Along the River Trail - Conclusion

By Dan R. Conway

(First published in the Hysham Echo on April 14, 1927

Boat Attacked by Sioux

The Sioux, who infested the surrounding country in force, knew that some one on the boat had killed one of their number, and they began to pay a lot of attention to the vessel, especially at night. When Colonel Norris arrived, the man who had done the killing had gone with the rest of the passengers, so the colonel found that he had inherited the feud with the hostile Sioux.

The boat’s cook was a little Englishman named Henry, who was a tenderfoot in every sense of the word. Colonel Norris, when he took possession of the after deck cabin, carefully sealed up the windows with gunny sacking, so that at night no ray of light could shine through. He instructed the cook never to open the door of the cabin at night when there was a light inside, and to be particularly careful not to do this if he heard the dog barking.

One night the dog started to bark furiously, and Henry, forgetting his instructions, opened the door. There was a flash from behind an old cottonwood tree on the bank, and a bullet crashed through the cabin and passed through seven staterooms but not before skinning the top of Colonel Norris’ head and taking a little of his hair. The colonel put the light out, and taking his rifle, stepped out on to the deck. He shot several times at the edges of the tree, but did no more harm than to skin the bark. The Sioux were too crafty to expose themselves.

The Sioux got bolder and bolder, and soon were constantly circling the fort on the bluffs overhead, flashing their signal mirrors in the sun and shooting down into the stockade. Colonel Norris managed to stop this to some extent by using a 12-pound howitzer that he found on the boat. One shot fell short of a party of Indians, but killed a horse and frightened them off.

As the winter passed, provisions got lower and lower. The colonel went out and killed a buffalo and it was the last good meat they had. It then got down to a diet of beaver meat, and for several weeks they lived on this fare, trapping one or two animals along the river bank every day.

Toward spring United States Marshal William F. Wheeler arrived from Helena in a mackinaw boat with one or two other officials for the purpose of selling the steamboat to satisfy the claims against it. On the way down the marshal had shot himself in the arm accidently with his shotgun, and there was nothing to dress the wound with at the fort, and not even good soap to wash it with. Wheeler suffered greatly and the injury was a long time healing. The invalid had to share the beaver soup diet with the rest.

When Colonel Norris took possession of the boat he took every possible precaution to protect it against the spring flow of ice, and built a bulkhead around the bow to prevent it being crushed. However, in the spring when the thaw came, one side of the boat caught on the bank and it slid down partly under water and was in this manner wrecked. A buyer for the owners came down from Helena to bid as high as $25,000 for the boat if it was in good shape, but as a result of the condition of the vessel he did not offer anything, and the wreck sold for $250.

The fees of the United States marshal and district federal attorney came before Colonel Norris’ claim for his services as deputy, and he therefore did not get a cent for his winter’s work, and was out two or three hundred dollars in cash besides. He waited at Fort Peck till the first boat came up from St. Louis in the spring, and went on up to Fort Benton.

The Tacony, the last time Colonel Norris saw it, had gradually worked its way across the river and was lying, half submerged along the opposite bank in the mud. Print this post