Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet. Фредерик Марриет

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СКАЧАТЬ threw away their bucklers at the instigation of the Prince Seravalle, who also taught them the European cavalry tactics. They had sense enough to perceive the advantage they would gain from them, and they were immediately incorporated, as far as possible, with their own.

      The Shoshones now charge in squadrons with the lance, form squares, wheel with wonderful precision, and execute many difficult manoeuvres; but as they combine our European tactics with their own Indian mode of warfare, one of the most singular sights is to witness the disappearance behind their horses, after the Indian fashion, of a whole body of perhaps five hundred horse when in full charge. The effect is most strange; at one moment, you see the horses mounted by gallant fellows, rushing to the conflict; at a given signal, every man has disappeared, and the horses, in perfect line appear as if charging, without riders, and of their own accord, upon the ranks of the enemy.

      I have dwelt perhaps too long upon the manners and habits of these people; I cannot help, however, giving my readers a proof of the knowledge which the higher classes among them really possess. I have said that they are good astronomers, and I may add that their intuitive knowledge of geometry is remarkable. I once asked a young chief what he considered the height of a lofty pine. It was in the afternoon, about three o’clock. He walked to the end of the shadow thrown by the pine-tree, and fixed his arrow in the ground, measured the length of the arrow, and then the length of the shadow thrown by it; then measuring the shadow of the pine, he deducted from it in the same proportion as the difference between the length of the arrow, and the length of its shadow, and gave me the result. He worked the Rule of Three without knowing it.

      But the most remarkable instance occurred when we were about to cross a wide and rapid river, and required a rope to be thrown across, as a stay to the men and horses. The question was, what was the length of the rope required; i.e., what was the width of the river? An old chief stepped his horse forward, to solve the problem, and he did it as follows:—He went down to the side of the river, and fixed upon a spot as the centre; then he selected two trees, on the right and left, on the other side, as near as his eye could measure equidistant from where he stood. Having so done, he backed his horse from the river, until he came to where his eye told him that he had obtained the point of an equilateral triangle. Thus, in the diagram, he selected the two trees, A and B, walked back to E, and there fixed his lance. He then fell back in the direction E D, until he had, as nearly as he could tell, made the distance from A E equal to that from E D, and fixed another lance. The same was repeated to E C, when the last lance was fixed. He then had a parallelogram; and as the distance from F to E was exactly equal to the distance from E to G, he had but to measure the space between the bank of the river and F, and deduct it from E G, and he obtained the width of the river required.

      I do not think that this calculation, which proved to be perfectly correct, occupied the old chief more than three minutes, and it must be remembered that it was done in the face of the enemy: but I resume my own history.

Chapter Ten.

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      In narrating the unhappy death of the Prince, I have stated that the Crows bore no good-will to the white men established among the Shoshones. That feeling, however, was not confined to that tribe; it was shared by all the others within two or three hundred miles from the Buona Ventura river, and it was not surprising! Since our arrival, the tribe had acquired a certain degree of tactics and unity of action, which was sufficient in itself to bear down all their enemies, independent of the immense power they had obtained from their quantity of fire-arms and almost inexhaustible ammunition. All the other nations were jealous of their strength and resources, and this jealousy being now worked up to its climax, they determined to unite and strike a great blow, not only to destroy the ascendancy which the Shoshones had attained, but also to possess themselves of the immense wealth which they foolishly supposed the Europeans had brought with them to the settlement.

      For a long time previous to the Crow and Umbiqua expedition, which I have detailed, messengers had been passing between tribe and tribe, and, strange to say, they had buried all their private animosities, to form a league against the common enemy, as were considered the Shoshones. It was, no doubt, owing to this arrangement that the Crows and Umbiquas shewed themselves so hardy; but the prompt and successful retaliation of the Shoshones cooled a little the war spirit which was fomenting around us. However, the Arrapahoes having consented to join the league, the united confederates at once opened the campaign, and broke upon our country in every direction.

      We were taken by surprise; for the first three weeks they carried every thing before them, for the majority of our warriors were still hunting. But having been apprised of the danger, they returned in haste, and the aspect of affairs soon changed. The lost ground was regained inch by inch. The Arrapahoes having suffered a great deal, retired from the league, and having now nothing to fear from the South, we turned against our assailants on our northern boundaries. Notwithstanding the desertion of the Arrapahoes, the united tribes were still three times our number, but they wanted union, and did not act in concert. They mustered about fifteen thousand warriors, from the Umbiquas, Callapoos, Cayuses, Nez-percés, Bonnaxes, Flat-heads, and some of the Crows, who had not yet gained prudence from their last “brushing.” The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements of the whole campaign, I will merely mention that part of it in which I assisted.

      The system of prairie warfare is so different from ours, that the campaign I have just related will not be easily understood by those acquainted only with European military tactics.

      When a European army starts upon an expedition, it is always accompanied by waggons, carrying stores of provisions and ammunition of all kinds. There is a commissariat appointed for the purpose of feeding the troops. Among the Indians there is no such thing, and except a few pieces of dried venison, a pound weight of powder, and a corresponding quantity of lead, if he has a rifle, but if not, with his lance, bow, arrows, and tomahawk, the warrior enters the war-path. In the closer country, for water and fuel, he trusts to the streams and to the trees of the forests or mountains; when in the prairie, to the mud-holes and chasms for water, and to the buffalo-dung for his fire. His rifle and arrows will always give him enough of food.

      But these supplies would not, of course, be sufficient for a great number of men; ten thousand, for example. A water-hole would be drained by the first two or three hundred men that might arrive, and the remainder would be obliged to go without any. Then, unless perchance they should fall upon a large herd of buffaloes, they would never be able to find the means of sustaining life. A buffalo, or three or four deer, can be killed every day, by hunters out of the tract of an expedition; this supply would suffice for a small war-party, but it would never do for an army.

      Except in the buffalo ranges, where the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Southern Shoshones will often go by bands of thousands, the generality of the Indians enter the path in a kind of echelonage that is to say, supposing the Shoshones to send two thousand men against the Crows, they would be divided into fifteen or twenty bands, each commanded by an inferior chief. The first party will start for reconnoitring. The next day the second band, accompanied by the great chiefs, will follow, but in another track; and so on with a third, till three hundred or three hundred and fifty are united together. Then they will begin their operations, new parties coming to take the place of those who have suffered, till they themselves retire to make room for others. Every new comer brings a supply of provisions, the produce of their chase in coming, so that those who are fighting need be in no fear of wanting the necessaries of life. By this the reader will see that a band of two thousand warriors, only four or five hundred are effectually fighting, unless the number of warriors agreed upon by the chiefs prove too small, when new reinforcements СКАЧАТЬ