“You are all a set of fools and old women,” cried he; “come with me, if any of you are brave enough, and I’ll show you how to fight.”

Beckwourth instantly threw off his trapper’s suit of buckskin, stripping himself naked as were the Indians themselves.  Throwing his rifle on the ground, he grasped a small hatchet, and running over the prairie to the right, hidden by a hollow from the eyes of the Blackfeet, he climbed up the rocks and reached the top of the precipice behind them.  Forty or fifty young warriors followed him.  By the cries and whoops that arose from below, Beckwourth knew that the Blackfeet were just beneath him; then running forward, he leaped from the rock right in the midst of the surprised savages.  As he fell, he caught one of the Blackfeet by his long, loose hair, and dragging him toward him, buried his hatchet in his brain.  Then grasping another by the belt at his waist, he struck him a stunning blow, and gaining his feet, shouted the Crow war-cry.  He swung his hatchet so fiercely around him that the astonished Blackfeet crowded back and gave him room.  He might, had he chosen, have leaped over the breastwork and escaped; but this was not necessary, for with devilish yells the remainder of the Crow warriors came dropping in quick succession over the rock, and rallied around him.

The convulsive struggle within the breastwork was frightful; for a few moments the Blackfeet fought and yelled like pent-up tigers; but the butchery was complete, and the mangled bodies lay piled together under the precipice.  Not a Blackfoot made his escape.

In 1833 a band of Blackfeet, superior in numbers to the Crows, most unmercifully whipped them.  On their return to their village one night in August, shortly after the fight, there was a grand display of meteoric showers, and although the Crow warriors were ready to face death in any form, the wonderful celestial display appalled them.  They regarded it as the wrath of the Great Spirit showered visibly upon them.  In their terrible fright, they, of course, looked to their chief for some explanation of it.  But as Beckwourth himself was as much struck with the wonderful occurrence, he was equally at a loss with his untutored followers to account for the remarkable spectacle.

Evidently, he knew, he must augur some result from it, though his own dejected spirit did not prompt him to deduce a very encouraging one.  He thought of all the impostures that are practised upon the credulous, and his imagination suggested some brilliant figures to his mind.  He thought at first of declaring to them that the Great Spirit was pleased with the expedition, and was lighting the band on its way with spirit lamps; or that the meteors were the spirits of departed braves, coming to assist their worldly brothers in another impending fight; but he was not sanguine enough of possible results to indulge in any attractive oratory.  He merely informed his warriors that he had not time to consult his medicine, but that as soon as he could he would interpret the miracle in full.