Page 15
Susan Hunter's diary continues the saga of the colonization of the springs in the autumn of 1872: "In the fall we went out with the children except the oldest boy to gather the crop. When we got to the Springs we found nothing there...the Indians had destroyed everything. All our exposing ourselves to danger and suffering were all in vain. Our crop that year would have brought us five or six thousand dollars - and we had conditionally sold to the Indian trader all our crop of potatoes at five cents per pound, and we had twelve acres...the yield we had the next year (1873) was three to four hundred bushel per acre."
The following newspaper account corroborates the version from Susan Hunter's journals: September 5, 1872 - "Dr. Hunter came in from his ranch on the Yellowstone Tuesday. The whole tribe of Crow Indians made square meal of the Doctor's fine stock of corn, melons and other garden stuff, and the result of his labors are gone."
A Hunter family story tells of Susan Hunter planting watermelon seeds at the hot springs site and the Crow Indians stealing the entire crop of watermelon. Later, the Crows asked Dr. Hunter how to cook the unknown comestible. The Crows had boiled their pilfered watermelons and the result was a skin as tough as, well, boiled watermelon! The Bozeman Avant-Courier newspaper reported that the residents of Bozeman were "sorry for the Doctor's losses," during the big watermelon raid of 1872.
October 3, 1872 - "Dr. Hunter came over from the Yellowstone on Tuesday safe and sound. The Doctor says he was in a pretty tight place, but the Indians didn't happen to 'get the drop on him.' He brought over some of the biggest blood beets we ever saw, the produce of his ranch at the warm springs. Those beets beat the Chappaqua farmer's beets all to smithereens." November 28, 1872 - "The Buffalo are coming - Dr. Hunter informs us that immense herds of buffalo are coming up the Yellowstone, and are but a few miles below the Dr.'s springs. Now is the time, ye gay and festive shootists, to bring down your score or more of these monarchs of the plains. Go for them and we may soon have the exquisite satisfaction of hearing at our boarding house, 'Buffalo Rump Steak and Tongue,' and hearing ourselves sweetly respond with a 'Yes'".
PREVIOUS PAGE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
NEXT PAGE
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Back to MAIN PAGE