In the fall of 1865 I
took eight well armed men who were familiar with Indian fighting, with me
after some timber. We went eighty miles up the Lawrence branch of the
North Platte, through a very wild country and inhabited with hostile
Indians. We were gone sixteen days and had only one scrap with the Indians
and much to our surprise, we all arrived home safe and sound.
This
same fall I put up two hundred tons of hay, and all the time we were
working at the hay, we were surrounded by the dangers. One day a man, who
happened to be in the field alone, was shot off the machine and his team
stolen by the Indians. After that a guard was sent out to see that there
were no Indians secreted in the field, before I sent the men out to work.
The buffalo and antelope were so numerous over the prairie that a
herd of a thousand head at a time would be grazing right around my fields.
They were killed to supply the government stations with meat for the
emigrants. There were times when the emigrants were not prepared to hunt,
so we scouts generally did the hunting. On account of the Indians always
sneaking around in the way, it was necessary for us to take a large supply
of cartridges with us. We had no means of carding them except in our
pockets, and they were so heavy they nearly always kept our pockets torn
down. I finally grew tired of that and decided to study out a new way.
While I was studying, I carelessly v/rapped a string around a cartridge
and noticed that it held the cartridge firm. It dawned on me that I could
fix a belt that way. After I figured it all out, I went to the harness
maker at Fort Sedgwick, and said, "Mr. Mitchell, I want you to do a job
for me. Take a strip of leather about three or four inches wide and long
enough for a belt, then take a buck string about half inch thick and sew
in loops on the belt, just so these cartridges will fit in them snug, and
not lose out." I paid him two dollars and fifty cents for making the belt.
When I wore it back on the plains, all of my friends greatly admired it
and praised it very highly. Some advised me to get a patent on it, but I
was over a hundred miles from Denver, and four hundred from Omaha,
therefore was unable to go.
Later I went to Fort Sedgwick and
asked for Mr. Mitchell. I wanted to tell him of the satisfaction of my
belt, in the general opinion of my friends on the plains. But I was told
he had invented a cartridge belt, sold the patent for a large sum of money
and left the frontier, leaving me the satisfaction of knowing I had told
him how to make it, while he got the credit and money for the belt.
In the spring and summer of 1867, the Indians again got so bold and
numerous up around Greeley, that freighters refused to load for the west.
Four hundred miles of the road to Denver and Greeley was cut off and
emigrants and freighters dared not travel. What freight was taken west was
raised to twenty cents a pound; grain was twenty and twenty-five cents a
pound, while hay was very high, and finally there was none to be had.
Gus Hall, who was injured in the American ranch fight six months
before, came back to my ranch with a cork leg and foot. He proposed to me
to go in with him and get some cows and capture some buffalo calves and
raise them. We got ready the first to the tenth of May, when buffalo
calves were due. There was a bunch of twelve or fifteen hundred buffalo
cows near my place, where we expected to get what we wanted in a few
minutes. On the tenth day of May, we started out with a pair of Mexican
mules and a spring wagon to gather the calves. The buffalo shifted around
so that we missed them and we kept on going, thinking they had sought the
table land above my place. Just before making the rise onto these broad,
level table lands, we stopped, and I got out and walked on ahead of the
team, so I could see the country and locate the buffalo. To my utmost
surprise and consternation, instead of finding the buffalo, there were
about a hundred Indians about a mile from us, coming in our direction on
the march, as if moving. I did not know if they had seen me or not, and
did not care to spend any time to find out, but knew if they found our
tracks we would be doomed. One of us took the lines and the other the
blacksnake and the way we flew down through those sand hills was a
caution. When about half way home we dashed down through a small basin and
there we found the buffalo cows and the calves were lying thick all over
the ground. We could have loaded up in just a few minutes, but the sight
of those Indians had left no desire for anything but to get to a place of
safety. After that we were cautious about going out and abandoned the
project.
We were out hunting, once after that, and again
encountered a band of Indians, but being well mounted, made our escape. I
told Gus that he seemed to be unlucky and I should decline to go out with
him anymore. About two years afterwards Gus Hall and Bill Comstock, with
two other men, while out in the cedar canon for wood, were all killed and
scalped by the Indians.
The Indians believe that no one can go to
the happy hunting ground baldheaded; that is the reason they always
scalped the white men, for they did not want them to get in on their happy
hunting grounds. They would always try to save their dead before the
settlers could scalp them, so they would be sure to enter their heaven.
On June 3rd, 1867, I went out to hunt antelope, and when about
half a mile from the house and in plain sight of it, I was surrounded by
Indians. They were all on ponies and kept circling around me. The Indians
would usually surround a man and induce him to shoot away his ammunition
the first thing, then they were sure to get him. I happened to know this,
so was saving with mine and intended to make every shot count. It was
nearly an hour before I got a good aim and as they ran past me I killed
one of their horses. The Indians had seemed to think I did not have any
cartridges, and were somewhat surprised at the shot, but as I did not
shoot again for nearly an hour, they began to think that I did not have
any more, and got reckless. One of them came up behind me and shot an
arrow that just buzzed past my ear and stuck in the ground a few feet
ahead of me. The Indian then whirled his horse, and just as he started
away, I tried my luck, and he raised up and went over his poor's head like
a leapfrog. I was getting reckless, too, for I thought I was a goner, and
was going to see how many I could send on ahead of me. My attention was
drawn towards the Indian I had shot, and I noticed that he was not
Coburn
surrounded by Indians
dead, so I got my knife and started for him, but another Indian saw my
intention and threw a rope on the wounded Indian and dragged him out of my
way. The Indian that was riding the horse I killed, had left the circle
and started on a run for the canon, and I was expecting more Indians to
arrive at any time. The stage coach drove up to my place and stopped, and
the passengers, numbering about twenty, were all watching my fight. But I
did not have time to wonder if they would come to my rescue, or to look if
the other Indians were coming. The Indian, in dragging the wounded one
away, caused the ring to be broken, and I was not long in darting out of
it and on my way home as fast as my legs could carry me, expecting at
every step to be struck by an arrow. The Indians had me penned in about
two hours and a half, all of which time I could feel my hair raising my
hat up. About five minutes after I reached the house, I saw the Indian
runner return with about forty-seven more. I escaped just in the nick of
time. The passengers on the coach were the only people near and they were
poorly armed, so would have had no show in helping me against fifty-eight
Indians.
That night General Custer, with three hundred soldiers,
camped a quarter of a mile from me, and the next morning he asked me if
there were any Indians in my neighborhood, and I told him of my experience
the day before and thought that they were camped in the cedar canon, as it
was the only place near that they could get both wood and water. I also
told him that twenty picked men could clean out the bunch, and I would
guide them to the canon, which was about twenty-five or thirty miles from
my ranch. He then told me that he was not out fighting Indians, but to
make treaties with them, and he supposed the band in the canon was a
forerunner of a large band of several hundred that had been following him.
One of his soldiers told me about camping one night on the
Republican River. A band of Indians camped near and refused to make a
treaty. They ordered Custer to move his camp, and fired a few volleys of
shot among the soldiers, so Custer had to move. A great many of his
soldiers deserted him; said they would not stand and be targets for the
Indians and not have the privilege to defend themselves.
Custer
had orders not to shoot at the Indians and he intended to obey orders. He
turned back, reported at Fort Sedgwick and went on into Fort Wallace.
Some of the Pioneers of Colorado
Source: True History of some of the Pioneers of Colorado, by Miss
Luella Shaw, Press of Carson Harper Co, Denver, Colorado, 1909 |
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