The Pawnees, to the northeast, were more numerous and more troublesome than the Kaws, but they seldom killed any travelers. They stole horses and cattle, and robbed small groups. Neither tribe paid much attention to the fur traders passing with their outfits, going to the mountains in May and returning in late summer. The fur men were on their guard and understood Indians quite well, and were let alone.
But in 1839 a new kind of wagon train started west along the trail, the first to take families in covered wagons to new homes on the Pacific coast. With women and children in the wagons and milk cows ranging alongside, this train was obviously different, and the people acted differently. They were more careless about guarding their stock, showed an unfamiliarity with the problems and dangers of the trail, and could be intimidated quite easily by a show of force.
Indian tribes on the plains regarded all strangers as possible enemies, and had no scruples about stealing from them. Hence any Indian visiting a wagon train or camp felt free to appropriate any unguarded article that caught his fancy. Stealing horses from a stranger was a long-established custom, almost an obligation, and once the Indians started eating cattle, these animals were added to the list of desirable items. Thus, in taking advantage of passing strangers on tribal lands, the Indians were not displaying actual hostility, although now and again they might kill a stray or two.
Usually the Indian objective in a raid on a wagon train was to secure as many horses and cattle as possible without losing any warriors. Parkman recorded this account of a raid as told to him a week later:
They had… encamped by the side of the Platte, and their oxen were scattered over the meadow, while the horses were feeding a little farther off. Suddenly the ridges were alive with a swarm of mounted Indians, at least six hundred in number, who came pouring with a yell down toward the camp… suddenly wheeling, they swept toward the band of horses, and in five minutes disappeared with their prey….
The 600 warriors was a hasty estimate by excited people.
Roving bands of warriors made it their practice to stop small parties of two or three men and take any of their belongings that looked interesting, usually the horses first, and people who resisted might get killed, as in this case which Parkman cited: ''Two men, at a distance from the rest, were seized by the Pawnees, but, lashing their horses, they broke away and fled. At this the Pawnees raised the yell and shot at them, transfixing the hindmost through the back with several arrows."
Through this period Pawnee war parties along the trail were usually estimated at 200 men, possibly because the later travelers had heard that number from earlier reports. Some travelers suggested that the tribe kept a force of that size near the trail most of the season to plunder the weak and to levy toll in the form of tobacco, food, or a beef animal, in payment for permission to pass. One traveler, Joseph Williams, reported that "about two hundred Indians… had robbed four men of all they had, stripped them naked, and left them on the open prairies to perish."
The following incident was recorded in the Bruff journals:
Met Mr. Hughes with a wagon and five men…. He said that two days ago a little above the old Pawnee Village he was attacked by a war party of 50 °Cheyennes, who robbed him of all his provisions. I sold him 30 pounds of flour, 20 of bacon, and six of sugar. He stated that they came down on him, when he halted, closed his wagons, and stood his men to their arms. Perceiving this, the chief with three or four other Indians rode over, with a white flag tied to a rifle, and he went out to meet them. The chief spoke Spanish, and said it was folly… to attempt repelling the Indians by force, and he might just as well give up his provisions and save their lives This he had to doas the Indians rode up and pillaged his wagons After which they threw down some beadwork, moccasins, sashes, etc. telling Mr. Hughes that there was pay for the provisions they had taken.
These Indians were well behaved. They offered no violence or insult, and were under no obligation, by the Indian code, to offer any payment whatever. They also, with an overpowering force, could have wiped out the whites and taken everything, but they might have lost a man or two, a price the chief dared not pay if he valued his reputation as a war leader. Here is another incident that occurred in the same area:
The Pawnees commenced gathering around us, they seemed to rise from the earth on both sides as far as the eye can distinguish them. I divided my mounted men in two parties, one as an advance guard and the other as a rear guard…. If the Pawnees had made a demonstration, we would most assuredly have made some ponies. But Alas, the great warriors, arabs and terror of the plains, turned out to be a sadly reduced, starving, contemptible race. They begged me for bread, opened their dingy robes, and exhibited their prominent ribs and breast-bones. As they were actually starving, famine might drive them to rob and break up some small party, maybe family, in the rear, and we had plenty; so I ordered a halt, gave the Indians about a peck of hard bread, half a middling of bacon, and a hat full of tobacco. They spread a skin on the plain, by the roadside on which was placed the bread, etc, some of my boys threw in bells and other trinkets….
These two incidents from the Bruff journals could be matched many times over from other journals and diaries of the trail, except for minor details. They illustrate the difference in treatment accorded to a well-guarded train and one too small to be out in the Indian country. Indian begging, especially by individuals and small family groups, was quite common along the trail just beyond the Kansas River crossing. Here one party doled out dimes, as they did not expect to need such small coins again. Often the Indians led up to their begging by first making a small present. This incident happened on the North Platte:
I found at my tent two young warriors, one of whom presented me with a piece of buffalo meat, which like all Indian gifts cost me in presents double its value. He commenced by begging for bread, meat, and whiskey…. He very soon left, but not without getting a little whiskey, which he cooly put into the tripe of a buffalo which he had killed that day…. What the taste of it could have been by the time he drank it will not be very difficult to imagine.
Other instances of Indian conduct along the trail before 1851 indicate that the Indians had little malice toward the whites, and allowed many small parties to pass unmolested. The Mormon handcart migration, composed of small groups of young men with their supplies and camp gear in small handcarts, attracted some attention, but no enmity. These men, too poor in the Indian's eyes to afford horses to ride, or even an ox to pull the cart, were not worth plundering.
Then there was the odd solitary traveler on the North Platte. Madison Berryman Moorman wrote in his journal on July 3: "We passed also a fat-faced, simple looking, good natured and recently imported German, who started from St. Jo afootdriving a cow, packed with his little budget. He was moving on finely and said he used the milk of the cow night and morning. He looked stout enough to stand the trip…."
Once the wagons started rolling along the trail in large numbers, some of the Kaw Indians put in small toll bridges on the creeks near their villages. These streams were tributaries of the Big Blue River. Moorman wrote that "across one of the creeks were two bridges, such as they were, belonging to two Indian youths who were dressed very gaudily…. One asked five cents, and the other, ten. The one who asked ten cents would point out the defects in the other's bridge, the rival would speak of the difference in price. We decided on the best bridge and over we went."