Twenty, maybe twenty-five years ago, I procured a short book that I recognized for its rarety. I am glad I did because it is full of great stories about this area we now live in. The title - Paha Sapa Tawoyake - is pretty meaningless to anyone who doesn't speak "Indian." I don't either, but I recognized its author, William V. Wade, as an old-timer who experienced many adventures here while this was still frontier.
In Wade's own words the book was "Written in 1926 at the Anchor Ranch, Cannonball River." Born in 1851 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he made his way west to St. Cloud, Minnesota 1n 1870 and ended up freighting with oxen for a time and made his way to Fort Rice, about twenty miles south of here. He got to know the historical characters we read about in the myths and legends and told stories about them.
One story he was about Nigger Tom at Fort Peck who was quite a good hunter, went off one day to bring back game by himself, and was accosted by ten Indians led by Sitting Bull. Tom thought they had good intentions, but Sitting Bull said the sun was in his eyes and wanted the nice hat Tom wore. Another said he wanted his shirt, and so on. He was soon stripped of his clothes, and then the Indians brought out some paints and decorated his entire body with pictures and signs. After an exhaustive run back, he rested before he was able to tell the men at the fort why he came back as a painted up nude.
Another story related as how Custer, when he came to the area, brought a pack of hunting hounds with him that succeeded in driving off all the wild game in the area so that the locals couldn't hunt anymore, so they shot two of the dogs that were caught away from Custer one day while they were chasing a deer. Custer got very upset about that but could never determine who did the deed.
He told how he and another's horses ran off from them when they were 50 miles from anywhere, their powder got wet, and they only had a shot apiece in their rifles with which they did shoot one scrawny deer - which did not last long. One of them caught a mouse which made the other aghast, "You're not going to eat that?" No, but they used it for bait and caught catfish with it.
In 1876 in Bismarck he watched a man who had arrived from the east and was dressed up in finery including a top hat. As he walked down the street the saloons had emptied so the men could watch a dog fight. Most of them wore pistols and one of them wise-cracked, "Shoot the hat, boys." This didn't scare the slicker who took off his hat, set it on the ground and said, "Try your luck, my friends." That's just what they did, and after the shooting stopped a number of holes could be seen ventilating the hat. Afterwards he bought them drinks and told them how he would wear it back east and tell them of the good time he had in Bismarck.
Great stories. These guys lived much differently than we do.
