Red Cloud Agency
A Pow-Wow With the Missouri River Indians
How Beef Cattle are Issued to the Nation’s Wards — A Brutal Spectacle — Food Enough and to Spare
From Our Special Correspondent
Red Cloud Agency, Neb. [Sunday] Sept. 12, 1875
To the Editor of The Herald
Brutal Work.
Saturday was the day for the issuing of beef at Red Cloud and 550 head were thus disposed of, being about 150 head in excess of the regular issue for ten days. The cattle were weighed on the hoof and then let out of the pen in which they were contained, by ones, twos, threes, fours, and fives, according to the number each sub chief was to receive, his name being called as the number of cattle he was entitled to was turned out. As the frightened animals crowded upon each other in the pen, arrows, which had been shot by juvenile Indians, were seen sticking in the bodies of perhaps one-third of them, and when a "ration" was allowed to pass out of the gate, the Indians, to whom they belonged, immediately started in pursuit, all mounted upon ponies and in this way each animal was chased down, sometimes running for twenty minutes with the Indians pouring arrows and revolver and rifle balls into him as he ran. Occasionally a terror stricken creature would dash toward the corral in his frantic endeavors to escape and then there would be a rapid scattering here and there of the hundreds of red skins who were seated upon their ponies waiting for their names to be called.
When a beef was finally killed in this horrible way, it was skinned and cut up by the squaws who would then carry the meat to the camp, while the bucks would take the skin to the agency traders where they received $3 each for the same, the sum of $1,700 being thus paid out to the Indians at this agency yesterday. As a general thing the carcasses are left upon the prairie where the animal was shot down, and a great deal of valuable food allowed to go to waste, for the reason that the Indians draw more rations than they can eat, although it is a well-known fact that an able-bodied Indian will eat as much as two white men.
In journeying about their camps Thursday, The Herald man saw great piles of flour and corn, especially in the tepees, though that was the last of the ten days for which they had drawn rations.
In consequence of being thus generously fed by the government, these Indians have given up the hunt almost entirely. One of our party here has been endeavoring to get a pair of moccasins made and has visited twenty-five tents for the purpose, being told by the occupants in every instance that they didn’t have buckskin enough to make them. Last night, however, a piece of buckskin was procured at the cavalry camp, two miles from here, and furnished a squaw who is not at work upon the moccasins. . . .
