The word had gone out among all the red people that the old agent was
entirely "cut off," and that a soldier and a sign-talker had come to
take his place, and so each little camp loaded its tepees on wagons or
lashed them to the ponies and came flocking in to sit down before the
Little Father and be inspired of him.
The young men came first, whirling in on swift ponies, looking at a
distance like bands of cowboys--for, though they hated the cattlemen,
they formed themselves on Calvin Streeter as a model. Each wore a wide,
white hat and dark trousers, and carried a gay kerchief slung round his
neck. All still wore moccasins of buckskin, beautifully beaded and
fringed, and their braided hair hung low on their breasts.
The old men, who jogged in later in the day, still carried blankets,
though they, too, had adopted the trousers and calico shirts of the
white man. Several of the chieftains preserved their precious
peace-pipes, and their fans and tobacco pouches, as of old, and a few of
those who had been in Washington came in wrinkled suits of army-blue.
The women dressed in calico robes cut in their own distinctive style,
with wide sleeves, the loose flow of the garment being confined at the
waist with a girdle. As this was a time of great formality, several of
the young girls returned to their buckskin dresses trimmed with elk
teeth, which they highly prized.
As a race they were tall and strong, but the men, from much riding, were
thin in the shanks and bowed out at the knee. They had lost the fine
proportions for which they were famed in the days when they were
trailers a-foot. "Straight as an Indian" no longer applied to them, but
they were all skilled and picturesque horsemen. Lacking in beauty and
strength, they possessed other compensating qualities which still made
them most interesting to an artist. Their gestures were unstudiedly
graceful, and their roughhewn faces were pleasant in expression. Ill
words or dark looks were rare among them.
In all external things they were quite obviously half-way from the tepee
to the cabin. Their homes consisted of small hovels of cottonwood logs,
set round with tall tepees and low lodges of canvas, used for
dormitories and kitchens in summer. A rack for drying meat rations was a
part of each family's possessions. They owned many minute ponies, and
their camps abounded in dogs of wolfish breed which they handled not at
all, for they were, as of old, merely the camp-guard.
Such were the salient characteristics of the Tetongs, westernmost
representatives of a once powerful race of hunters, whose home had been
far to the east, in a land of lakes, rivers, and forests. They were not
strangers to the young soldier; he knew their history and their habits
of thought. He now studied them to detect change and found
deterioration. "I am your friend," he said to them each and all. "I
come to do you good, to lead you in the new road. It is a strange road
to me also, for I, too, am a soldier and a hunter; but together we will
learn to make the earth produce meat for our eating. Put your hand in
mine."
He was plunged at once into a wilderness of work, but in his moments of
leisure the face of Elsie Brisbane came into his thought and her
resentment troubled him more than he cared to acknowledge. He well knew
that her birth and her training put her in hopeless opposition to all he
was planning to do for the Tetongs, and yet he determined to demonstrate
to her both the justice and the humanity of his position.
He knew her father's career very well. He had once travelled for two
days on the same railway train with him, and remembered him as a
boastful but powerful man, whose antagonism no one held in light esteem.
Andrew Brisbane had entered the State at a time when its mineral wealth
lay undeveloped and free to the taker, and having leagued himself with
men less masterly than himself but quite as unscrupulous, had set to
work to grasp and hold the natural resources of the great Territory--he
laid strong fists upon the mines and forests and grass of the wild land.
Once grasped, nothing was ever surrendered.
It mattered nothing to him and his kind that a race of men already lived
upon this land and were prepared to die in defence of it. By adroit
juggling, he and his corporation put the unsuspecting settler forward to
receive the first shock of the battle, and, when trouble came, loudly
called upon the government to send its troops "in support of the
pioneers." In this way, without danger to himself, the shrewd old Yankee
had acquired mineral belts, cattle-ranges, railway rights, and many
other good things, and at last, when the Territory was made a State, he
became one of its senators.
Naturally, he hated the red people. They were pestilential because,
first of all, they paid no railway charges, and also for the reason that
they held the land away from those who would add to his unearned
increment and increase the sum total of his tariff receipts. His
original plan was broadly simple. "Sweep them from the earth," he
snarled, when asked "What will we do with the Indians?" But his policy,
modified by men with hearts and a sense of justice, had settled into a
process of remorseless removal from point to point, from tillable land
to grazing land, from grazing land to barren waste, and from barren
waste to arid desert. He had no doubts in these matters. It was good
business, and to say a thing was not good business was conclusive. The
Tetong did not pay--remove him!
Elsie in her home-life, therefore, had been well schooled in race
hatred. Tender-hearted where suffering in a dog or even a wolf was
concerned, she remained indifferent when a tribe was reported to be
starving. Nothing modified her view till, as an art student in Paris,
she came into contact with men who placed high value on the redman as
"material." She found herself envied because she had casually looked
upon a few of these "wonderful chaps," as Newt Penrose called them, and
was often asked to give her impressions of them. When she returned to
New York she was deeply impressed by Maurice Stewart's enormous success
in sculpturing certain types of this despised race. A little later
Wilfred J. Buttes, who had been struggling along as a painter of bad
portraits, suddenly purchased a house in a choice suburb on the strength
of two summers' work among the mountain Utes.
Thereupon Elsie opened her eyes. Not that money was a lure to her, for
it was not, but she was eager for notice--for the fame that comes
quickly, and with loud trumpets and gay banners. In conversation with
Lawson one day she learned that he was about to do some pen-portraits of
noted Tetong chieftains, and at once sprang to her opportunity. She
admired and trusted Lawson. His keen judgment, his definiteness of
speech awed her a little, and with him she was noticeably less assertive
than with the others of her artist acquaintances. So here now she sat,
painting with rigor and immense satisfaction the picturesque rags and
tinsel ornaments of the Tetongs. To her they were beggars and tramps, on
a scale with the lazzaroni of Rome or Naples. That they were anything
more than troublesome models had not been borne in on her mind.
She had never professed special regard for her uncle the agent--in fact,
she covertly despised him for his lack of power--but, now that the issue
was drawn, she naturally flew to the side of those who would destroy the
small peoples of the earth. She wrote to her father a passionate letter.
"Can't you stop this?" she asked. "No doubt Uncle Henry will go direct
to Washington and make complaint. This Captain Curtis is insufferable.
I would leave here instantly only I am bound to do some work for Mr.
Lawson. We must all go soon, for winter is coming on, but I would like
to see this upstart humbled. He treats me as if I were a
school-girl--'declines to argue the matter.' Oh! he is provoking. His
sister is a nice little thing, but she sides with him, of course--and so
does Lawson, in a sense; so you see I am all alone. The settlers are
infuriated at Uncle Sennett's dismissal, and will support you and Uncle
Henry."
In the days that followed she met Curtis's attempts at modifying her
resentment with scornful silence, and took great credit to herself that
she did not literally fly at his head when he spoke of his work or his
wards. Her avoidance of him became so painful that at the end of the
third day he said to his sister: "Jennie, I think I will go to the
school mess after this. Miss Brisbane's hostility shows no signs of
relenting, and the situation is becoming decidedly unpleasant."
"George!" said Jennie, sternly. "Don't you let that snip drive you away.
Why, the thing is ridiculous! She is here on sufferance--your
sufferance. You could order them all off the reservation at once."
"I know I could, but I won't. You know what I mean--I can't even let
Miss Brisbane know that she has made me uncomfortable. She's a very
instructive example of the power of environment. She has all the
prejudices and a good part of the will of her father, and represents her
class just as a little wild-cat represents its species. She's a
beautiful girl, and yet she is to me one of the most unattractive women
I ever knew."
Jennie looked puzzled. "You are a little hard on her, George. She _is_
unsympathetic, but I think she says a lot of those shocking things just
to hurt you."
"That isn't very nice, either," he said, quietly. "Well, our goods are
on the way, and by Thursday we'll be independent of any one. But maybe
you are right--it would excite comment if I left the mess. I will join
you all at meals until we are ready to light our own kitchen fire."
Thereafter he saw very little of the artists. By borrowing a few
necessaries of his head farmer he was able to camp down in the house
which Sennett had so precipitately vacated. He was busy, very busy,
during the day; but when his work was over and he sat beside his fire,
pipe in hand, Elsie's haughty face troubled him. His life had not taken
him much among women, and his love fancies had been few. His duties as
an officer and his researches as a forester and map-builder had also
aided to keep him a bachelor. Once or twice he had been disturbed by a
fair face at the post, only to have it whisked away again into the
mysterious world of happy girlhood whence it came.
And now, at thirty-four, he was obliged to confess that he was as far
from marriage as ever--farther, in fact, for an Indian reservation
offers but slender opportunity in way of courtship for a man of his
exacting tastes.
He was not quite honest with himself, or he would have acknowledged the
pleasure he took in watching Elsie's erect and graceful figure as she
rode past his office window of a morning. It was pleasant to pause at
the open door of her studio for a moment and say "Good-morning," though
he received but a cold and formal bow in return. She was more alluring
at her easel than in any other place, for she had several curious and
very pretty tricks in working, and seemed like a very intent child, with
her brown hair loosening over her temples, her eyes glowing with
excitement, while she dabbed at the canvas with a piece of cheese-cloth
or a crumb of bread. She dragged her stool into position with a quick,
amusing jerk, holding her brush in her teeth meanwhile. Her blouses were
marvels of odd grace and rich color.
The soldier once or twice lingered in silence at the door after she had
forgotten his presence, and each time the glow of her disturbing beauty
burned deeper into his heart, and he went away with drooping head.
Mrs. Wilcox took occasion one day to remonstrate with her niece. "Elsie,
you were very rude to Captain Curtis again to-day. He was deeply hurt."
"Now, aunt, don't _you_ try to convert me to a belief in that tin
soldier. He gets on my nerves."
"It would serve you right if he ordered us off the reservation. Your
remarks to-day before that young Mr. Streeter were very wrong and very
injudicious, and will be used in a bad cause. Captain Curtis is trying
to keep the peace here, and you are doing a great deal of harm by your
hints of his removal."
"I don't care. I intend to have him removed. I have taken a frightful
dislike to him. He is a prig and a hypocrite, and has no business to
come in here in this way, setting his low-down Indians up against the
settlers."
"That's just what he is trying _not_ to do, and if you weren't so
obstinate you'd see it and honor him for his good sense."
"Aunt, don't _you_ lecture me," cried the imperious girl. "I will not
allow it!"
In truth, Mrs. Wilcox's well-meant efforts at peace-making worked out
wrongly. Elsie became insufferably rude to Curtis, and her letters were
filled with the bitterest references to him and his work.
Lawson continued most friendly, and Curtis gladly availed himself of the
wide knowledge of primitive psychology which the ethnologist had
acquired. The subject of Indian education came up very naturally at a
little dinner which Jennie gave to the teachers and missionaries soon
after she opened house, and Lawson's remarks were very valuable to
Curtis. Lawson was talking to the principal of the central school. "We
should apply to the Indian problem the law of inherited aptitudes," he
said, slowly. "We should follow lines of least resistance. Fifty
thousand years of life proceeding in a certain way results in a certain
arrangement of brain-cells which can't be changed in a day, or even in a
generation. The red hunter, for example, was trained to endure hunger,
cold, and prolonged exertion. When he struck a game-trail he never left
it. His pertinacity was like that of a wolf. These qualities do not make
a market-gardener; they might not be out of place as a herder. We must
be patient while the redman makes the change from the hunter to the
herdsman. It is like mulching a young crab-apple and expecting it to
bear pippins."
"Patience is an unknown virtue in an Indian agent," remarked the
principal of the central school--"present company excepted."
"Do you believe in the allotment?" asked Miss Colson, one of the
missionaries for kindergarten work, an eager little woman, aflame with
religious zeal.
"Not in its present form," replied Lawson, shortly. "Any attempt to make
the Tetong conform to the isolated, dreary, lonesome life of the Western
farmer will fail. The redman is a social being--he is pathetically
dependent on his tribe. He has always lived a communal life, with the
voices of his fellows always in his ears. He loves to sit at evening and
hear the chatter of his neighbors. His games, his hunting, his toil, all
went on with what our early settlers called a 'bee.' He seldom worked or
played alone. His worst punishment was to be banished from the camping
circle. Now the Dawes theorists think they can take this man, who has no
newspaper, no books, no letters, and set him apart from his fellows in a
wretched hovel on the bare plain, miles from a neighbor, there to
improve his farm and become a citizen. This mechanical theory has failed
in every case; nominally, the Sioux, the Piegans, are living this
abhorrent life; actually, they are always visiting. The loneliness is
unendurable, and so they will not cultivate gardens or keep live-stock,
which would force them to keep at home. If they were allowed to settle
in groups of four or five they would do better."
Miss Colson's deep seriousness of purpose was evident in the tremulous
intensity of her voice. "If they had the transforming love of Christ in
their hearts they would feel no loneliness."
A silence followed this speech; both men mentally shrugged their
shoulders, but Jennie came to the rescue.
"Miss Colson, did you ever live on a ranch, miles from any other
stove-pipe?"
"No, but I am sure that with God as my helper I could live in a
dungeon."
"You should have been a nun," said Lawson. "I don't mind your living
alone with Christ, but I think it cruel and unchristian to force your
solitary way of life on a sociable redman. Would Christ do that? Would
He insist on shutting the door on their mythology, their nature lore,
their dances and ceremonies? Would He not go freely among them, glad of
their joy, and condemning only what was hurtful? Is there any record
that He ever condemned an innocent pleasure? How do you know but they
are as near the Creator's design as the people of Ohio?"
The teacher's pretty face was strained and white, and her wide-set eyes
were painful to see. She set her slim hands together. "Oh, I can't
answer you now, but I know you are wrong--wickedly wrong!"
Jennie again broke the intensity of the silence by saying: "Two big men
against one little woman isn't fair. I object to having the Indian
problem settled over cold coffee. Mr. Lawson, stop preaching!"
"Miss Colson is abundantly able to take care of herself," said Slicer,
and the other teachers, who had handed over their cause to their ablest
advocate, chorused approval.
Curtis, who sat with deeply meditative eyes fixed on Miss Colson, now
said: "It all depends on what we are trying to do for these people.
Personally, I am not concerned about the future life of my wards. I want
to make them healthy and happy, here and now."
"Time's up!" cried Jennie, and led the woman out into the safe harbor of
the sitting-room.
After they had lighted their cigars, Lawson said privately to Curtis:
"Now there's a girl with too much moral purpose--just as Elsie is
spoiled by too little. However, I prefer a wholesome pagan to a morbid
Christian."
"It's rather curious," Curtis replied. "Miss Colson is a pretty girl--a
very pretty girl; but I can't quite imagine a man being in love with
her. What could you do with such inexorable moral purpose? You couldn't
put your arm round it, could you?"
"You'd have to hang her up by a string, like one of these toy angels the
Dutch put atop their Christmas-trees. The Tetongs fairly dread to see
her coming--they think she's deranged."
"I know it--the children go to her with reluctance; she doesn't seem
wholesome to them, as Miss Diehl does. And yet I can't discharge her."
"Naturally not! You'd hear from the missionary world. Think of it! 'I
find Miss Colson too pious, please take her away.'" Both men laughed at
the absurdity of this, and Lawson went on: "I wished a dozen times
during dinner that Elsie Bee Bee had been present. It would have given
her a jolt to come in contact with such inartistic, unshakable
convictions."
"She would have been here, only her resentment towards me is still very
strong."
"She has it in for you, sure thing. I can't budge her," said Lawson,
smiling. "She's going to have you removed the moment she reaches
Washington."
"I have moments when I think I'd like to be removed," said Curtis, as he
turned towards Mr. Slicer and his other guests. "Suppose we go into the
library, gentlemen."