My Trip Out West: A True Adventure from 1873 (Part 4 of 4)

In the days of Noah, when the lifespan was nearly a thousand years, many generations could share stories about what it was like when they grew up.  Today, it is rare to go back even a hundred years.  Our own family has a true-life adventure story from 1873, when my great-great grandfather decided as a young man to see the Old West while it was still wild, and buffalo still roamed the plains.  Here is the final part of the letter he wrote to my father in 1931.

BUFFALO HUNTING ON BEAVER CREEK

Along the latter part of October, a number of us got a notion to go Buffalo hunting (as there wasn’t much work in sight), so eight of us laid in a stock of grub, such as flour, some canned goods, coffee, salt & pepper, and a couple of slabs of bacon, tin plates, knives and forks, tin cups, a coffee pot, a kettle or two and a frying pan.  We took an ax, plenty of ammunition, and plenty of bedding.  Our party had two wagon outfits.  So, the first day of November four men climbed into each wagon, and away we went for the Buffalo country.  The first day we drove about 35 miles, and camped on the south side of the Platte River.  The third day down the Platte we camped on a dry creek they call Beaver Creek.  The day before we left Beaver Creek, we stopped and hunted one day.  Six of us thought we would take a look around and see if there were any Buffalo in that part of the Country.  We hadn’t gone more than a mile or two when we saw what we thought at first was a cow, but it proved to be a Buffalo.  When it saw us it started to run, and we after it, shooting as fast as we could find the trigger, yelling like wild Indians, and finding fault with the way the other fellow was shooting.  Eventually the Buffalo dropped.  On coming up to it we saw that it had one leg that had been broken some time before.  That was how we were able to catch up with it.  We also found that we had put fourteen bullets into it.  No wonder it couldn’t get away with all that lead in it and a broken leg.  After skinning it we took the hide and some of the meat back to camp with us and had Buffalo steak for supper.  The fun of it was each one claimed that he was the one that killed the Buffalo.

A BRUSH WITH INDIANS

There was another party camped at Beaver Creek that night near to where we were.  The next morning on crossing the creek we noticed a lot of moccasin tracks, so we stopped and investigated.  We found that during the night there had been a number of Indians taking a look at us from the opposite bank of the creek.  We followed their tracks for a way, and found they had gotten on their ponies and gone on down the Platte River the same way that we were going.  We noticed their tracks all day.  In the afternoon, we came to a little sod house and a woman and one child were the only ones at home.  We asked her if any Indians had passed by.  She said yes.  They had stopped there and wanted some milk.  She gave them what she had.  They told her they were Cheyenne Indians and had been down on the Pawnee Indians Reservation and had stolen some of their Ponies.  The woman told us there were about twenty Indians and they had quite a bunch of horses.  The Chief said to her, “Pawnee mad.  Come get Pony--big fight”, then they rode away. 

After the woman told all she knew about the Indians we drove on until it began to get dark, and camped.  We drove all the next day.  In the afternoon we met a team, and the man told us that we hadn’t better go on farther (we had told him that we intended going south the next day to a place that was called Battle Springs).  He told us that he just came from there, and had camped there the night before.  A number of Indians had been at his camp that night and they were saying something about a battle they were expecting to have with the Pawnee Indians.  But that night after nine o’clock we noticed that the grass was afire for miles east of us.  Then one of our party that had been in the West a number of years said, “No danger of there being a battle.  The Cheyenne Indians are leaving--see, they are burning the grass, that’s a sure sign that they are leaving.  They always do that so the enemy won’t have any feed for his horses.”

FACE TO FACE WITH PAWNEES

So, the next morning we started for Battle Springs.  After driving all day, we got there in time to make camp before it got dark.  All day we could see some dark object on a rise to the east of us but it never showed up plain enough so we could make out what it was.  We hunted in that part of the country until we had 10 nice Buffalo.  That was about all that we could take care of.  So, we packed up our duds and started for home.  We got back to the Platte River just after it was beginning to get pretty dark.  We noticed on an Island in the River about 100 feet from the bank there were a number of small camp fires.  So, me and a fellow by the name of Luke walked ever along the bank to get a better look at it.  It didn’t take but a moment until a number of Indians came out from behind the brush in their War Bonnets and had a look at us.  We didn’t say anything to them and they didn’t say anything to us.  We drove on for a mile or so to where we intended to camp.  There was a house nearby and the man and his wife had us sleep in their house that night.  It was the only night we slept in a house while on the trip.  I forgot to say that those Indians on that Island were Pawnees.  They were after those Cheyenne Indians that had stolen their Ponies, or so the man told us in the house where we slept that night.

ABRUPTLY CALLED HOME

When we got back to Collins there was a letter for me saying that Father wanted me to come home as soon as possible.  He wanted me on the farm as he wanted to go east for a while.  So, there wasn’t anything else for me to do but pack my duds and go home.  But since then I have been more or less homesick to go back to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

           

Well, Donnie, I think that’s about all that I can remember of my trip to the wild and woolly West in the year of 1873.  All the young men that were with me on that Buffalo hunting trip are Dead and Gone to that happy hunting ground, as the Indians say.

So Long, My Donnie Boy.

Grandpa Horning

[Frederick.L. Horning to Donald Mitchel Horning]

Frederick L. Horning:  My Trip Out West