The traveller on the plains in the early days soon learned the significance of the spires of smoke that he sometimes saw rising from a distant ridge or hill and that in turn he might see answered from a different direction. It was the signal talk of the Indians across miles of intervening ground, a signal used in rallying the warriors for an attack, or warning them for a retreat if that seemed advisable.

The Indian had a way of sending up the smoke in rings or puffs, knowing that such a smoke column would at once be noticed and understood as a signal, and not taken for the smoke of some camp-fire. He made the rings by covering the little fire with his blanket for a moment and allowing the smoke to ascend, when he instantly covered the fire again. The column of ascending smoke rings said to every Indian within thirty miles, “Look out! There is an enemy near!” Three smokes built close together meant danger. One smoke merely meant attention. Two smokes meant “camp at this place.”

Sometimes at night the settler or the traveller saw fiery lines crossing the sky, shooting up and falling, perhaps taking a direction diagonal to the lines of vision. He might guess that these were signals of the Indians, but unless he were an old-timer, he might not be able to interpret the signals. The old-timer and the squaw man knew that one fire-arrow, an arrow prepared by treating the head of the shaft with gunpowder and fine bark, meant the same as the columns of smoke puffs—“An enemy is near.” Two arrows meant “Danger.” Three arrows said imperatively, “This danger is great.” Several arrows said “The enemy are too many for us.” Thus the untutored savage could telephone fairly well at night as well as at day.

And this was where the red man was ahead of the white, for this long distance system of communication was in daily use years before the Morse code of telegraphy by wire, which was practically on the same lines, was invented.

Another system of wireless telegraphy by mirrors was also operated by the red man, but it would only be used on bright sunshiny days and never at night. The holder of the mirror, by catching the rays of the sun could direct them right into the eyes of a passing person at some distance, and thus attract his attention, and communication between them was thus established.

All of which goes to show the truthfulness of the adage; “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

At the time of the Custer massacre, the first tidings of the fight were learned in the Red River valley from Indians from the Red Lake River, a tributary of the Red River, who came down in canoes in war paint and told the people of Crookston, Minnesota, of the great Indian victory. The Winnipeg Free Press and the St. Paul and Minneapolis evening papers published the story simultaneously, and this was the first intimation given of Custer’s terrible fate. The next day, the news came by wire from Deadwood, but the Indian signals beat out the telegraph companies, and these Red Lake Indians were several hundred miles from the scene of the massacre.