Tall Tale Contest Submission...

[Red Badger]

Well, let me tell you youngin's  'bout my trek to the Green River rendezvous in  '24.  I was trappin and tradin with the Fox in what you now as the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin in the early part of 1820 and saw me a church steeple in the valley below.  Now when I sees a church,  I  knows that civilization is a catchin up so I packed my possible's and headed toward the setting sun.  I was wanderin through this wonderful country and met up with a boy chopping down a tree.  He told me his name was Paul and was cuttin out a road fer the pilgrims, who was sure to foller to this beautiful country.  He asked me to sit at his fire and share sum vittles and coffee.

Paul told me some pretty tall tales for a youth of his age and showed me the biggest blue ox I'd ever seen.  After the vittles he went back to chopin on that tree and I headed on west toward the end o the forrest.
'Bout a month later I'm walking through waist high prairie grass and see a smoke in the distance, bein a fare cautious man I stears clear of the smoke havin been told bout a group of natives know as Bug's Boys who didn't cotten to white men in their territory.  I'd been travelin for on to a year now and was getting pretty well played out when I come across a heard of Buffalo like I'd never seen before.  I shot me one and was skinning it out when all of a sudden I was surrounded by a group of Indians.  I was able to communicate with them passably using the sign language I'd been taught by the Fox Indians back home, and found out they had not seen nor heard a rifle before this... they wanted my "thunder stick" and were getting a might bit restless about me wantin to hold on to it.  They took me back to their village and were figgurin out what to do when a fellow white man approached the camp with some trade rifles and saved my scalp.  I stayed with that band of Soux for the rest of the fall teachin them how to fire their new muskets.  After the last spring snows I and two hunters from the cam headed west to the mountains. 

Along about May in '22 I was again alone in the wilderness and had set up a camp in the mountains of what would become Wyoming when I came across thei young feller all done in, wearin nothin but his skin, and even that weren't all there... after I nursed him back to something more human like he told me his name was Bridger and he'd come out west as part of a trappers brigade which was to set up somewhere along the Green River.  Now knowin the Green was a bit of a travel I got him up and packed up all the hides I had stored for trading with the local Indians and down the mountain we travelled.  After about another month or so we came upon the green and a sight I'd never thought I'd see... there was more white men than I'd ever seen in one place and Whiskey was a flowing like water.  I traded all the pelts I had for necessaries like tobacco, and some honest to god sugar, left that young feller Bridger with a Mr. John Ashley and met quite o few characters who stand out in my memory, Fellers like Jedediah Smith and Jim Beckwourth who were men to ride the range with...  Ahh my throats getting a mite dry, pass that jug over will ya......