together with our sleek friend, the clerk Montalon, were, I believe, the
only persons then in the fort who could read and write. May was telling
a curious story about the traveler Catlin, when an ugly, diminutive
Indian, wretchedly mounted, came up at a gallop, and rode past us into
the fort. On being questioned, he said that Smoke's village was close at
hand. Accordingly only a few minutes elapsed before the hills beyond the
river were covered with a disorderly swarm of savages, on horseback and
on foot. May finished his story; and by that time the whole array had
descended to Laramie Creek, and commenced crossing it in a mass. I
walked down to the bank. The stream is wide, and was then between three
and four feet deep, with a very swift current. For several rods the
water was alive with dogs, horses, and Indians. The long poles used in
erecting the lodges are carried by the horses, being fastened by the
heavier end, two or three on each side, to a rude sort of pack saddle,
while the other end drags on the ground. About a foot behind the horse,
a kind of large basket or pannier is suspended between the poles, and
firmly lashed in its place on the back of the horse are piled various
articles of luggage; the basket also is well filled with domestic
utensils, or, quite as often, with a litter of puppies, a brood of small
children, or a superannuated old man. Numbers of these curious vehicles,
called, in the bastard language of the country travaux were now
splashing together through the stream. Among them swam countless dogs,
often burdened with miniature travaux; and dashing forward on horseback
through the throng came the superbly formed warriors, the slender figure
of some lynx-eyed boy, clinging fast behind them. The women sat perched
on the pack saddles, adding not a little to the load of the already
overburdened horses. The confusion was prodigious. The dogs yelled and
howled in chorus; the puppies in the travaux set up a dismal whine
as the water invaded their comfortable retreat; the little black-eyed
children, from one year of age upward, clung fast with both hands to the