Chapter 31
Brule Sioux Toll Charged To Travel Over Their Land
Little Elk and Walking Bird had led the hunting party for three days before they came across a small herd of buffalo.
“Quiet”, Little Elk said in a hoarse whisper. He then commanded silence by raising his hand after which he pointed here and there to places where he wanted the braves to go before they charged the herd.
They were able to kill four bulls and a cow. They had skinned the hides and sliced the meat into one inch wide and one half-inch thick strips. They cut away all the fat and added pemmican and peppers and hung the strips of meat from poles to dry in the sun. They had enough to feed their tribe for the next few months.
They broke camp and loaded the hides and jerky on the horse travois’ and headed back to the reservation. There was a time when all they would have to do was step outside their teepees and they would find thousands of buffalo grazing in the prairie. Since the arrival of the white man the buffalo had disappeared. Most of what remained had been run off the prairie and higher in the mountains.
Little Elk had learned that the white man had killed over thirty-one million buffalo over the past thirteen years. They received eight dollars for a ton of buffalo bones. He was told it took one hundred carcasses to make a ton. He could recall as a young boy riding with his father the prairie being black from horizon to horizon with buffalo. Once they rode for three consecutive days through one continuous herd.
He and Walking Bird had witnessed the white man shooting hundreds of buffalo from their big Iron Horse that ran on iron paths that cut across the Sioux land. They left the buffalo to rot in the hot day sun. He and Walking Bird rode down and cut the hides and stripped the meat from as many as they could for a whole day before fatigue over took them. They had to leave the rest to the buzzards
As they rode up the arroyo, they saw a wagon train approaching about one quarter mile to the east. Little Elk and the rest of the hunting party came to a stop to watch them approach. There was a Calvary attachment of eighty riding in columns of four leading about twelve wagons. They counted fifteen outriders as well. The white man hired many Crow Indians as scouts, but this attachment had a white man with long yellow hair. Little Elk knew that could only be his friend, Yellow Hair, who told him that he hired on to scout for the Calvary.
He turned to Walking Bird and said, “That’s Yellow Hair. I will go speak with him.”
Walking Bird nodded.
“Stay here”, Little Elk commanded. He urged his pony down the hill toward the approaching wagon train.
Little Elk thought of the many times he hunted with Yellow Hair and knew he was one of a few white men able to hunt the buffalo riding without a saddle and bridle. His horse, the buckskin mare, was one of the best hunting ponies in the Lakota nation. She was quick and fast and would bring Yellow Hair so close to the buffalo that he could reach out and touch them with his rifle. Little Elk and Yellow Hair had many contests to see who would be the first to bring down a buffalo bull in a hunt. Yellow Hair usually won due to his pony’s knowledge and fearlessness around the buffalo.