Mountain Scouting: A Hand-Book for Officers and Soldiers on the Frontiers

1. What they did

Edward Farrow, a United States Army officer and tactics instructor at West Point, wrote this handbook for young officers and soldiers about to serve on the western frontier. He had formerly commanded Indian scouts in the Department of the Columbia. His aim was to gather, in a small book, the practical knowledge that new officers usually learn “by bitter experience”. He drew on his own campaigns, the experience of older officers, notes made while studying Native American peoples, and works of reference.

The book has sixteen chapters: the horse; the rifle; medical and surgical hints; useful information; equipage and supplies; mountain travel; pack mules and packing; marching; forced marches; crossing rivers; the camp; the mess (with recipes); living off the country (the habits of game and how to hunt them); Indian character; the trail, signs and signals; and skirmishing. An appendix covers swimming, rowing and a Chinook Jargon vocabulary.

The book was written during the wars against Native American peoples, and its language and views about them are those of a soldier of that time.

2. What they found

The trail, signs and signals (Chapter XV)

• Farrow calls trailing or tracking a “difficult art” of great importance in the warfare of the time. A trail is made up of signs that something has been present: marks on ground, rocks, grass, trees or brush, and the form, size, stride, direction and firmness of footprints.
• To follow a trail well, one must understand all the signs, know the character and habits of what is being trailed, know the country, and sharpen the eyes and ears. He advises scouting the ground around every halt or camp for signs of anything living nearby.
• Animal footprints show gait and direction: slow walking while feeding, or running when frightened.
• Reading people’s tracks: Native Americans walk with their toes turned in, whether in moccasins or other footwear, while white men in moccasins leave toes turned out. Boot patterns and repairs can let a trailer pick out one print among hundreds. The form and depth of prints show whether a person carried a load, travelled at ease or in haste, or was drunk. Barefoot people leave fine dust caked by sweat on hard rock. At rest stops, the way people sat can show whether women were in a party.
• Aging tracks: whether tracks were made before, during or after rain; dew on the trail; sand or dust blown onto or off the track; which of several tracks overlies the others; the moisture of disturbed earth and droppings; and wet ground beyond a water crossing.
• Hard ground: stones turned over, flakes of foam, food fragments dropped from an animal’s mouth, and tiny blood specks when trailing the wounded. Native Americans sprinkled sand over trails to record who passed. When animals raided Farrow’s camp on the Payette River, one of the Indian scouts spread dried river sand around the camp, and next morning showed the tracks of a bear, two coyotes, a weasel and several skunks.
• Horse tracks: an unshod Indian pony walks with tracks about 2 feet 10 inches apart, trots with tracks about 6.5 to 7.5 feet apart, and gallops with tracks 8 to 9 feet apart, which may show only as disturbed earth. Pony tracks differ from the larger, usually shod American horse and the narrower, more angular mule. Droppings scattered along the trail mean a ridden horse; a trail passing under low branches means a loose one. Native riders mounted from the right. On grass, the trail can show as a different shade of colour.
• Lost trails: when a trail heading for a pass fades, go on to the pass and look for it there; on poor ground, carry on in the likely direction until better ground.
• Ruses: fleeing parties scattered, travelled over rock and along streams, and agreed a meeting point beforehand.
• The scout Shaplish: Farrow’s chief of Umatilla scouts read from the trail that a fleeing party had discovered their pursuers and were travelling at night (they passed under low branches and crossed at bad places they would have avoided in daylight). Once, to fool a possible war party, he walked eight or ten miles with his shoes cut open and worn back to front, and a hunting party followed the false track of a single man going the other way. Another time he picked the right one of two diverging trails, ten miles out, by the long stride and deep toe prints of a young officer.
• Animals as signs: wild ducks swimming downstream towards you are a sure sign that someone is coming and the ducks have already seen them; a mule staring in one direction with head high and ears forward means something is coming.
• The chapter ends with Plains sign language (including signs for several tribes) and smoke and fire signals.

Animal behaviour and natural history (mainly Chapter XIII)

• Elk travel at night in single file, leaving a well-defined trail, and seldom stay more than one day in one area.
• Deer use their noses into the wind and their eyes downwind, so can only be approached across the wind. They are best stalked early morning or just before dark, when feeding. They travel long distances at night to salt licks, and show alarm by throwing up the head and jerking the tail. A fawn means a doe is hidden within calling distance.
• Black-tailed deer bound off, then stop for a few moments to look for the cause of alarm. Pronghorn antelope are drawn by curiosity to a waved handkerchief. Their tracks are shorter than deer tracks, sharp at the toes and broad and round at the heels.
• Buffalo scatter when feeding and bunch into herds when fleeing; they are not alarmed by a rifle’s report if the hunter is unseen and unscented. Farrow warns that buffalo will soon become extinct if they keep declining.
• Bears hibernate and have a keen sense of smell; the grizzly lurks in thickets to seize passing animals. The cougar prowls at night. Coyotes follow travelling parties and raid camps at night.
• Mountain sheep flee without leaving any sign. According to Native Americans, mountain sheep and deer are never found together, and deer suddenly coming down to the river bottoms means sheep are on the mountains.
• Prairie dogs post sentinels that give the alarm, and are very active just before a storm.
• When a curlew is wounded, the others come to the spot.
• Rattlesnakes travel together to winter dens at first frost. The book says a male and female travel within hearing of each other and can track each other; Native Americans trapped them by dragging a dead snake into a hollow log.
• A mule kept away from the herd will track out the bell mare (madrina) by smell; lost mules will trail the stock back to camp.
• Game trails usually follow the most direct and practical route over a divide and often lead to the best fords. A trail on one bank only often marks a watering place. Where deer and wild fowl are plentiful, water can be found where trails converge and where the birds fly before evening.

Lost people (Chapter VI)

Farrow writes that horses and other animals running on open ground gradually turn left, and so do lost people, often walking in a circle back to where they started. He advises staying calm, working out how far away and in which direction the lost trail lies, leaving a broad trail for searchers, and making a big smoke.

3. What they concluded

• Success on a frontier expedition depends on a chain of small successes, each of which must be perfect.
• Trailing is a skill that can reach great perfection with constant, careful practice, as the exploits of Shaplish show. Farrow believed most white men could not acquire it.
• Knowing animal habits matters both for living off the country and for scouting: hunting parties also serve as scouts, and animals’ reactions can warn of people nearby.
• Smoke signalling, as used by Native Americans, could be adapted by cooperating army columns.

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking is the subject of Chapter XV and runs through the whole book. Farrow describes both tracks and signs identification (human and horse footprints, droppings, blood, overturned stones, sand traps, rest sites, camps) and trailing (following people and horses, aging tracks, picking up lost trails, anti-tracking ruses). Other chapters use tracks and signs for finding routes, fords and water, checking camps for signs of people, hiding signs around caches, and hunting.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. Farrow describes the skill of his Native American scouts, especially Shaplish, his chief of Umatilla scouts, and Chuck, who was known for describing camps and country from his father’s knowledge. Their skill is shown through anecdotes, not through any test.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Natural navigation: the North Star, Ursa Major and the Southern Cross, thicker moss on the north side of firs and pines, and wind ripples in snow.
• Route-finding along mountain divides, and a method for working out where a lost trail lies.
• Plains sign language, smoke and fire signals, and a Chinook Jargon vocabulary.
• Spring-gun and bow traps set across animal trails.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Farrow notes that the range of the buffalo was shrinking and that, if the decline continued, they would soon become extinct.