Terror in the Pryor Mountains

Secreted in a towering Pryor Mountain cave, the Little People danced.

Keening a mournful chant, the knee-high, no-neck beings circled a fire that sprang from a glowing rock. At irregular intervals, an anguished wail in an ancient language crackled like lightning flashing from the ground to gathering clouds.

Deep in heart of the night, their drums faded and dancing stopped. From the cave soared a flight of great winged creatures.

Invisible against a starless night, they swooped low over the Children of the Large-Beaked Bird camped in buffalo-hide tepees near the banks of Pryor Creek. Their powerful wings loosed a howling wind through the sleeping village, rattling the lodge poles and unnerving ponies grazing nearby.

Together the creatures banked south and east, headed for the steep canyons that caged the Bighorn River. On sheer cliffs rising hundreds of feet above the river’s surface at Devil’s Canyon, the Little People painted new warnings.

It would be a grim message this wild October night. A terror of a new kind floated up the Missouri, felling the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan by the thousands. Wolves and foxes stalked boldly through empty villages rotting in winds and rain.

The terror preceded light-colored men up the Yellowstone and crept through its tributaries spreading through the Bighorn country and into the Pryor Mountains, moving faster even than trappers and traders.

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