known to the tribes that the newcomer really and truly belonged to
Relation-eater. Not long had he been settled when there occurred a
meeting between his tribe and another, a game of bluff, when the
warriors of both sides danced the splendid Haka, most blood-curdling,
hair-lifting of all ceremonials. Afterward old Relation-eater singled
out the horrible savage who had begun the war-dance, and these two
tender-hearted individuals for a full half-hour, seated on the ground
hanging on each other’s necks, gave vent to a chorus of skilfully
modulated howling. “So there was peace,” and during the ceremonies
Maning came upon a circle of what seemed to be Maori chiefs, until
drawing near he found that their nodding heads had nobody underneath.
Raw heads had been stuck on slender rods, with cross sticks to carry
the robes, “Looking at the ’eds, sir?” asked an English sailor. “’Eds
was _werry_ scarce--they had to tattoo a slave a bit ago, and the
villain ran away, tattooin’ and all!”
“What!”
“Bolted before he was fit to kill,” said the sailor, mournful to think
how dishonest people could be.
Once the head chief, having need to punish a rebellious vassal, sent
Relation-eater, who plundered and burned the offending village. The
vassal decamped with his tribe.
“Well, about three months after this, about daylight I was aroused by
a great uproar.... Out I ran at once and perceived that M--’s premises
were being sacked by the rebellious vassal who ... was taking this
means of revenging himself for the rough handling he had received from
our chief. Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows
and doors, loaded with everything they could lay hands upon.... A large
canoe was floating near to the house, and was being rapidly filled with
plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman who was washerwoman, being dragged
along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her
grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation.
I perceived at a glance that the faithful old creature would probably
save a sleeve.
“An old man-of-war’s man defending _his_ washing, called out, ‘Hit out,
sir! ... our mob will be here in five minutes!’
“The odds were terrible, but ... I at once floored a native who was
rushing by me.... I then perceived that he was one of our own people
... so to balance things I knocked down another! and then felt myself
seized round the waist from behind.
“The old sailor was down now but fighting three men at once, while his
striped shirt and canvas trousers still hung proudly on the fence.
“Then came our mob to the rescue and the assailants fled.
“Some time after this a little incident worth noting happened at my
friend M--’s place. Our chief had for some time back a sort of dispute
with another magnate.... The question was at last brought to a fair
hearing at my friend’s house. The arguments on both sides were very
forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief
and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap before
my friend’s door, and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend’s house
and store blown up and burnt to ashes.
“My friend was, however, consoled by hundreds of friends who came in
large parties to condole with him, and who, as was quite correct in
such cases, shot and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese,
fowls, etc., all in high compliment to himself; he felt proud.... He
did not, however, survive these honors long.”
Mr. Maning took this poor gentleman’s place as trader, and earnestly
studied native etiquette, on which his comments are always deliciously
funny. Two young Australians were his guests when there arrived one
day a Maori desperado who wanted blankets; and “to explain his views
more clearly knocked both my friends down, threatened to kill them both
with his tomahawk, then rushed into the bedroom, dragged out all the
bedclothes, and burnt them on the kitchen fire.”
A few weeks later, Mr. Maning being alone, and reading a year-old
Sydney paper, the desperado called. “‘Friend,’ said I; ‘my advice to
you is to be off.’
“He made no answer but a scowl of defiance. ‘I am thinking, friend,
that this is my house,’ said I, and springing upon him I placed my
foot to his shoulder, and gave him a shove which would have sent most
people heels over head.... But quick as lightning ... he bounded from
the ground, flung his mat away over his head, and struck a furious blow
at my head with his tomahawk. I caught the tomahawk in full descent;
the edge grazed my hand; but my arm, stiffened like a bar of iron,
arrested the blow. He made one furious, but ineffectual attempt to
wrest the tomahawk from my grasp; and then we seized one another round
the middle, and struggled like maniacs in the endeavor to dash each
other against the boarded floor; I holding on for dear life to the
tomahawk ... fastened to his wrist by a strong thong of leather.... At
last he got a lock round my leg; and had it not been for the table on
which we both fell, and which in smashing to pieces, broke our fall,
I might have been disabled.... We now rolled over and over on the
floor like two mad bulldogs; he trying to bite, and I trying to stun
him by dashing his bullet head against the floor. Up again! another
furious struggle in course of which both our heads and half our bodies
were dashed through the two glass windows, and every single article
of furniture was reduced to atoms. Down again, rolling like made, and
dancing about among the rubbish--wreck of the house. Such a battle it
was that I can hardly describe it.
“By this time we were both covered with blood from various wounds....
My friend was trying to kill me, and I was only trying to disarm and
tie him up ... as there were no witnesses. If I killed him, I might
have serious difficulties with his tribe.
“Up again; another terrific tussle for the tomahawk; down again with a
crash; and so this life and death battle went on ... for a full hour
... we had another desperate wrestling match. I lifted my friend high
in my arms, and dashed him, panting, furious, foaming at the mouth--but
beaten--against the ground. His God has deserted him.
“He spoke for the first time, ‘Enough! I am beaten; let me rise.’
“I, incautiously, let go his left arm. Quick as lightning he snatched
at a large carving fork ... which was lying among the debris; his
fingers touched the handle and it rolled away out of his reach; my life
was saved. He then struck me with all his remaining fire on the side
of the head, causing the blood to flow out of my mouth. One more short
struggle and he was conquered.
“But now I had at last got angry ... I must kill my man, or sooner
or later he would kill me.... I told him to get up and die standing.
I clutched the tomahawk for the _coup de grace_. At this instant a
thundering sound of feet ... a whole tribe coming ... my friends!...
He was dragged by the heels, stamped on, kicked, and thrown half dead,
into his canoe.
“All the time we had been fighting, a little slave imp of a boy
belonging to my antagonist had been loading the canoe with my goods and
chattels.... These were now brought back.”
In the sequel this desperado committed two more murders “and also
killed in fair fight, with his own hand the first man in a native
battle ... which I witnessed.... At last having attempted to murder
another native, he was shot through the heart ... so there died.”
Mr. Maning was never again molested, and making full allowance for
their foibles, speaks with a very tender love for that race of
warriors.
LVI
A.D. 1840
A TALE OF VENGEANCE
In the days of the grandfathers, say ninety years ago, the Americans
had spread their settlements to the Mississippi, and that river was
their frontier. The great plains and deserts beyond, all speckled now
with farms and glittering with cities, belonged to the red Indian
tribes, who hunted the buffalo, farmed their tobacco, played their
games, worshiped the Almighty Spirit, and stole one another’s horses,
without paying any heed to the white men. For the whites were only a
little tribe among them, a wandering tribe of trappers and traders who
came from the Rising Sun Land in search of beaver skins. The beaver
skins were wanted for top hats in the Land of the Rising Sun.
These white men had strange and potent magic, being masters of fire,
and brought from their own land the fire-water and the firearms which
made them welcome among the tribes. Sometimes a white man entered the
tribes and became an Indian, winning his rank as warrior, marrying,
setting up his lodge, and even rising to the grade of chief. Of such
was Jim Beckwourth, part white, part negro, a great warrior, captain
of the Dog Soldier regiment in the Crow nation. His lodge was full of
robes; his wives, by whom he allied himself to the leading families,
were always well fed, well dressed, and well behaved. When he came home
with his Dog Soldiers he always returned in triumph, with bands of
stolen horses, scalps in plenty.
Long afterward, when he was an old man, Jim told his adventures to a
writer, who made them into a book, and in this volume he tells the
story of Pine Leaf, an Indian girl. She was little more than a child,
when, in an attack of the Cheyennes upon the village, her twin brother
was killed. Then, in a passion of rage and grief, she cut off one of
her fingers as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and took oath that she
would avenge her brother’s death, never giving herself in marriage
until she had taken a hundred trophies in battle. The warriors laughed
when she asked leave to join them on the war-path, but Jim let her come
with the Dog Soldiers.
Rapidly she learned the trade of war, able as most of the men with bow,
spear and gun, running like an antelope, riding gloriously; and yet
withal a woman, modest and gentle except in battle, famed for lithe
grace and unusual beauty.
“Please marry me,” said Jim, as she rode beside him.
“Yes, when the pine leaves turn yellow.”
Jim thought this over, and complained that pine leaves do not turn
yellow.
“Please!” he said.
“Yes,” answered Pine Leaf, “when you see a red-headed Indian.”
Jim, who had wives enough already as became his position, sulked for
this heroine.
She would not marry him, and yet once when a powerful Blackfoot had
nigh felled Jim with his battle-ax, Pine Leaf speared the man and saved
her chief. In that engagement she killed four warriors, fighting at
Jim’s side. A bullet cut through his crown of eagle plumes. “These
Blackfeet shoot close,” said Pine Leaf, “but never fear; the Great
Spirit will not let them harm us.”
In the next fight, a Blackfoot’s lance pierced Jim’s legging, and
then transfixed his horse, pinning him to the animal in its death
agony. Pine Leaf hauled out the lance and released him. “I sprang
upon the horse,” says Jim, “of a young warrior who was wounded. The
heroine then joined me, and we dashed into the conflict. Her horse
was immediately after killed, and I discovered her in a hand-to-hand
encounter with a dismounted Blackfoot, her lance in one hand and her
battle-ax in the other. Three or four springs of my steed brought me
upon her antagonist, and striking him with the breast of my horse when
at full speed, I knocked him to the earth senseless, and before he
could recover, she pinned him to the earth and scalped him. When I had
overturned the warrior, Pine Leaf called to me, ‘Ride on, I have him
safe now.’”
She was soon at his side chasing the flying enemy, who left ninety-one
killed in the field.
In the next raid, Pine Leaf took two prisoners, and offered Jim one of
them to wife. But Jim had wives enough of the usual kind, whereas now
this girl’s presence at his side in battle gave him increased strength
and courage, while daily his love for her flamed higher.
At times the girl was sulky because she was denied the rank of warrior,
shut out from the war-path secret, the hidden matters known only to
fighting men. This secret was that the warriors shared all knowledge in
common as to the frailties of women who erred, but Pine Leaf was barred
out.
There is no space here for a tithe of her battles, while that great
vengeance for her brother piled up the tale of scalps. In one
victorious action, charging at Jim’s side, she was struck by a bullet
which broke her left arm. With the wounded arm nursed in her bosom she
grew desperate, and three warriors fell to her ax before she fainted
from loss of blood.
Before she was well recovered from this wound, she was afield again,
despite Jim’s pleading and in defiance of his orders, and in an
invasion of the Cheyenne country, was shot through the body.
“Well,” she said afterward, as she lay at the point of death, “I’m
sorry that I did not listen to my chief, but I gained two trophies.”
The very rescue of her had cost the lives of four warriors.
While she lay through many months of pain, tended by Jim’s head wife,
her bosom friend, and by Black Panther, Jim’s little son, the chief was
away fighting the great campaigns, which made him famous through all
the Indian tribes. Medicine Calf was his title now, and his rank, head
chief, for he was one of two sovereigns of equal standing, who reigned
over the two tribes of the Crow nation.
While Pine Leaf sat in the lodge, her heart was crying, but at last
she was able to ride again to war. So came a disastrous expedition,
in which Medicine Calf and Pine Leaf, with fifty Crow warriors and an
American gentleman named Hunter, their guest, were caught in a pit on
a hillside, hemmed round by several hundred Blackfeet. They had to cut
their way through the enemy’s force, and when Hunter fell, the chief
stayed behind to die with him. Half the Crows were slain, and still the
Blackfeet pressed hardly upon them. Medicine Calf was at the rear when
Pine Leaf joined him. “Why do you wait to be killed?” she asked. “If
you wish to die, let us return together. I will die with you.”
They escaped, most of them wounded who survived, and almost dying of
cold and hunger before they came to the distant village of their tribe.
Jim’s next adventure was a horse-stealing raid into Canada, when he was
absent fourteen months, and the Crows mourned Medicine Calf for dead.
On his triumphant return, mounted on a piebald charger the chief had
presented to her, Pine Leaf rode with him once more in his campaigns.
During one of these raids, being afoot, she pursued and caught a young
Blackfoot warrior, then made him her prisoner. He became her slave, her
brother by tribal law, and rose to eminence as her private warrior.
Jim had founded a trading post for the white men, and the United
States paid him four hundred pounds a year for keeping his people from
slaughtering pioneers. So growing rich, he tired of Indian warfare,
and left his tribe for a long journey. As a white man he came to the
house of his own sisters in the city of Saint Louis, but they seemed
strangers now, and his heart began to cry for the wild life. Then news
came that his Crows were slaying white men, and in haste he rode to the
rescue, to find his warriors besieging Fort Cass. He came among them,
their head chief, Medicine Calf, black with fury at their misdeeds,
so that the council sat bewildered, wondering how to sue for his
forgiveness. Into that council came Pine Leaf. “Warriors,” she cried,
“I make sacrifice for my people!” She told them of her brother’s death
and of her great vengeance, now completed in that she had slain a
hundred men to be his servants in the other world. So she laid down
her arms. “I have hurled my last lance; I am a warrior no more. To-day
Medicine Calf has returned. He has returned angry at the follies of his
people, and they fear that he will again leave them. They believe that
he loves me, and that my devotion to him will attach him to the nation.
I, therefore, bestow myself upon him; perhaps he will be contented with
me and will leave us no more. Warriors, farewell!”
So Jim Beckwourth, who was Medicine Calf, head chief of the Crow
nation, was wedded to Pine Leaf, their great heroine.
Alas for Jim’s morals, they did not live happily ever after, for the
scalawag deserted all his wives, titles and honors, to become a mean
trader, selling that fire-water which sapped the manhood of the warrior
tribes, and left them naked in the bitter days to come. Pine Leaf and
her kindred are gone away into the shadows, and over their wide lands
spread green fields, now glittering cities of the great republic.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and
outside quotations.
The pages in the introductory chapter “Adventurers” were not numbered.
Transcriber did so with Roman numbers.
Page 210: “the overload Joy” may be a misprint for “the overloaded Joy”.