THEN AND NOW;
OR,
Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies.

Personal Reminiscences of Some of the First Pioneers of the State of Montana.

INDIANS AND INDIAN WARS.

The Past and Present of the Rocky Mountain Country.
1864–1900.

BY
ROBERT VAUGHN.

MINNEAPOLIS:
Tribune Printing Company.
1900.

Copyrighted, 1900.
BY
ARVONIA ELIZABETH VAUGHN.

DEDICATION.

Arvonia Elizabeth Vaughn,
Great Falls, Montana.
My Dear Little Daughter:

The following series of letters, which include a short history of Montana’s early days, together with a brief sketch of your father’s life and a copy of my letter to you, giving an obituary of your dear mother, I dedicate to you, knowing that they will be appreciated, and hoping that you will have the pleasure of reading them after I am gone.

Your affectionate father,
Robert Vaughn.

Great Falls, Montana, May 15th, 1900.

PREFACE.

It may not be out of place to explain how this book came to find its way into print. It was written for my little daughter, in the form of letters at various times, and not intended for publication, but many friends after reading them insisted that they should be published. One said: “You must not wait until you are dead before these letters are given to the world.”

As my desire is, by the grace of God, to live many years yet, I now present these letters to the reader, supplemented by others from old time friends who braved the perils and dangers of pioneer life; and as they are intended to be a part of the history of this great state, care has been taken to keep strictly to the truth.

It is hoped that a line here and there will be appreciated by those who ride in palace cars as well as the old pioneers who came west in prairie schooners.

Robert Vaughn.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Then and Now;
Or,
Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies.

FROM HOME TO THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

I was born in Wales June 5, 1836, and was reared on a farm until I was nineteen years old. My parents’ names were Edward and Elizabeth Vaughan. There were six children—Jane, Hugh, Robert, Edward, John and Mary. Edward lives in the old home at the present time. His address is: “Dugoed Bach, Dinas Mowddwy, Mereoneth Sheir, G. B.”

My parents were of good family; by that I mean they and their ancestors were good Christian people, father and mother were members of the Episcopal Church. Father was a warden as long as I can remember. Mother was my only teacher. She taught me to obey, to tell the truth, to be kind, to respect others, and above all to fear God.

I left home when I was between nineteen and twenty. At this time I could speak but the Welsh language. I had a great desire to learn to acquire English; therefore I went to Liverpool, where sister Jane lived. I secured employment from the Hon. Benjamin Haywood Jones to work in a flower garden at his beautiful home on the West Derby Road. He was a rich banker in the city. I remained there over a year. Brother Hugh had gone to America a year before I left home, locating near Rome, N. Y. In the fall of 1858, instead of going home as I intended, I concluded that it would be a good idea for me to go to America and see my brother; then return in four or five months. So, without the knowledge of my parents, I took passage on board a steamship named the “Vigo” bound for New York. I was on the ocean twelve days and a half. As soon as I landed I wrote home and stated what I had done, and that I would be back home in four or five months, and at that time it was my honest intention to do so. From New York City I went to my brother’s, and stayed with him about three months; then I went to Palmyra, Ohio, to see Aunt Ann, my father’s sister. I was right at home now, and my father was satisfied since I was in the care of his sister. I was there over a year, going thence to Youngstown, Ohio, where I worked for Joshua Davies on a farm, and in the coal mines. From here I proceeded to McLean county, Illinois, where my brother had been for two years. I farmed with him one summer, then I went to Fairbury, Livingston county, and mined coal until 1864. During all this time I wrote home regularly and received letters in return. Instead of going home I was continually getting further from it. Somehow I could not resist the desire of venturing into the unsettled regions of the West. I kept drifting further and further until I found myself in the heart of the Rocky mountains, six thousand miles from home.

In this way forty-one years elapsed since I left my childhood home, but the picture remains in my memory as though it were but yesterday; everything appears to me as it was the last time I saw it. The house still seems the same; the ivy creeping up its walls; the sycamore, alder, birch and spruce trees stand there like sentries guarding it. The rose bushes and the evergreens in front, the hollies where the sparrows huddled together at night, the orchard and the old stone barn; and I imagine that—

I see the dancing rill flowing by the garden gate, and the great arch of white thorn overspanning the passage way that led to the main road. There my mother embraced and kissed me and bade me good-bye for the last time. Here my “only teacher” gave me her last instruction, it was this: “My dear son, be careful in selecting your companions to go out with in the evenings. God be with you, good-bye.”

There she stood staring at her wandering boy leaving home. We watched one another until a curve in the road took me out of sight; that was the last time I saw my mother. Father came with me about a quarter of a mile. We spoke but very little; we were both very sad. Suddenly father turned to me and took me by the hand and said: “Well, my son, fare thee well, be a good boy.” I was weeping bitterly and after I had gone a little way I looked back and saw father leaning against a gate which led to the meadow, with both hands on his face; this caused my tears to flow faster than ever. I shall always believe that father was praying for me then. And that was the last time I saw him. Father and mother are now sleeping in the silent tomb. But in my memory they appear like statues as I saw them last, and that was forty-one years ago. Mother standing at the gate with tears in her eyes waving the kind and tender hand that soothed and fondled me when I was a babe, and father leaning on that rude gate with his face buried in his hands offering a prayer in my behalf. Nothing can efface that vision from my memory. Mother more than once said in her letters to me that she always remembered me in her prayers. I often think that I might not have fared so well and perhaps be a worse man than I am, were it not for the prayers of my father and mother.

Robert Vaughn.

Great Falls, Mont., March 20, 1898.

CROSSING THE PLAINS.

I left Fairbury, Livingston county, Illinois, March 4, 1864, in company with James Gibb, John Jackson, James Martin, and Sam Dempster and wife, destined for the new gold fields in Idaho, for the Territory of Montana had not then been created.

Our mode of traveling was with a four-horse team and a farm wagon. A great portion of Illinois and Iowa was then but sparsely settled; we would travel for hours without seeing any signs of habitation. The roads were very bad through those states; and it took us twenty-five days to come to Council Bluffs, which was then but a small frontier settlement. An old man, one of the inhabitants of the place, called my attention to two small hills on the bluff above the village and said: “It was there General Fremont, with his men, held a council before crossing the river to traverse the plains to California, and from this incident the town derives its name.” We crossed the Missouri on a ferry boat. Omaha had scarcely twelve hundred people. Here we made up a train of sixty-five wagons, some drawn by oxen. It was a mixed train as far as the destination was concerned. Some were going to California, Oregon, Washington, and Salt Lake, but mostly to the new gold diggings in Idaho. We were to travel together as far as Utah.

Our trail was on the north side of the North Platte river as far as Fort Laramie, following most of the way the surveying stakes on the line of the Union Pacific Railway. For several hundred miles, while we traveled in the Platte river valley, we passed over fine land for agriculture. Here we met a great many Indians of the Pawnee tribe, but all appeared to be friendly. I was approached by one of them, who came and asked me to give him some coffee; he was over six feet tall, and had a very large bow and arrows. I made a mark on a big cottonwood tree and stepped off fifty paces and told him if he put an arrow in that mark I would give him some coffee. At once he began sending his arrows, every one piercing the tree about two inches in depth, and the fourth one into the center of the mark. I gave him his coffee. On another occasion I put my hat on a bunch of sage brush for two Indian boys to shoot at for a piece of bread; the next thing I knew there was an arrow through my hat. Several days, when traveling in this valley, not a stick of timber of any kind could be had; the only fuel we could obtain was buffalo chips which were abundant.

The mail carrier told us that after passing a place called “Pawnee Swamp,” which was about fifty miles west of Fort Kearney, we would be in the Cheyenne and Sioux country, and that those Indians were very hostile to the whites. It was two days after we crossed this line before we saw an Indian. The third morning at day break, when I was on guard, I discovered one from a distance who was coming towards our camp. I kept watching him; finally he came to me and spoke, at the same time making signs; of course I did not understand either. While going on with his gibberish and making those motions with his hands he stepped up and patted me on the breast and on my vest pocket. I told him in plain English that he was getting a little too familiar for a stranger, and to keep away from me. Then he picked up a stem of some dried weed about the size of a match and scratched it on a stone as a person would when lighting a match. This convinced me that he wanted some matches. I gave him half a dozen and he thanked me, or at least I thought he did, for he gave a kind of grunt with a faint smile and went back in the direction he came from.

In the afternoon of the same day we crossed a small creek; on its bank there was a newly made grave in which a young woman twenty-two years of age had been laid to rest. At the head of the grave, for a head-board, a round stick, which had been used at one time for a picket pin, was placed, and on this some unskilled hand had written with a pencil “In memory of ——,” the name I could not decipher, but the words “dear daughter” were plainly written, which indicated that there was a parent present to kiss her marble brow before it was lowered into the silent tomb. This instance made a deep impression on me then when viewing that lonely grave in the heart of the wilderness and thinking of its occupant, who possibly was once the center star in some lovable family, but was left there alone in her earthen couch to sleep and rest forever; and when, on the coming of spring, no one would be there to even pluck wild flowers and lay them on the grave of the unfortunate young traveler. What more sorrowful sight could there be than witnessing those parents leaving that sacred spot before continuing their westward journey, and, when on that ridge, taking the last look at the little mound by the winding brook in the valley below? Here the curtain drops on this pitiful scene; the emigrant train is out of sight and all is over.

At Fort Laramie we met the noted frontiersman, John Bozeman, after whom the city of Bozeman, Montana, was named. He sought to organize a train to take a cut-off route east of the Big Horn mountains. There was also a man by the name of McKnight, who was a trader at this place. He had two wagons loaded with goods for Alder Gulch, each wagon being drawn by four fine mules, and he was getting up a train to go west of the Big Horn mountains and through the Wind River country. McKnight said to me that he wanted about one hundred wagons and about five hundred good, resolute, determined men and they would get through all right. I told him that there were five of us, and that we would accompany him. There were scores of wagons passing Laramie every day and most of them were bound for the new gold diggings.

The first day we got twenty wagons to join the McKnight train, and we pulled out about a quarter of a mile in the direction we were to travel. This new camp was a kind of “refinery;” here one and all might consider the perils, dangers and privations likely to be encountered. The faint-hearted ones took the safer route by way of the South Pass. However, in a few days we had four hundred and fifty men and over one hundred wagons. We were aware that we were going to travel through several hundred miles of an untrodden wilderness, where Red Cloud and Sitting Bull reigned over twenty or twenty-five thousand savages, so it was very necessary for us to be well armed and organized. Before starting we took a vote and selected a captain and two lieutenants, and a committee of three to examine every one and see if he was prepared with guns, sufficient ammunition, and if his outfit was substantial enough to make the trip. A paper was drawn in which was inserted a provision that we were to stand by and defend each other at all hazards; to this we all signed our names. We realized that it was a perilous undertaking, but we pressed onward. We depended a great deal on our guide. He was a tall, well-built, straight, dark-complexioned, resolute and intelligent man; he was reared in Canada and had been in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was a famous scout and versed in the language of every Indian tribe from the Platte to the Saskatchewan, and was both feared and respected by all. He was a brave and true man, whose tact and courage, on more than one occasion, resulted in avoiding trouble with hostile redskins.

Roll was called every evening. Each man had to be on guard in his turn for four consecutive hours during the night. To form the camp the first wagon had to make a circle until it faced the hindmost one, and each one followed forming thus a stockade, the horses being driven past the inside hind wheel of the wagon in front; after unhitching the tongue was thrown over the wheel and rested on the axle. At night all the horses and the tents were on the inside and those standing guard being on the outside. We invariably formed our camp in this way, and were always on our guard, for no man can tell when danger may be near in an Indian country. When there is not an Indian to be seen it is the time they are the most likely to make an attack. An incident I well remember. The writer and Gibb were ahead of the train and about half a mile on one side from the direction we were traveling. Crossing a small ravine we saw two Indians hiding under some willows. They pretended not to see us. It is probable that there were many more in that vicinity, although there was no indication of the kind.

One day we came through a Sioux village of eighty-five tepees; there were from two to three hundred Indians, chiefly women and children. On a slope of a hill near by were over eight hundred horses in charge of six Indians. Though we camped at noon but a short distance from them, only two approached us, and their actions were different from those of the other Indians whom we met. When the Sioux came to our camp they would go from one tent or wagon to another in a sullen manner with a contemptible look as if they were going to massacre every one of us, and likely the reason they did not was that we had taken them unawares and before they had time to prepare, besides we were as good as an equal number of soldiers if it had come to fighting. But by the year following they were better prepared, for they had obtained guns and ammunition from the traders. They killed many immigrants. And the year succeeding traveling through that part of the Sioux country was entirely discontinued, and Fort Phil Kearney was established. A few months later all the soldiers, eighty-one in number, were killed by the Indians—not one was left to tell the story. And, these savages kept up their murderous deeds until the Sioux war of 1876.

Many times I thought of the perils and dangers that we escaped on that eventful journey, of which I now give an account.

It was against the rules of our camp for any one to kindle a fire after dark. The object was to prevent the Indians from locating us at night. We were obliged to camp where an abundance of water could be obtained. A small spring would not meet our requirements, for we had nearly three hundred horses, sometimes we had to make long drives to the next stream or a place where there was plenty of water. Other times we had to stop, from early noon until next day, for we could not make the drive in one afternoon. For the balance of the day we frequently had considerable sport by playing several games, shooting at a mark, short and long distance jumping, wrestling and foot racing; but as the journey grew longer the contraction of the muscles put a stop to the latter three. On one of those long evenings we saw a torch light at the base of a mountain not far off. It was swung back and forth for several minutes. It was an Indian sign, and that put a stop to all games for that evening. We looked for trouble that night, but had none. We were all happy and had no sickness on that trip. There were six or seven men from the southern part of Illinois who had the ague at the time they joined the party, but as we came nearer to the mountains all traces of it disappeared and returned no more. It was hard for us to secure game of any kind, for the Indians kept driving it away as we went, and it was not prudent for us to venture far from the course we were pursuing to look for any. We saw many deer and buffaloes, but they were a long ways off; occasionally we would get some of the smaller game. We traversed much good grazing land where water was plenty; also many valleys with rich lands for farming and an abundance of good timber.

The atmosphere was very clear when we first saw the Rocky mountains. They were several hundred miles distant; an old Californian pointed them out. They appeared to be of immense height and it was difficult to convince many of us that they were mountains, for they looked more like thunder clouds to us who came from the prairie states. Every day brought us nearer, and soon the perpetual snow was visible, then the green pines and the rocky cliffs above the timber line, where no vegetation exists, were plain to be seen, and, as I gazed at those high rocky peaks, reaching above the clouds, it was plain to see why the Rocky mountains were called “The Rockies.”

It did not take many days to skirt those lofty mountains and wind our way through their canyons, listening to the rebounding echo of our wagons rattling over the rocks and boulders as we went.

In one of those narrow valleys in the mountains we camped one June day for dinner. Trout was abundant in the creek. On both sides there was a dense growth of pine. Thinking that it was a good place to look for deer, I took my gun and climbed the mountain side until I reached where the land was almost level. After I had gone about a mile, I arrived at an opening in the woods; two or three hundred yards away I saw a large brown bear and elevating my gun I took aim at the big brute; just then a second thought came to me, and I said to myself: “If I kill it, all well and good; if I only wound it I’ll get the worst of it.” I paused for a minute, looking at the bear, and the longer I looked the larger it seemed; the bear stood and looked at me, and finally he walked away slowly, occasionally looking back. I was walking as the bear did, only in the opposite direction. Soon the bear stopped and faced towards me and I made a bee-line for the camp, for I was not looking for that kind of game that day.

We frequently passed trees in the branches of which a dead Indian was placed on a kind of scaffold eight or ten feet above the ground. This place of burial was constructed of poles and branches of trees tied together with strips of rawhide. The remains were carefully wrapped in beaded and painted robes, in Indian fashion, and secured with rawhide ropes to the scaffold. Thus the dead Indian rested, high and dry, on his sacred roost until his gorgeous couch was destroyed by the elements and his bones picked by birds of prey. We also passed several scaffolds built on four forked stakes, on which remains of Indians were placed, and wrapped in the same manner as those on the trees.

Very often some aged Indians would visit our camps and go from one tent to another and peep in as if they were counting to ascertain how many there were. We treated them kindly and gave them something to eat; they always asked for matches and were very fond of tobacco. Our guide warned us that they were spies and for us to have our guns in a conspicuous place so they could see our strength. We had many obstacles to contend with on our journey. One day we had to travel forty miles without water. It was very hot; many of the horses giving out, their tongues being swollen until they protruded from their mouths. At another time we had to let the wagons down the mountain with ropes, with the hind wheels locked; and we had to cross rivers on rafts and wagon boxes; again fording streams where there was great danger of being taken down by the surging waters. Four of our men came very near losing their lives in this way; but being good swimmers they avoided drowning. We crossed the Powder, Clark’s Fork, Rosebud and Yellowstone rivers and many other streams. The first we came to were very high, for at that time the snows were melting off the mountains.