rode away with his property. Roosevelt felt cheap, as though he had done a service which had not been appreciated; but a few days later the old Indian came to him and silently laid in his arms a hide bearing an elaborate painting of the battle of the Little Big Horn.

The depredations of the Indians in the autumn of 1885 made concerted action on the part of the cattlemen inevitable. The damage which the fires did to the cattle ranges themselves was not extensive, for the devastation was confined in the main to a strip of country about eighteen miles on either side of the railroad's right of way, and the ranches were situated from twenty-five to eighty miles from the track. The real harm which the fires did was in the destruction of the "drives" to the railroad. Driving cattle tended, under the best conditions of water and pasture, to cause loss of weight; when the "drive" lay through a burnt district for twenty or twenty-five miles the deterioration of the cattle became a serious matter.

Day after day the cowboys fought the fires. It was peculiarly harassing work.

The process we usually followed [Roosevelt wrote in his Autobiography] was to kill a steer, split it in two lengthwise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, and that of the other to the hind leg. One of the men would spur his horse over or through the line of fire, and the two would then ride forward, dragging the steer, bloody side downward, along the line of flame, men following on foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets to beat out any flickering blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire and the twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task.

Work of this sort, day in, day out, did not make for magnanimity on the part of the cowboys. It was found that seventy-five Indians, who had received hunting permits from the agent at Berthold, were responsible for the devastation, and even the Eastern newspapers began to carry reports about a "serious conflict" which was likely to break out any minute "between cattlemen and Indian hunters in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri."

Some one evidently called a meeting of the Little Missouri River Stockmen's Association to consider the situation, which was becoming dangerous, for on November 4th the New York Herald reported that

the Cattle Association on Thursday next will send in a party of thirty-five cowboys to order the Indians off the Bad Lands and to see that they go. The Indians, being well armed and having permits [the report concluded] are expected to resist unless they are surprised when separated in small parties.

Whether or not the party was ever sent is dark; but there was no further trouble with the Indians that year.

Roosevelt did not attend the meeting of the Association he himself had established. Sometime after the middle of October, he had returned to the East. On October 24th he rode with the Meadowbrook Hunt Club and broke his arm, riding in at the death in spite of a dangling sleeve. A week or two later he was again in the Bad Lands.

He was a sorry sight as he arrived at Elkhorn Ranch, for his broken arm had not been the only injury he had incurred. His face was scarred and battered.

Bill Sewall regarded him with frank disapproval. "You're too valuable a man to use yourself up chasing foxes," he remarked. "There's some men that can afford to do it. There's some men that it don't make much difference if they do break their necks. But you don't belong to that class."

Roosevelt took the lecture without protest, giving his mentor the impression that it had sunk in.

Roosevelt remained in the Bad Lands until after Christmas, shooting his Christmas dinner in company with Sylvane. Before the middle of January he was back in New York, writing articles for Outing and the Century, doing some work as a publisher in partnership with a friend of his boyhood, George Haven Putnam, delivering an occasional lecture, and now and then making a political speech. Altogether, life was not dull for him.

Meanwhile, winter closed once more over the Bad Lands. The Marquis went to France, followed by rumors disquieting to those who had high hopes for the future of what the Marquis liked to call "my little town." J. B. Walker, who "operated the Elk Hotel," as the phrase went, "skipped out," leaving behind him a thousand dollars' worth of debts and a stock of strong drink. Nobody claimed the debts, but Hell-Roaring Bill Jones took possession of the deserted cellar and sold drinks to his own great financial benefit, until it occurred to some unduly inquisitive person to inquire into his rights; which spoiled everything.

The event of real importance was the arrival of a new bride in Medora. For early in January, 1886, Joe Ferris went East to New Brunswick; and when he came back a month later he brought a wife with him.

It was a notable event. The "boys" had planned to give Joe and his lady a "shivaree," such as even Medora had never encountered before, but Joe, who was crafty and knew his neighbors, succeeded in misleading the population of the town concerning the exact hour of his arrival with his somewhat apprehensive bride. There was a wild scurrying after tin pans and bells and other objects which were effective as producers of bedlam, but Joe sent a friend forth with a bill of high denomination and the suggestion that the "boys" break it at Bill Williams's saloon, which had the desired effect.

Joseph A. Ferris.