The third scout in the group is my interpreter, a young Mexican. Do you notice his long matted hair? Barnum would make a fortune if he had him. His hair never made the acquaintance of a comb, and his face is almost equally unacquainted with water. Yet he is a very good and deserving person, in his way. We have a great deal of sport with him. I threaten to put kerosene oil on his hair and set it on fire. He speaks several of the Indian languages, and is very useful. The fourth in the group is Jack Corbin, one of my most reliable scouts and couriers. He has made frequent trips to Camp Supply and back with the mail.
WASHITA BATTLE-GROUND, March 24, 1869.
We arrived here yesterday, having marched three hundred and fourteen miles. I will rest two days and then start with my entire command for Camp Supply.
I have been successful in my campaign against the Cheyennes. I outmarched them, outwitted them at their own game, proved to them they were in my power, and could and would have annihilated the entire village of over two hundred lodges but for two reasons. 1st. I desired to obtain the release of the two white women held captive by them, which I could not have done had I attacked. 2d. If I had attacked them, those who escaped, and absent portions of the tribe also, would have been on the war-path all summer, and we would have obtained no rest. These reasons alone influenced me to pursue the course I have, and now, when I can review the whole matter coolly, my better judgment and my humanity tell me I have acted wisely. You cannot appreciate how delicately I was situated. I counselled with no one, but when we overtook the Cheyenne village, and saw it in our power to annihilate them, my command, from highest to lowest, desired bloodshed. They were eager for revenge, and could not comprehend my conduct. They disapproved and criticised it. I paid no heed, but followed the dictates of my own judgment—the judgment upon which my beloved commander (General Sheridan) said he relied for the attainment of the best results. He had authorized me to do as I pleased, fight or not. And now my most bitter enemies cannot say that I am either blood-thirsty or possessed of an unworthy ambition.
Had I given the signal to attack, officers and men would have hailed it with a shout of gratification. I braved their opinion, and acted in opposition to their wishes, but to-day not one but says I was right, and any other course would have been disastrous. Many have come to me and confessed their error. The two women are bright, cultivated, and good-looking.
I now have the Cheyenne chiefs prisoners, and intend to hold them as such until their tribe comes in. I think we have rendered them sick and tired of war. We are delighted to find a large mail here. The paymaster is at Camp Supply waiting to pay the troops. One-half the command is dismounted, and what few horses we have could not go out again for two months.
General Custer refers in the letters written to me, from which quotations have just been made, to the rescue of the two white women. It was brought about after unending parleyings, delays, and excuses on the part of the Indians, by threatening to hang the three chiefs, Big Head, Fat Bear, and Dull Knife, who had been captured by our people with a view to holding them until all the white captives then with the hostiles were released. Indian messengers were sent to the tribe to report the danger to their chiefs, and finally, after long and weary watching of the hills over which the detachment from the village must come, a group of horsemen appeared. While they traversed several miles that separated them from our troops, the whole command watched with breathless interest. The young brother of a captured woman had been with the command all winter, and moving daily among our men, had kept their sympathies alive to the atrocity that had been perpetrated. All the troopers were watching this half-grown man, suddenly matured by anxiety and trouble, as he kept his eyes on the approaching Indians. The hearts of the soldiers beat faster and faster as the lad grew paler and more anxious. "The bravest are the tenderest", and that day proved it, for our rough men had scarcely any thought but for the suffering youth among them. Finally the Indians came near enough for an officer to perceive with his glass that there were two on one pony. A little nearer and they reported that they were women. The poor boy had no reason to be sure that one of them was his sister. To the Indian his captive is nameless. The chiefs had confessed that they had two white squaws, but by no means in their power could our people ascertain who they were. Finally the two figures descended from the pony, left the Indians, who were at a halt, and began to walk towards the waiting troops.
General Custer, by the aid of his powerful field-glass, told young Brewster that one of the figures coming was short and stout, the other taller. As soon as any observation was made by General Custer regarding what his glass revealed, one listening soldier told it to another, and a tremor of excitement spread from one end of the long watching line to the other. As Brewster looked through the glass lent to him and saw the women, he began to believe that one of them was his sister, as she was of about her height, and he implored General Custer for permission to go to her. It was hard to refuse, but he was obliged to do so, fearing the boy's horror at the change in her would make him forget the necessity for caution, and attempt revenge before the prisoners had really reached our lines.
The regiment of Kansas Volunteers had been organized to revenge some of the outrages to the border people, and with the hope of rescuing white prisoners, so General Custer gave them the privilege of first greeting their two States women. Three ranking officers went forward to meet the poor creatures, who, even then, except for their white skin, could hardly be distinguished from the Indians, so strange was their dress. Hardly had the officers advanced a quarter of the way when the waiting lad darted from his place beside General Custer, and sped on before every one until he had reached the women. As he clasped the taller of the two in his arms the soldiers knew that the sister for whom he had suffered so much was restored to him. The officers, in telling this story to us afterwards, always hurried over this part; they could not speak calmly.
They all crowded round the poor girls, eager to shake their hands and welcome them; but the most daring, the most valiant among them, did not attempt to conceal the tears that rolled down their cheeks. Men who had laid the fair flower of chivalry, the loved comrade, Captain Hamilton, in the ground only so recently with tearless silence, now wept over the two captives. The longer they looked upon the poor creatures the harder it became to control their emotions. The young faces of the two, who not a year before were bright, happy women, were now worn with privation and exposure, and haggard with the terrible insults of their captors, too dreadful to be chronicled here. The rudely cut and scanty garment that barely covered them was made from flour sacks bearing the brand that our government purchases, thus proving that the Indians who captured them had been drawing rations from the United States Indian agency at the time. They had Indian leggings and moccasins, their braided hair and arms encircled with spiral wire, their fingers covered with brass rings, their necks with beads, were evidences that the Indians, by thus adorning their prisoners, hoped to mollify the wrath of the white man. Fortunately, the one woman on the expedition, who was General Custer's cook, and from whose temper, as I have elsewhere related, her soldier husband so often suffered, now forgot the rages and furies of her daily life, and gave the poor released creatures some of her clothing, clad in which they left in charge of the now happy brother for their homes when the first wagon-train coming with supplies went back to Camp Supply.
The story of their life among the Indians was one of barbarous treatment and brutality; one had no knowledge that the other was a prisoner, as they had been captured separately, until they met in an Indian village, and after being traded about from one chief to another, they at last came to be owned by the same warrior. While together, they planned an escape. They did not know where they were, but stole out at night, and, guided by the stars, started north. With great joy they at last reached a wagon-road lately travelled. In the midst of this delight a bullet whistled by them, and soon they saw their owner in hot pursuit. New insults were inflicted, and more laborious work was loaded on the two after their return to the village. The conduct of the squaws, always jealous of white women, was brutality itself. The chief finally sold the two apart. With the terrible physical labor required