Deer Lodge City, M.T., Aug. 9th, 1870.

Dear Sam and Langford: 

Stickney wrote me that the Yellow Stone party had dwindled down to eight persons.  That is not enough to stand guard, and I won’t go into that country without having a guard every night.  From present news it is probable that the Crows will be scattered on all the headwaters of the Yellow Stone, and if that is the case, they would not want any better fun than to clean up a party of eight (that does not stand guard) and say that the Sioux did it, as they said when they went through us on the Big Horn.  It will not be safe to go into that country with less than fifteen men, and not very safe with that number.  I would like it better if it was fight from the start; we would then kill every Crow that we saw, and take the chances of their rubbing us out.  As it is, we will have to let them alone until they will get the best of us by stealing our horses or killing some of us; then we will be so crippled that we can’t do them any damage.

At the commencement of this letter I said I would not go unless the party stood guard.  I will take that back, for I am just d——­d fool enough to go anywhere that anybody else is willing to go, only I want it understood that very likely some of us will lose our hair.  I will be on hand Sunday evening, unless I hear that the trip is postponed.

Fraternally yours,

JAS. Stuart.

Since writing the above, I have received a telegram saying, “twelve of us going certain.”  Glad to hear it—­the more the better.  Will bring two pack horses and one pack saddle.

I have preserved this letter of James Stuart for the thirty-five years since it was received.  It was written with a lead pencil on both sides of a sheet of paper, and I insert here a photograph of a half-tone reproduction of it.  It has become somewhat illegible and obscure from repeated folding and unfolding.

[Illustration:  A letter.]

[Illustration:  A letter, continued.]

Mr. Stuart was a man of large experience in such enterprises as that in which we were about to engage, and was familiar with all the tricks of Indian craft and sagacity; and our subsequent experience in meeting the Indians on the second day of our journey after leaving Fort Ellis, and their evident hostile intentions, justified in the fullest degree Stuart’s apprehensions.

About this time Gen. Henry D. Washburn, the surveyor general of Montana, joined with Mr. Hauser in a telegram to General Hancock, at St. Paul, requesting him to provide the promised escort of a company of cavalry.  General Hancock immediately responded, and on August 14th telegraphed an order on the commandant at Fort Ellis, near Bozeman, for such escort as would be deemed necessary to insure the safety of our party.

Just at this critical time I received a letter from Stuart announcing that he had been drawn as a juryman to serve at the term of court then about to open, and that as the federal judge declined to excuse him, he would not be able to join our party.  This was a sore and discouraging disappointment both to Hauser and myself, for we felt that in case we had trouble with the Indians Stuart’s services to the party would be worth those of half a dozen ordinary men.