John George Brown (10 October 1839 – 18 July 1916), better known as “Kootenai” Brown, was an Irish-born Canadian polymath, soldier, trader and conservation advocate.
Born in Ennistymon, Ireland, and educated at Eton and Oxford, Brown was commissioned as a British Army officer in 1857 “without purchase” (a reference to the practice then common of wealthy Britons purchasing officers’ commissions), joining the 8th Regiment as an ensign.
“Sitting Bull ordered us to get off our horses and when we did he had us stripped as naked as the day we were born. They took everything, dispatches, mail, guns, horses, clothes … Some of the young bucks began yelling ‘Kash-ga, Kash-ga,’ meaning kill them. Sitting Bull raised his hand and shouted ‘Don’t be in a hurry, we’ll make a fire and have some fun with them.’ We understood every word they said, of course, and we knew that Sitting Bull meant some playful mode of torture.”
When a dispute arose over some horses, Brown and his friend Joe rolled into a coulee and sprinted for a nearby lake. “We were standing in water up to our necks with Indians running up and down the shore firing at random into the weeds … It was blowing a regular hurricane and pouring down torrents of rain and this is probably what saved us. Finally, half dead with cold, we stole quietly out in the pitch darkness and scrambling up the banks took to our heels.”
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