C'mon! Let's Go Hunt Some Buffalo...........Yeehaw!

[genealogynut]

Howard Courant
Thursday, June 15, 1933

BUFFALO HUNT IN SEVENTIES

A Pioneer of The Early Days Tells of His Pursuit of the Bison

James Smith, a pioneer of old Howard county, Kansas, but who for many years has lived in the far west, recently visited relatives in Howard, Mrs. Marsha DeVoe, Dick Fickle and Emmett Fickle, and while here found a few old-timers of the early seventies.  He visited at The Courant office-two or three times while in town, told of the experiences of the days of 1870 and the years following, and told of a buffalo hunt he had in '73 (1873) and we suggested that we would like to publish a story of his hunt. He then told us that he had a few weeks ago told it to a young man in Oklahoma who wrote it up for one of the Chandler papers, and he gave us a copy of the paper from which we condense the following story of a real buffalo hunt in the early days:

It was the autumn of '69 when first I saw this western country, but it is the year of '73, I want to tell you about.  Having just married, my wife and I left old Virginia in a covered wagon and headed west for our honeymoon.  We never stopped for long until we reached the little settlement on Grouse creek, twenty miles east of the present site of Winfield, Kansas.

This was the point from which Smith, now 82 years old, started his buffalo hunts in the fall and winter of '73, which brought him to the banks of the Driftwood, the Salt Fork; the Cimarron and the Canadian rivers.

Leaving Lazette, our little settlement on the Grouse (now Cambridge, Kansas), in early October, we camped for our first night at Oxfod; 30 miles distanrt.  In the absence of wood, we gathered cow chips, built a fire, and killed a den of seven diamond rattlers, four feet long.  My brother-in-law, Austin Fickle, and I slept in the one wagon that was covered, the other boys--Perry Cummings, M. McGee, Noland and my younger brother, Thomas, chose the ground.

Deep creek, just west of Wellington, served as our second night's camp, and Old Kiowa, on the Medicine, for the third night.

The sun was already setting when next day we reached the Driftwood, but there in front of our eyes was surging black file of a hundred buffaloes, moving slowly toward the setting sun, made it seem as if a million savory meals were vanishing forever.  Picture a streak of black extending along the horizon and you just about have it, one old cow passing or falling behind another.  The nearest were about 250 yards away as we jumped behind the south bank, eagerly making ready to bring down at least one a piece.

There was a little water in the creek and deer wre dashing out of the cottonwoods along the banks.  Whole families of squirrels were busily running to and fro.  Overhead a bevy of a thousand prairie chickens flew past and not far to the left a cluster of antelope, sleek and sprightly, went into scampers.  An old crow called to a distant mate, listened, and called again.  It was Indian summer, in the Indian country.

But the unexpected often happens, even with seasoned hunters, the narrator here pointed out.  In this instance all aimed at the same animal, so that only buffalo died that night.

Moving father up the creek next day the party git three more and then camped for three days.  Their store along the Driftwood was seven buffaloes in all, Mr. Smith said, and might have been more, but that was all their two wagons would hold.

"We didn't take anything but the side humps, 100 pounds on each side, and the hind quarters.  We never at any time took any fore quarters."

Their wagons piles high with choice, fresh meat, they could only gaze in wonderment at the sight awaiting them on the banks of the Medicine.  It was the close of first day on the homeward trip; camp was set. Out of the east came thousands of turkeys, thousands of them, just walking along the verdant turf, heading toward the hunters' camp.

The turkeys had been feeding on redberries in the sandhills and were coming home to roost.

"Talk about your insouciance," (that word means lighthearted, carefree, unconcerned) chuckled. the old buffalo hunter, "them turkey had it; they were positively careless in the way they sauntered along.  I reckon you would say those birds were a black ribbon on a field of green--a hundred yeards abreast and a quarter of a mile in length.

Mind you, I don't say those turkeys came into our camp, but they walked right up to it, and weren't a bit afraid.  Slowly, they raised themselves into the tops of the cottonwoods, where they roosted all night, beside our camp.

The next morning, shortly after daybreak, I shot seven of them, while leaning against a tree.  I don't know how many the other boys got.  But even after we began firing into them hundreds continued to light within 60 feet of us.........putt-putt-putt.........I can hear them yet.

No sooner were we started on our homeward trail again than here came 10 or 15 buffaloes running  head on toward us.  They were being follow by a lone man with a six-shooter, I picked out a big, black cow that looked like a good one and plugged in.  That animal was 300 yards away when I took that shot and she just turned head over heels.  I had hit her above a front forelock.  When I followed her she turned to fight--she that was hopping on three---but a bullet through the heart ended that.  We skinned that buffalo and divided the meat amongest us, tho we hadn't much room on our wagons.  The cow weighed 1500 pounds.

By December the hunters were back again, this time bent on getting into bigger herds.  For that reason, they pressed farther to the west nearer the present site of Alva, Oklahoma perhaps.

Working our way westward at high noon the next day, still along the bank of the creek we were following, one of the boys on a knoll half a mile north of the creek, shot and killed a buffalo.  We all drove over to help skin that buffalo when three Cheyenne Indians on horseback, painted a vivid red and wrapped in blankets with their guns thrown over their saddles of bark were enough to depict barbarian culture, but their somber, rude faces in that awful paint seemed heathenish, which it was:

"Too much white man, puck-a-shee," one old Indian shouted.  We guessed what that meant, but we watched them pick up our buffalo hide and throw it on their own pony.

"Heap Cheyenne a comin." they said as they rode away.

I said to the boys, "Let's turn around and go back; let them have hide, meat, and all, rather than have any trouble."  Then we took our back trail the same way we had some in.  It was three o'
clock in the afternoon and we figured we had time to get out of that neighborhood before dark.

A half-mile farther on we looked back.  It looked as if there were 300 Indians on the spot where we had killed that buffalo meat.  They told us that if we were afraid they would follow.  Driving until dark, then off of the trail and up into the canyon where we couldn't be seen from the trail, we camped for the night.

Next morning we concluded we would go back home and had gotten perhaps ten miles when we met three men from Michigan, buffalo hunters like ourselves, only they were after the hides, not the meat.  They told us that if we had gone on ten miles farther south we would have missed the Indians, that we had driven into their camp.  The Indians we had run on to, they said, were making their way eastward along the river to headquarters.

The three men from Michigan invited us to go with them, so I and my two brothers joined their party.   The rest of our group, afraid of the Indians, went on home.

With our new companions we made our way on down the river.  Along the bottom about four o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a herd of buffaloes coming in from the southeast. They were about a mile or so away.  Just a mass of black as far as you could see and extending far to the right and to the left.  It looked like the whole earth was moving, there were so many of them.  Man, what a sight!  And they were moving right toward us.

I had my kid brothers drive the teams on ahead and into a canyoon so as to be out of sight.  As we entered the canyon I left them and made for a ledge of rocks, while they drove about two hundred years deeper into the ravine.

Hidden from view by the ledge I had selected, I waited for those buffaloes to come along.  It seemed as if that ground I had selected had been erected just to divide that buffalo herd in the middle.  Along came those big black cows and bulls, walking slowly, turning only to the right or to the left to get beyond me and that ridge, where theywould again unite once they had passed.

I remained immovable until they had gotten themselves encircled about that clump of grass and rocks and then in five shots killed five.  They weren't more than twenty steps away you see.

The men from Michigan, still in the bottom, were not so fortunate, but they got two.  I let them skin my buffaloes for the hides, and took the meat for myself.  After we had loaded our prizes we drove together--the three Michigan fellows, my two brothers and myself--a half a mile up the creek into Cedar canyon where there was a dead wood, and there we camped for the night.

And what a night.  Three inches of snow fell, a storm broke in all its fury, zero weather set in.  We stayed in that canyon two weeks, snowed in.  Cooking buffalo meat and making bread in a Dutch oven out of the corn meal we had, we did not go hungry.  But we ran out of horse feed and had to cut down young cottenwoods for our horses to eat.  They would at least eat the bark off and that would keep them alive.

Making our beds on the ground and sleeping between buffalo hides, the top hides with the fur down and the bottom hides with hair up, and a fire burning all night, we kept warm enough, but we had to take turns about as sentry.  Each night one fellow had to be left sitting before the fire, with rifle in hand, to keep at bay , those howling, menacing wolves.  "Loafers" those wolves were, and they weighed about 200 pounds apiece.

One evening, at the end of those two weeks, an old weather beaten Indian came riding alone into camp without saying a word, not so much as mumbling, that old Indian just sat there on his pony, wrapped in a blanket and with that hideous red paint smeared over his face and his gun laid across his lap, and he looked around our camp.

He saw how many buffalo hides we had, and our wagons loaded with meat, then as silently as he came he rode away.

I said to my brothers, "I'm going to get out of here in the morning.  That old Indian is on his way to headquarters.  Likely as not he'll report us and maybe they'll come and massacre us."  It was seven miles to their camp, I suppose.

Just after that Indian had left us I heard buffaloes coming over the snow toward our camp.  They were running and to keep them from messing up our things, I shot into the bunch of them and killed one of the cows.  On of the men from Michigan aimed to bring down one of them, too, but his rifle missed fire.

In the early hours of the morning, with daylight yet some time away, the three young Smith hunters prepared to break camp.  Uncle Jim says that when he started to get some meat for breakfast he found it frozen so hard he couldn't chop it with an ax, so he just went out to that old dead buffalo, lying as yet unskinned on the frozen snow, and proceeded to cut a big piece out of the ham and to cook it for breakfast.

The men from Michigan were not up yet when the brothers set out on their homeward trip; they were waiting for daylight to come so they could skin that bufflao.  Uncle Jim said he guessed he came in for a plenty of cussing when they saw the big patch cut out of that hide, but he insists it was his buffalo.

Once again upon the banks of the Medicine, we were to witness a more startling sight than a column of promenading turkeys.  Looking down into the river bed below us, we could see a hundred tepees arranged in a village setting.  One look was enough to see that that village was a swarming den.  And to think we had fled one Indian infested neighborhood only to run amuck in a winter settlement.

But even as I hestitated, not knowing which way to turn, a man in uniform rode up to say we need have no fear.  He was a government soldier, he said, and they were moving the Indians to a reservation.  Upon his invitation we camped with the Indians that night.

Well, if there were any proud people, it was my folks upon our return to the little settlement on the Grouse.  Fickle and his party, having found an excuse for their early return incumbent upon them, had told that the Indians were on the warpath.  My mother and father wre nearly crazy.  They were getting up a search party to come and look for us.

Not long afterwards we got the report that the Cheyennes had seized three men out there on the prairies, appropriated their horses and wagons, their blankets and their firearms, and left them to roam the plains barefoot.  Returning hunters had rescued them without learning their identity.  I have often wondered, though of course, I never learned if those three men might not have been the three good fellows from Michigan.

Note:  I was so excited about this buffalo hunt, that I missed copying the very last paragraph of this article.  I am still kicking (ouch!) myself.