| Show powder river the he stream chats s A mile wide and aninch an inch deep 4 Is one of americas americans most famous by ELMO SCOTT WATSON Q western newspaper union F YOU have ever lifted up your eyes to cloud peak rear ing its majestic head feet in the air or gazed upon lake de blue waters thit that are made mad e bluer still by with the red hills surrounding it if you have ever known the exhilaration of a swinging alop i llop across a flower studded grassy mountain meadow I 1 have felt your horses muscles tighten under you as he aked his way along a dim trail that clung precariously to steep slope ol of rock if you have ever listened to tc e winds mourning through e needles of a pine tree or e wild music of a brawling out stream high up in the jg ig horn mountains eilf af you have ever stood on i the che roof of the world and bathed ea thed deep deep deep an intoxicating draught of clear coming air i if any of this has ever appended to you then DONT sad ad struthers hurts burts new ook powder river let ir bucki buck illustrated b by y loss santee the cowboy t artist for its certain to baake you restless and dissatisfied atis fied with wherever you ire or whatever youre do ng g its bound to make you ph mesick homesick 0 for a land that ant your home but once visited never ceases to pull it your heartstrings heart strings t the latest volume in in the rivers of america series published ly y farrar and rinehart Rl powder er river rive let et e er r buck is t the he aty i atory of 1 rat that stream which mr jurl burt ca calls closta the most famous river aver in a state te filled with lovely rivers i the most famous river in wy ming the powder is the most coniing famous river in the northwest famous now all over the country its name familiar to thousands iwho ho haven t the faintest idea where the river is is or whether its 11 tan an actual river or merely an exclamation cla mation A river spoken of i I 1 with contempt by all who first saw it whose name has become la a battle cry A shout of encouragement ia argement gement A cry of derision A password to a secret society powder river let er B buck ki I 1 A mile wide and an inch deep i during the last war the wyoming troops fought under that gonfalon gon falon of words usually lust just the two words powder river 1 i short sharp shrill like the cow boy yell which is is the confederate i yell brought up the texas trail with the longhorns the echo of tle the coyote added the last note pitched high and held so that it will carry a long distance presently almost the entire united states army in in france knew the battle cry wherever men ride bad horses either for amusement or for money powder river P greets them as man and horse turn loose in wholehearted admiration mi ration if the ride is is good or edged with ridicule the adara admiration reserved for the horse if the rider is thrown in the most unexpected places they spring out at you A brand an open sesame A voucher A visiting card to r repeat i a password in the east in i europe u in south america in the orient th ats all a man ma has to say to you and the roaring stam stain of cities are soundless for a moment and you are surprised and pleased all of which explains in part why anyone who has ever visited that counti country y grows ho homesick for steven it even though it ha has s never been his home for as mr burt explains it powder river is above all a symbol of an american way of living which despite all the varied drama of ameri american can life took hold of the american imagination and still holds it as an epitome of perhaps thi the deepest and most universal expression of this continents wish the expression of some longing some vision some desire for loneliness in crowds some some inherited horizon honline line some nostalgic hope as close t to the american heart as the old life of the south or the lost quiet elms and spare democracy of et Nii new england Con compared pared together rivers in america iri in terms of length breadth or beauty the powder is not an impressive stream its only about miles long and a martof part of that length ls is due to the way it winds across mcross the landscape its not a broad stream that phrase 41 a mile wide and an inch deep is s according to mr burt the acidly affectionate description used by those who are its intimates it is by no means mean a mile wide and it is considerably sider ably over an inch deep the phrase possesses the exaggerated truth common to folk description an exaggerated truth conveying a picture clearer than i elac exactness aness As for beauty it Is a I 1 narrow I 1 yellow winding little river a small river fierce in the iran spring 9 floods coiling torpid and slow in the summer heat like a rattlesnake a river spotted with the horrid blackness of whose muddy waters the cowboys working on roundups used to clear by dropping a halved cactus into the bucket then why is it important why devote a whole book to iti it well its because along its banks and in the country it drains three great national epics have been enacted and because of this the powder river country deserves to be as memorable to americans although most of them dont know it as marathon is to the greeks the walls of vienna to the austrians Aust rians charles martel at tours to western europe the epic of the sioux the first of these was the epic of the sioux these indians came originally from the forests of the lower mississippi they followed the father of waters north to the woods of wisconsin and minnesota where they strove mightily to oust the chippewa or wa then a part of this nation the teton sioux began to push west following the buffalo who followed the grass across the greatest grasslands this continent has ever known in the great grass that rippled to the horizon like a green ocean they found the horses that made them in the words of gen george crook the finest natural cavalry the world has ever seen and the terror of the northern plains when they reached the big horn mountains of wyoming they found the crows or Ab in possession of the powder river coun country and drove them back across the big horns into the basin beyond for almost eight decades the sioux and the buffalo kept inviolate the green strip of lof country a hundred and fifty miles long from north to south 25 to 50 miles wide from east to west between thebie the big horns and the powder between the north platte inay in wyoming and the rosebud in montana then the first thin trickles of the tidal wave dav e of white invasion began to seep into this country first there were the trappers and fur traders and next the government exploring expeditions then the tide of emigration to oregon and the california goldfields gold fields began to flow along the oregon trail which ran through southern wyoming that was no direct threat to Sioux supremacy in the powder river count country but when soldiers airi wiri were sent to protect the eini emigrants grants on the trail there came the inevitable clash between thi the white man nian and the red then the bozeman trail was laid out as a short cut to the montana mining camps and it ran through the heart of the powder river country despite the protests of the sioux forts were built along this trail the result 1 was red clouds Cloud war which ended in a complete victory for the doughty leader of the agala las in the treaty of 1868 thi the forts were abandoned and for a few years the sioux held undisputed possession of their hunting grounds but the peace a precarious one at best lasted only a few beals years then the whites violation of the treaty when the government failed to keep prospectors out of the black hills sent the sioux on the warpath karpath once more but this timothey time timi they were doomed to eventual defeat despite their one great victory over general george A cu custer ster and his seventh cavalry on the little big bg horn the sioux were cooped up on reservations in north and south dakota and the cattlemen who had been walting waiting dorthi for the thi indians to be driven out moved into the i powder river country with their longhorns and their horses and their families and their cowboys they had found their home this sweet grass country with the mountains streams coming down from the pines and firs and aspens ashens of the big horns homo and the tha grass spreading eastward until it began to thin near the banks of the powder river the epic of the cowboy then came the epic of the northwestern cattle business of the northern cowboy of the open range it last lasted edless less than a dec ade but during that time the great cattlemen lived a feudal pastoral life such as has been equaled nowhere else save in mexico texas the argentine Arg intine and southern california in 1878 the powder river country was opened to white settlement and within five years the grass was becoming crowded blizzards took their toll speculation ruined others rustlers working on the flanks banks of the herds like wolves on the flanks of the vanished dark pools of buffalo grew I 1 powerful the johnson county war of 1892 also known as thi the rustler war marked the beginning of the end of this epic the appearance la in lot IF I 1 ft 4 11 powder diverl A mile q wide and ati inch deal I 1 turn of the nester the homesteader st the I 1 and finally the farmer wrote fl finis inis to that epic I 1 after the world war drouth came even deadlier than buzzard blizzard erosion was helped along by its greatest friend man so the third epic began it ische esthe epic of grass and says mr hurt burt athas it has not yet reached its conclusion cl powder river is still asking the question of what shall happen to the great grazing highlands of america whether or not that question will be answered is still unknown but the people of the powder river country have developed a new form of ranching which seems to guarantee that the spirit of theold the old days shall survive all the changes that have hava taken place it is ing and its development has done much to spread the fame of powder river twenty five years ago the west laughed at the ladies in queer pants and their male companions who wore neck handkerchiefs wrongly says mr burt the Th eWest west also regarded with suspicion those ranchers who encouraged cou raged these allens aliens to ru ruin horses and frighten steers now all this Is changed costly M because of the growth of the dude ranching industry today most americans know the west and being americans most of them love the west and find there something indigenous and american and revivifying revivify ing and comforting and magnificent the wild west asat as it persists in fiction tio nand and the movies for the refreshment of city dwellers who never leave their eastern towns is based br on actuality however distorted and foreshortened and heightened jt it is merely 10 years of history let letus us say condensed into two weeks week I 1 of impossible living the real west as it actually was and still is yield stales that need no heightening that are beyond the imaginings of scenarists nor can the real west die not so long as as there are cattle and the herding of them is a business and a way of life not so long ion g as there are thousands of mileson mi lesof loneliness of plains of mountains of forests and of deserts and this thistle the whole ot of it is justa just a simple fact apart fro from m blurbs blurs blur bs denials dudes highways or anat anything hing else you care to mention to those who deeply know the west from the rio grande to the arctic circle from eastern oregon to western nebraska the west is a fact a tradition an intention jn A point of view abbood a blood stream away of doing things and a devotion P powder river Is a buckaroo a broken nosed insouciant slightly swaggering old waddle 0 powder river Is a shado shadowy figure of a rustler hawkey hawk ey eyed d I 1 and cruel powder river is a cavalryman tin dusty blue a fatigue cap pulled down over one eye powder river Is a sioux naked and painted tor foz war powder river Is a crows crow looking down from the summits of f the big horns po powder ader river r is a man of a dim historic race who has left only a few undecipherable signs behind him borall for all we know powder river may alsobr also be a tall man in shining clothes feathers on his head aa A ghost speaking spanish 1 thus does Struthers aBurt Burt apostrophize troph ize the country whose geography whose people whose history traditions customs and spirit he has placed within the covers cover coverson of hisbrook his book 1 Ono on one page of it he also observes the powder river is knee deep in stories this river which is said to be orgy only an inch deep deemi there here are only afew a few of those yarns A well known western wyoming brand was obtained in the following manner the owner having sold hosfor his former brand wanted another one in a hurry three times he sent brandson brands in to the state board and three times they were re rejected finally he telegraphed please send brand of your selection alo 11 the answer came back 1 fine e ill they tell a story about old jim B ridger bridger that on one occasion guiding a detachment of troops under command of a second lieutenant across the big horn river n flood when he made suggestions as to sate safe swimming he was told by the embryo officer to mind his own business since he was merely a civilian scout the result was that a trooper was drowned when eventually bridger got the troops across without further loss the young officer a very religious man knelt down on the bank and loudly and publicly thanked god bridger watched him in silence till he had finished then raised his eyes devo devoutly fitly to the skies and pird pardner ner he said confidentially fidentia lly he never once mentioned jim Brid bridger gerlY I 1 there is agnost a ghost story on the powder the tradition of an army of ghosts ragged dand and grim who had marched up the bozeman trail a little while before carrington who established F fort ort phil kearney of tragic memory unharmed and hardly noticed and had disappeared into theroun the mountains of western montana the ghosts wore uniforms whatever remnants were left of a different color from ons men you remember perhaps price the confederate general who fought in texas and who was them the one confederate general whose army never surrendered and who himself fled to mexico the story 9 goes oes that parts part of prices army marched up from texas marched all those long arid miles and then up upa the bozeman to the edge of the bitter roots where it scattered and settled there seems tobe to be little basti basis for this story but itis it is true that numerous confederate veterans took tooka up p land in western montana as they did all ov over erthe the west anyway its i a nice ghost story the spanish h american war had just been declared and most of t the he leading bad men of the west at once wanted to enlist in the united states a army il well wish ers persuaded thern them that discretion is often the betters better part of patriotism but some minor hard characters didat did get to cuba possibly you rein remember ember the famous story told by col theodore Rob roosevelt sevelt in his autobiography of a friend of bisin his in new mexico who wrote as follows dear colonel im sure sorry I 1 cant join you and thi the other boys in your roughriders rough riders But Colonel im in jail I 1 shot aladjin alad a lady yin in the eye it was a mistake I 1 meant to shoot my wife A friend of mine trapping in the mountains cami came down at dusk to the cabin of an old bach elor whom he knew the cabin was blazing with light and he heard many voices iri in turn curnin indulging in edrnest earnest debate deba tei looking through the window he saw that the old man was as alone he was holding court taking the part ot judge witnesses criminal and counsel for the defense and for the state well the far west when j a man cant find |
