Yet these aliens from society,
these strangers to the refinements of civilization, who would tear off
a bloody scalp even with grim smiles of satisfaction, were fine
fellows, full of the milk of human kindness, and would share their
last slapjack with a hungry stranger.
Uncle John Smith, as he was known to every trapper, trader, and
hunter from the Yellowstone to the Gila, was one of the most famous
and eccentric men of the early days. In 1826, as a boy, he ran away
from St. Louis with a party of Santa Fe traders, and so fascinated
was he with the desultory and exciting life, that he chose to sit
cross-legged, smoking the long Indian pipe, in the comfortable
buffalo-skin teepee, rather than cross legs on the broad table of
his master, a tailor to whom he had been apprenticed when he took
French leave from St. Louis.
He spent his first winter with the Blackfeet Indians, but came very
near losing his scalp in their continual quarrels, and therefore
allied himself with the more peaceable Sioux. Once while on the
trail of a horse-stealing band of Arapahoes near the head waters
of the Arkansas, the susceptible young hunter fell in love with
a very pretty Cheyenne squaw, married her, and remained true to the
object of his early affection during all his long and eventful life,
extending over a period of forty years.
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