Exactly ten years from the day we had left New York I returned. My
heart was so bound up in frontier life I had hoped until the last
moment that the spring rains, which had been unusually severe, would
keep us storm-bound in Texas. The town of Brackett had been flooded
just before our departure, and the post, from its high and dry hill,
looked down upon a scene of devastation and misery. Every house on
the low lands was undermined, and many were washed away; the people
sought refuge in trees, where they were obliged to remain for hours,
until assistance in the shape of boats reached them.
Of course, as in all scenes where the colored race is conspicuous,
several ludicrous incidents occurred. One old mammy, who weighed at
least two hundred pounds, in her joy at being rescued, fell into the
arms of an unusually small white soldier, and swamped herself, the
soldier, and the boat.
Days passed before the water subsided, and in consequence our journey
was delayed a month; as with four days of ambulance travel to San
Antonio we did not dare start until the roads were dry. I was wicked
enough to hope they never would be in condition for travel; but when
the mail again reached us regularly there was no farther excuse for
delay, and with tearful eyes I bade adieu to dearly loved Fort Clark.
Many of the ladies thought my unwillingness to leave Texas could not
be really sincere, a change seemed to them so desirable. But my fears
that I should not feel at home in civil life, where everything was so
different, were verified.
Four days’ travel by ambulance through deep mud was required to reach
San Antonio. We did not tarry to explore that curious old town, but
stepped immediately on board a train for Galveston, where we arrived
in twenty-four hours. At that place I parted from my husband, and
took a steamer for New York. Seven days’ passage over Southern and
into Northern seas brought us to the city, where our children saw
civilization for the first time within their recollections.
It is needless to recount our experiences in New York, or rather
Coney Island, where we remained through the summer, and which was
just the place for little barbarians to see strange sights and become
familiarized with strange scenes.
After all the frontier travel and its dangers through which we had
passed, it seemed odd that this land of safety should hardly have
been reached before we narrowly escaped serious harm. I chose the
boat as a means of transit to Coney Island; and when we reached the
pier found that our trunks had not arrived, and so waited hours for
the expressman, who did not come until very late in the day.
I was overwhelmed with our belongings, which consisted of two
large trunks, the same number of hand-bags, an immense valise, and
a violin. After we had boarded the boat and fairly started on our
way, I was dismayed to find night rapidly approaching, and most
ominous-looking clouds arising. They proved precursors of a furious
storm, the violence of which reminded me of those experienced while
at the West. Much damage was done in and around New York Harbor.
When we neared the island after a terrifying trip, I saw to my horror
that the boat, instead of landing at the first and completed iron
pier, passed it, and made for the uncompleted pier, which jutted much
farther out into the ocean, and at that time was simply an uncovered
walk about a quarter of a mile in length.
Nothing, however, could be done except land—with three children—and
stand in the maddest rush of rain to which I had ever been exposed,
watching our trunks and bags tumbled out into the storm. Aware that a
few moments’ exposure to such a torrent would ruin their contents, I
looked, but in vain, for a means of conveyance to the hotel. No one
was in sight, the few passengers who had landed having immediately
hastened away; and as we were being completely drenched, I decided to
leave the baggage to its fate.
Carrying as much as possible in my hands, I sent our little girl in
advance with her small brothers. Judge of my horror when suddenly I
saw the piles of boards that were stacked in readiness for roofing
the pier, moving and actually filling the air on all sides. The
children were directly in the path of that furious hurricane, and
I could only helplessly watch them. Fortunately it did not last
long; and my little daughter was wise enough to race ahead with
her brothers, so no damage was done except the loss of both the
boys’ hats, which blew into the ocean. Then the rain descended with
redoubled force; but some one compassionately let us into a little
house built for the workmen, where, terrified beyond measure, we were
shut in with darkness.
I was all the while worrying about our trunks, and finally induced a
workman to promise that he would have them taken to the hotel. But
the man soon returned, and reported that they had disappeared. That
was a severe blow; and in the darkness I wandered all over the pier
until finally a kind policeman was found, who assured me the trunks
could not have been stolen. Our search was at last rewarded by their
discovery, when the policeman called a coach and bade me take the
children to a hotel. I did so, and then sent the coachman back for
our trunks.
An hour passed without his return, when I made inquiries, only to be
consoled by being told that the coachman was unknown in the hotel,
and had probably stolen our possessions.
I started again, in spite of the continued storm, for that pier,
where to my joy I spied the policeman, who said he had refused to
deliver the trunks without a written order. Although deeply grateful
for his caution, I would gladly have been back in Texas, where,
whatever happened, there was some one to share hardships with me.
The storm was unusually severe. After its cessation sign-boards were
found scattered all over the island, and some buildings had been
unroofed.
It is not my intention to dwell at length on our sojourn in the
East, which lasted four years. This is a tale of army life, and one
accustomed to it is amazed when living among civilians to find how
little they know of such an institution as the army.
My husband had long been entitled, by reason of rank and length of
service, to the one detail—that of recruiting—which brings a cavalry
officer East. He had always intended to reserve this for the time
when an education would be demanded for our children, and that time
had come; so Mr. Boyd applied for and received the detail in the fall
of 1882.
On reaching St. Louis, where the choice of several cities was given
him, he selected Boston because of its excellent schools. We spent
there a winter, which seemed to us, fresh from sunny climes, one long
succession of rain, fogs, and east winds. Still, the many advantages
of that well-regulated city were appreciated, and had I been well
we should have enjoyed its intellectual atmosphere. As it was, we
were glad when summer arrived, and a little cottage on one of the
delightful beaches near by could be taken. It was a great treat, and
we were most thoroughly enjoying our surroundings, when, in the month
of August, a thunder-clap fell on our ears in the shape of an order
for that Eastern cavalry recruiting station to be discontinued.
Boston had kept the station for so many years I could not at first
believe the bad news was true. But it proved to be; and Captain
Boyd, who had just received his promotion, was ordered to open a
recruiting office in Davenport, Iowa. After having served faithfully
as lieutenant for twenty-one years, he had at last been advanced to
the rank of captain.
It was not deemed advisable for the entire family to be continually
changing from East to West, and _vice versâ_, so Captain Boyd went
alone to his new station. Time showed that our decision had been
judicious; for before his two years of recruiting service were
over he had been assigned to four different stations, going from
Davenport, Iowa, to Rochester, New York, and finally spending three
months at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri.
Our long planned Eastern tour had proved an utter failure, and was
one more added to the list of many disappointments. After giving up
our country home near Boston, I went to New York with our children,
and placing them in excellent schools entered a hospital, where I
remained for one long year, a sufferer from illness entailed by early
army hardships. Our little boy was sent to his grandparents in the
country, and my husband returned to Texas.
After Captain Boyd had been alone there a year, he asked for and
obtained leave of absence, which permitted us to spend four pleasant
months at Cooperstown, on Otsego Lake, where we had a glorious time.
My husband endeared himself to every one, for he was constantly
helping others.
While he was stationed at Davenport, Iowa, a gentleman from there
called on me in New York, who described Captain Boyd as the most
popular man in the city. He said that every white man, woman, and
child in the town knew and loved my husband, while every old darky
idolized him.
The ladies connected with one of Davenport’s principal churches were
greatly in need of money for charitable purposes, and Captain Boyd
wrote and delivered a lecture in their behalf which netted nearly
three hundred dollars. It was a humorous view of the Indian question,
and elicited shouts of applause. He was subsequently invited to give
the same address in other cities.
On Captain Boyd’s return to the frontier his services as a lecturer
were in great demand, and he was in that way able to raise large sums
of money for charitable purposes. My husband became the best-known
army officer at the West on account of his frequent appearances on
the lecture platform.
In the early spring of 1885, four years after having left Texas,
I returned. In all that time not one moment had passed in which I
would not gladly have been there; so I seized the first plausible
excuse afforded—a greatly needed change for our daughter—and leaving
the eldest boy at school in New York, again sailed for husband and
frontier life.
The sea voyage to Galveston was the most soothing and delightful trip
of the kind possible. The water never appears rough immediately after
leaving New York; and for three days, while off the coast of Florida,
the vessel seemed gently—almost imperceptibly so far as motion was
concerned—gliding along. On arriving at San Antonio, instead of a
tedious ambulance-ride awaiting us, we went by rail to Fort Clark,
which was reached in a few hours.
The sight of dear old familiar landmarks was inexpressibly pleasant;
and when we were ushered into one of those well-remembered little
houses, with all the old furniture about, it really seemed too
good to be true. Everything was more than satisfactory; and the
gratification afforded by the change can be understood only by those
who have been away from loved scenes for years, and on returning
found all expectations realized. Old friends were there to greet us,
and we were supremely happy in the renewal of our former life.
My content and joy lasted four months, when rumors of Indian
outbreaks in far away New Mexico reached our ears, and were soon
followed by an order for all cavalry troops to hold themselves in
immediate marching readiness.
Captain Boyd had just returned from a trip to San Antonio, having
gone there in compliance with a request to deliver the oration at
the National Cemetery on Decoration Day. In that address my husband
distinguished himself in a way to be long remembered by his family
and friends. It was the most touching and felicitous tribute to
our dead soldiers ever written; touching because of the truest
sentiments; felicitous because in a place where sectional feeling
had for years run riot, not one word was uttered to which the
veterans on either side could object.
The address was very lengthy, occupying four columns of the _San
Antonio Express_, in which it was published next day; but every word
was listened to with eager interest by the immense audience. Long
before its conclusion the fervent tears that fell from old soldiers’
eyes attested Captain Boyd’s eloquence; and when he ceased speaking
the veterans, mainly of the Southern army, crowded about him with
words of earnest praise, and begged that he honor them with a visit.
The Texas papers were unanimous in the declaration that no such
masterly address had ever before been heard on a similar occasion.
Captain Boyd was obliged to hasten his return because feeling very
ill; he had been scarcely able to stand in the heat of that day, May
30, 1885, when, as usual at that season of the year in Texas, the
temperature was extreme and the atmosphere torrid. After reaching
home he was confined to his room for a week, and then came word for
the troops to start for New Mexico.
The order was received in a telegraphic dispatch from Washington,
and was immediately complied with. Before we could realize it, every
troop of cavalry had left Fort Clark for an indefinite period. A long
series of Apache outrages headed by Geronimo had resulted in the
determination to capture him and his band, if it took the whole army
to do it. Accordingly, from every post in New Mexico and Texas all
troops that could be spared were sent.
A cordon of outposts was established, so that the Indians who had
gone into Mexico could not return without being captured. The
devastations they had wrought were terrible. The little corner of
south-western New Mexico, in the neighborhood of Fort Bayard, had
become a veritable charnel house. Every interest of the country had
been ruined by their constant raids.
The President’s attention was directly drawn to the state of affairs
by my brother, who was in Washington at the time. He had edited a
paper in Silver City, New Mexico, for several years, and had kept an
account of the number of murders committed by Indians—five hundred in
eight years. In such a sparsely settled country the loss of so many
precious lives was not only sad beyond expression, but if continued
must result in hopeless ruin to that region, which, as I have before
stated, is the garden spot of the West. Sheltered by numerous hills,
cattle always thrive and increase there, because of the perfectly
equable climate and a constant supply of nutritive food.
For those very reasons, probably, it was a paradise for the Indians,
who could steal in and out more readily on account of the numerous
mountain hiding-places.
It was very unusual for troops stationed in Texas to be sent out of
their district; but in that case everything possible was done to
enhance the safety of the long-suffering people. I shall not try
to give an account of that long-protracted warfare, which lasted
eighteen months before Geronimo was captured. During that time our
troops marched over ground that was well-nigh impassable, and endured
every species of hardships. The cavalry worked night and day to
secure those wily Indians, and finally succeeded; but a volume would
be required if their hardships and sufferings were to be recounted.
It is simply impossible for any one who has not seen the unsettled
portions of this country to imagine its character and the
difficulties which beset troops that follow on the trails of Indians.
Our cavalry has been criticised freely; but I would say to the
critic: “Go thou and do likewise.” More than they have done, it would
be impossible to do, and no country could be less grateful than ours.
If soldiers were rewarded according to their deserts, each cavalryman
would wear the choicest prize within the nation’s gift. The service
is very trying. I can scarcely recall an officer who is not a martyr
to severe sufferings caused by constant exposure, and who in middle
life is not an old man both in feeling and experience.
After reaching Deming, New Mexico, Captain Boyd’s troop was sent
into the Black Range, where they encamped at a little place called
Grafton, fifty miles from the mountains. I have my husband’s diary,
which contains an account of the march and the country over which
they traveled. He greatly disliked to settle quietly down in the
camp selected as a permanent one, and was delighted when a letter
summoning him away was received.
The letter was sent from a little Mexican town about one hundred
miles distant, and informed him that ten Indian women had reached
there, who, if captured, would perhaps prove valuable hostages. They
were the wives of some members of the band that were on the war-path;
and if they could be secured the probability of effecting a treaty
seemed reasonable.
Captain Boyd lost no time in preparations, but started at once with
twenty mounted men. The march occupied five days, and on reaching the
town the Indian women were found in an almost starving condition.
The country was very rough, and a few lines received from my husband
while there stated that he was suffering greatly from the effects of
bad drinking-water. The man who had sent the letter begged him to
remain a few days, and not risk the effects of the return to camp
while so ill. But he refused to stay, fearing the Indian women might
escape if not speedily taken to a permanent military station.
My husband returned to camp, having suffered intensely during the ten
days of his absence, and when he reached his troop was dying, though
still refusing to consider himself seriously ill. He at once ordered
the only officer with him to proceed with the Indian women to the
place where the main body of the regiment was encamped, one hundred
and fifty miles distant.
The young officer was so anxious about Captain Boyd that he sent
a courier for the nearest surgeon, who was at Hillsboro, eighty
miles away. It was four days before the doctor could reach Grafton,
and meantime Captain Boyd was without proper medical attendance.
Everything his faithful soldiers could do was done; but, alas, to no
purpose! The army doctor’s first glance showed him that Captain Boyd
was doomed.
For five days the most unremitting care and attention were given him,
both by the kind physician and by a captain of the regiment who had
accompanied him. But all was useless. The fifth day ended the life of
this noble and true man.
Captain Boyd’s last hard ride had developed violent inflammation
which was simply incurable, as the disease had been increasing for
years, having first developed when during the war the young soldier
had been compelled to drink impure water and go without food for
days. Subsequent years of cavalry hardships had increased its
strength until that last exposure proved fatal.
Home in Texas we scarcely realized that he was ill when the terrible
news of his death came in a telegram that had been two days _en
route_.
Letters had been received from him so regularly that when they ceased
I supposed he was still on the march. When the doctor and captain
began to write, their communications were at first so encouraging
that we could scarcely believe he was in any danger, and were totally
unprepared for the terrible sequel. In fact, no one could at first
accept the sad truth; for Captain Boyd had been the picture of
health, and had impressed every one with his unusual vitality. When
the young officer who had been sent forward with the Indian women
returned to find his beloved captain dead and buried, the shock was
so great he almost fell from his horse.
That Indian campaign resulted in some terrible deaths, but none was
more shocking than this sad ending to a long and most faithful career.
Only a few months previously Captain Boyd had spoken very feelingly
of the double loss army women sustained when death robbed them of
their husbands—the loss of both husband and home. He realized how
deeply attached to the life they became, and how sad it was that
they must be cast adrift from all the associations of years. But
such, though sorrowful in all its aspects, is the fate of army women.
My grief was intensified by the utter refusal of the Secretary of
War to remove all that remained of so true and manly a soldier to
a National Cemetery. After my first request had been denied I went
to Washington, only to receive there a second from the same source;
the reason given being that government could not afford to incur the
expense.
Had I not made every effort possible, there would have been another
lonely grave in the very heart of a remote mountain region, where
none who loved him could ever have visited the spot.
Captain Boyd died on the same day as General Grant. A week later
orders were received at Fort Clark from the War Department, directing
that the nation’s great general should have every honor paid his
memory. Guns were fired, flags displayed at half-mast, and the band
played sad and solemn music, while troops paraded in honor of the
dead general and his great achievements.
It seemed to me mournful and unjust, that while high and deserved
honors were paid the memory of one, the other, as noble and true a
soldier as ever walked this earth, and who had given twenty-four of
his forty-one years of life in faithful service, had endured terrible
hardships, and yielded at last even his life for his country, should
be laid to rest far from home and friends, out on the lonely prairie,
and except in the hearts of a few his memory should utterly fade.
Captain Boyd sleeps in the National Cemetery at San Antonio, where
six weeks previously he had touched all hearts with his eloquence.
Graven on his tomb are the last words of that memorable address:
“Sleep, soldier, still in honored rest
Thy truth and valor wearing;
The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring.”
APPENDIX A.
_Extract from the proceedings of the Association of Graduates of the
United States military Academy at its annual reunion, held at West
Point, New York, June 10, 1886._[1]
[1] This obituary was distributed throughout the corps of cadets at
West Point by the Commandant at the time of Captain Boyd’s death, and
its perfect justice has never in the slightest degree been challenged.
ORSEMUS B. BOYD.
NO. 2216. CLASS OF 1867.
_Died (in the field), at Camp near Grafton, New Mexico, July 23,
1885, aged 41._
“So passed the strong, heroic soul away—”
Born in New York; appointed from New York; class rank, 61.
Entered the War of the Rebellion as a member of the Eighty-ninth New
York Volunteer Infantry, Sept. 1, 1861, and served until July 1,
1863, when he was appointed a Cadet in the United States Military
Academy. He saw active service in our great war, and was mentioned
for gallantry at Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
He was graduated on June 17, 1867, and appointed second lieutenant
Eighth United States Cavalry; first lieutenant same, Oct. 13,
1868; captain, Jan. 26, 1882. He died July 23, 1885, closing in
_acknowledged honor_ and undoubted manly effectiveness _twenty-four
years of faithful and gallant service_ in the saddest of our
wars, and in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, where he assisted in
developing our great inland resources.
His family have an honest pride in his unostentatious record, and we
all may say:
“Duncan is in his grave.
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”
THE RECORD OF A NOBLE LIFE.
“I, the despised of fortune, lift mine eyes,
Bright with the luster of integrity,
In unappealing wretchedness, on high,
And the last rage of Destiny defy.”
It is with deep solicitude that the writer endeavors, in a few words,
to do justice to the memory of Captain Boyd.
For several long and intensely painful years I knew him to be
an innocent Enoch Arden in a lonely desert of solitude, bereft
of—dearer to the soldier than wife or life—his HONOR—a sufferer for
the crime of _another man_.
It was in 1863 that he entered the academy—a veteran soldier, a young
man whose merits had gained for him the honorable rank of cadet.
In 1864 the writer joined the corps, and for three years marched
shoulder to shoulder in the line of the dear old Gray Battalion with
the man who sleeps far away from the Hudson, and where the foot
of the idle stranger may stop to mark where a good, honest, and
much-wronged man sleeps the sleep which knows no waking.
No man ever did better work in the army than Boyd. By steady,
faithful, and efficient service, he wore out suspicion,
conspiracy, bad luck, and scandal. Since the establishment of his
innocence—unsought, unchallenged by him—his defamer has preceded him
to the awful bar of the Great Judge.
He lived to round a career of usefulness and gallant service with the
tributes of regimental and army respect, the affection of his brother
officers, the endearments of family life, the respect of the people
of Texas and of the territories where he had served. Demonstrations
by his company and comments of the general press prove that his
once-shadowed name is now clear and clean, and may be honored by
those who loved him.
The facts are these: In the winter of 1865-1866 the robbery of
certain sums of money occurred in “B” Company, United States Corps
of Cadets. It is unnecessary to refer to the facts other than that
after repeated robberies and some rather crude detective work, one
evening, at undress parade in the area of barracks, Cadet Boyd was
ignominiously brought before the battalion of cadets with a placard
of “Thief” on his breast, drummed out of the corps, mobbed and
maltreated. A most intense state of excitement prevailed on the
post, and the strongest discipline was enforced, the cadets being
summarily quelled in any riotous actions. Innocent parties had their
names dragged into the affair, and poor Boyd finished his cadetship
generally cut in the corps, and endured, till he graduated, a life
which was a living hell.
The scandal followed him to his regiment, and years of exemplary
behavior were needed to enable him to live down his trouble. His
quiet, manly obstinacy in clinging to the army is explained by his
innocence. To the honorable but hot-headed men who so long made Boyd
carry the burden of another’s crime, deepest regret must ever attend
the memories of this affair. It is a matter of strange remark that
the guilty man who made Boyd suffer for him—John Joseph Casey, of
the class of 1868—was accidentally shot at drill, by a soldier, at
Fort Washington, Md., March 24, 1869, within nine months after his
apparently honorable graduation. The careers and untimely end of
several who bore down on the suffering man of whom we speak show
some strange and continued sadness or burdens of expiation. It is
all over now. The wandering squadron passing poor Boyd’s grave may
dip the colors to a man whose eyes closed in honor, true to himself,
to his family, his corps and to the dear old flag that he served so
patiently, so quietly, and so well. God rest his soul! Amen.
His innocence was publicly established as follows: In the winter of
1867-1868, Cadet Casey, while sick in the hospital, confessed to his
room-mate, Cadet Hamilton (now dead), that he (Casey) had stolen the
moneys for which poor Boyd had suffered the loss of name and fame.
* * * * *
[The records show that Casey was in the hospital from Jan. 24 to Jan.
31, 1868, suffering from dementia. He was so ill that his classmates
took turns in nursing him. One night, in his delirium, he spoke of
the Boyd affair. Hamilton happened to be with him at the time. The
next morning, when Casey was again in a conscious condition, Hamilton
told him what he had said. It was _then_ that Casey confessed his
part of the conspiracy. If it had not been for Casey’s illness the
facts above narrated would never, in all human probability, have come
to light.—_Sec. Assn._]
* * * * *
It is unnecessary for the writer to state why Hamilton kept this
awful secret locked in his breast from 1867-1868 until he died,
Jan. 22, 1872, from consumption; but he did, alas for him! Casey
had peculiar temptations. Private matters and a hounding blackmail
pressed him for money, which he stole from rich cadets. The cause was
a concealed marriage of Casey’s, that if known would have voided his
cadetship and destroyed his chance for social elevation.
Poor Boyd lived alone in a room on the third floor, third division,
“B” Company. Casey lived directly opposite, and concealed marked
money in Boyd’s books, which caused Boyd to be suspected as the thief
of all the money previously stolen.
Hamilton, the confidant, feared his room-mate of four years,
erred, and kept silent, as far as I know, until June, 1871. At
the St. Marc Hotel, Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Hamilton, in
view of his approaching death, communicated to me his knowledge
of Casey’s confession and of Boyd’s innocence. I was shocked, and
at once communicated the facts to the then Lieut. O. B. Boyd, on
the frontier. On my return, after three years of absence in the
Orient, Europe, and the South, I discovered, in a conversation with
Captain Price of the engineers, that full justice had not been done.
Duplicate affidavits were immediately made by me and forwarded to
Captain Boyd and another person interested. I received a letter from
Boyd thanking me for my efforts—a letter that has made me always
happy, and which, I regret, is stored with valuable archives where I
cannot at once find it. It speaks of his struggles, and pleasantly
says that his character needs no present backing, but that a time
will come when I may speak and tell all, if I think it will please
those who value him.
It was in Siberia that I received the letter asking me to commit
these facts to paper, and by hazard I found a stray copy of the
_Army and Navy_ which contained a report of Captain Boyd’s honorable
obsequies.
From the Pacific I pen the last tribute to a man of much-tried worth.
The subject brings back painful memories of two men whom I loved and
honored in my cadet days—Casey and Hamilton. I am proud to state here
that two of my class never cut Boyd, and several others in the corps
did him some act of kindness in the awful silence of two years. With
pride I recall that the officers of the post did full justice to his
barren rights, and that the old and faithful servants of the Academy
treated him with a discerning kindness which is a wreath of honor on
their silent graves. I will not refer to one affection which cheered
him—there are things too sacred for words.
It is all over! There is only one name off the duty roster; an empty
chair; a lonely grave; an old sword hanging idly in the sunshine
somewhere; a riderless horse; a void in the little family circle
which knew and loved the man who is no more.
It is well to know that his name is mentioned with honor and respect;
that the burden of another’s crime has been cast from him, and that
Time will quietly and in honor carpet the grave of the honest soldier
with “the grass which springeth under the rain which raineth on the
just and the unjust alike.” I believe restitution of honor and
public consideration has, in so far as possible, been fully made. I
look back sadly on my waning youth, as I think of this story, its
actors, and that—
“The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones with the dust.”
RICHARD H. SAVAGE,
_Class of 1868_.
APPENDIX B.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.
AS VIEWED BY WEEPING WEASEL, LATE CHIEF OF THE KIOWAS.
A LECTURE
_Written by_ CAPTAIN ORSEMUS BRONSON BOYD, _in behalf of the
Charitable Enterprises of the Ladies connected with the —— Church
of Davenport, Iowa, and also given before the Masonic Lodge in
San Antonio, Texas._
_Ladies and Gentlemen_:—In the first place I am not a lecturer. I
make this announcement now, for fear you may not discover it before I
shall have finished, or if the fact should be rudely thrust upon you,
I will have pleaded guilty in advance to the indictment.
When, a boy, I took part in the debating clubs that were held in
those old red schoolhouses where all great affairs of state—wars,
revolution, politics and finance—were discussed with the freedom of
boys and the ignorance of savages, there was one question which never
failed to elicit ample talk: “Resolved, that anticipation is better
than reality,” and on that question I was always in the affirmative.
In an hour you will all be with me.
I shall tell no tale of personal adventure; nothing worth recording
ever happened to me. Diogenes, with a lantern, and open sunlight to
aid the lantern, in the city of Athens failed to find an honest man.
An untutored Indian from the plains of Texas, amid the common events
and every-day life of the Pale-faces, discovered that their vaunted
civilization was a myth, and their boasted culture a delusion. Let us
at once annihilate the Indian and discredit Diogenes.
In common with all Christians of our kind, we believe that it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to inherit the kingdom of heaven. There are other Christians who
believe that it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a
needle than for a camel to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Who shall
say which Christian is _the_ Christian?
Before the brothers of this noble profession, this mystic tie, whose
deeds have been known in every land and under every sun—amid burning
flames and on frozen mountains, on swollen rivers and tempestuous
seas, by the bedsides of dying princes, in the cabins of poverty,
desolation, and disease, in public and private, to bond and free, to
all brothers who own its symbolic rites—to all brothers and wives of
the brothers, I can more freely speak of one who, though ignorant and
a savage, still found in his own faith and his own civilization his
own Christianity.
Eighteen hundred years ago, in Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, a
man, whom the charity of God had sent into the world, was preaching
to the people. And a certain lawyer, willing to justify himself,
stood up and asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Promptly came the answer:
“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among
thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and
departed, leaving him half dead.
“And by chance there came down a certain priest that way, and when he
saw him he passed by on the other side.
“And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on
him, and passed by on the other side.
“But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed, came where he was; and when
he saw him, he had compassion on him.
“And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,
and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took
care of him.
“And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave
them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him: and whatsoever
thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that
fell among the thieves?”
On the boundless prairies of the West and South, that are in extent
empires, the white man has learned that devotion which Nature, in her
grandest forms, most surely teaches. He has learned that tolerance
which men unfettered by the bonds of conventional society most
quickly learn.
Two years ago last July I found myself encamped upon the banks of the
Red River of Texas, with forty horsemen as scouts under my command.
Like a silver thread the river ran a thousand feet beneath us,
through the wildest and most precipitous cañon.
At four o’clock one morning, a Seminole Indian, attached to the
command, brought me intelligence that six hours previously six
horses, four lodges, one sick Indian, five squaws, and several
children had descended into the cañon one mile above us, and were
then lost to sight. I asked:
“Had they provisions?”
“Yes; corn and buffalo meat.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw corn scattered upon one side of the trail, and flies
had gathered upon a piece of buffalo meat on the other.”
“How do you know that one of the Indians is sick?”
“Because the lodge poles were formed into a travois, that was drawn
by a horse blind in one eye.”
“How do you know the horse was half blind?”
“Because, while all the other horses grazed upon both sides of the
trail, this one ate only the grass that grew upon one side.”
“How do you know the sick one was a man?”
“Because when a halt was made all the women gathered around him.”
“Of what tribe are they?”
“Of the Kiowa tribe.”
And thus, with no ray of intelligence upon his stolid face, the
Seminole Indian stood before me and told all I wished to know
concerning our new neighbors, whom he had never seen.
Two hours from that time, not knowing whether they were friends or
enemies, I was carefully studying, from the bluff above, through a
field-glass, the Indian camp.
The lodges had all been erected, and were gay with the robes of the
buffalo of the plains, the prairie wolf, and the coyote. A great war
bonnet of eagles’ feathers hung before the door of the principal
tepee, denoting that its occupant was a chief. From the lodge pole
floated a blue streamer, bearing the rude device, in red paint, of a
whip-poor-will attacking a rattlesnake; this told me that he was the
chief of all the Kiowas. I knew the man. I had met him, with many
others of his tribe, one night several years before, one hundred
miles below on the same river, and the meeting had not been pleasant
to either of us.
In fact, several hours had been required in which to adjust our
differences; and as the chief left me amid the crack of rifles and
the swish of arrows, I heard his clear voice solemnly declaring in
Spanish that he would surely come again “when the moon was young.”
Fate was too strong even for the chief of the Kiowas; he never came;
his tribe had been conquered and were at peace.
Returning to my cantonment, I hastily saddled a small detachment,
and descending the almost precipitous sides of the gorge reached the
Indian encampment, and dismounting, raised the buffalo skin that hung
before the entrance of the principal lodge, and stood unsummoned in
the presence of the chief. An old and shriveled man, with nerveless
arms and sunken eyes, from which the fire of battle had forever fled,
lay upon a rude couch of skins. He gave courteous greeting, said he
knew me, and even spoke my name. As I sat upon the ground at his side
he told me how, for weeks before our previous meeting to which I have
alluded, he had been upon my trail when I marched over the short,
crisp buffalo grass of the staked-plains. He had known my personal
habits, the disposition of the camp for defense at night, the number
of men, animals, and wagons; in fact, all that I had known myself.
The chief then told me that he was stricken by death, and should soon
be in the presence of the Great Spirit, roaming the happy hunting
grounds of his tribe, and asked that he be allowed to die in peace.
Day after day I visited the dying warrior, who related from time to
time, as his strength permitted, the story of his life and the story
of his tribe. He recounted the wrongs they had suffered, and the
wrongs they had done. He told me of their customs and traditions,
their marriages, births, and deaths. For days he talked, sometimes in
the soft Spanish tongue, often in the beautiful sign language of the
plain Indian.
In my youth I lived near, and of course read the romantic creations
of that clever gentleman who resided upon the shores of the beautiful
Cooperstown Lake. I had also read the works of a novelist from the
South who had invested the Indian character with all the warmth and
color of his native skies, with all the romance that belonged to
his Southern forests, gay with flowers and poetic with festoons of
clinging moss.
In consequence of this I had come to look upon the Indian as all that
was noble, grand, and heroic in war, all that was gentle, tender,
and true in peace. I had read with breathless interest of his loves,
courtships, and marriages. I had admired his keenness of vision upon
the trail, his untiring energy, fleetness of foot, immunity from
fatigue, his long fasts, and the halo of romance that seemed to
ever encircle him. I considered him a “Chevalier Bayard,” a model of
physical beauty, who resembled, perhaps, the dying gladiator.
My boyhood’s dream was rudely broken, and like many another boyish
illusion it disappeared in a day. I found the Indian dirty, unwashed,
and treacherous, a prey to the lowest instincts and the most
revolting cruelty.
He was no “Chevalier Bayard,” and did not resemble the dying
gladiator. The romance, color, light and shades—all were gone, and I
learned that the Indian and our treatment of him were deformities and
blots upon our fair land and our modern civilization. Between the law
of force upon one side, and the law of civilization upon the other,
the Indian has been tossed like an unripe apple, and has not known
which to obey.
One night the old Indian chief died, and the next morning, with such
rude and simple rites as obtained among the Kiowas, we carried him to
his last resting-place upon the platform which had been erected for
the purpose.
The dawning light was flushing rosy red in the blushing East; in
the West the darkness of the night still lingered. The songs of a
thousand birds and the chirp of millions of insects broke in some
measure the eternal silence of those great plains. The buzzard, a
mere speck in the sky, with the eye of the eagle waited impatiently
for his prey. Herds of timid antelopes, with great startled eyes,
watched us from a distance, ready to dash away on fleetest foot at
a moment’s warning. Troops of buffaloes were slaking their thirst
in the rippling river. The great cat-fish, with strong leaps, rose
bodily from the water in pursuit of prey, and fell back with a splash.
All animal life was awake with the flush of the morning; and as the
sun’s disk appeared above the horizon’s dead level, we laid the chief
upon the platform, with his face turned toward the “God of the Dome.”
His body was wrapped in a red blanket stoutly bound about with cords.
He had been brave in battle, so all his war implements were laid by
his side. His great war bonnet of eagle’s feathers was hung upon one
of the upright poles. His horses were slain by the scaffold. Then, to
the accompaniment of low-voiced chants, his widows began their work
of scarification with knives upon the lower extremities. When that
was finished we left him to the hush of those vast plains.
That night in one of the lodges a great great granddaughter but a
few months old died. The child was placed in a frail burial canoe,
covered with trailing vines that had grown upon the river’s banks,
and gently cast adrift. No doubt the tiny bark was soon caught in
rippling eddies, or its course stopped by stout rushes, and in time
its lifeless occupant returned to the dust from which it had sprung.
After the obsequies of the dead chief I returned to camp, and in
order to divert my mind sought to fatigue my body by stalking
buffaloes all day. But I had gained a new insight into the Indian
character, and one which enabled me to respect it.
That evening, lying in a hammock under the awning of my tent, as the
first shades of darkness came creeping over the plains, there struck
upon my ears, borne upward from the gorge below, the chant of Indian
women for their dead. Its tones were the rhythm of sorrow and the
notes of woe. Until midnight the songs continued, now loud, then
sinking to the faint whisperings of the wind. Next morning the lodges
were in ashes, and nothing was left of our strange neighbors but the
dead chief upon his platform, and the footprints of their moccasins
as they traveled straight toward the North Star.
These events made so strange and strong an impression upon me, that
I propose telling you this evening, in as simple words as possible,
the story of the pilgrimage of Weeping Weasel, late chief of all the
Kiowas. I shall dwell longer upon his attempts to introduce the white
man’s civilization in his tribe, what he saw, and the inferences
drawn therefrom, than upon all the other incidents he related. The
conclusions at which Weeping Weasel, with the intellect of an Indian
and the sagacity of a politician, arrived, are not necessarily mine;
and if their recital should wound any one within the sound of my
voice, I would beg them to remember that they were told me by a dying
Indian chief, as he lay in his lodge upon the banks of the Red River
flowing peacefully through the great staked-plains of Texas.
Years and years before—even for hundreds of summers—the Kiowas had
been a powerful nation. When the tent of the chief was planted, there
clustered around it five thousand lodges. The tribe was rich in the
implements of war, owned thousands of horses, were mighty hunters,
bold and aggressive warriors. No footprint of man or animal, no
upturned stone, broken twig or bended grass escaped the keen vision
of their scouts.
From El Paso, where the Rio Grande del Norte commences its westward
course, and swings in the arc of a great circle until completed at
the mouth of the Pecos, where it again flows south, they owned the
lands of which this river formed the Western boundary; thence south
across the “Devil’s River” and the Nueces, to where it empties into
beautiful Matagorda Bay. On the east they had fought for supremacy
with the Comanches, and been victorious. They had made the Tonkawas
a nation of beggars and old women. From across the border they had
repelled invasions of the Kickapoos and Lipan-Apaches. They had
marched, an irresistible army, across the pine ridges and cedar
mountains of New Mexico, and fearlessly confronted the Warm Springs
and Mescalero tribes. The Utes of Colorado had descended from their
mountain fastnesses, battled with them in the open plain, and
been defeated. They had measured lances with and beaten the Tonto
and Jicarrila—Apaches of Arizona. They had destroyed the great
wheat-fields on the Gila River of the Pima and Maricopa tribes. The
Yumas had heard their battle-cry. They had pushed their conquests
amongst the Pi-Utes and Shoshones of Nevada, and from thence had
marched against the Bannocks of Idaho, and the Nez Perces of Oregon.
Their spoils of war had been great.
But in course of time the hands of all other tribes were raised
against them, and through disaster and defeat they had been reduced
to the occupancy of only the great plains of Western Texas.
At that time Weeping Weasel became their chief. He was then in the
prime of manhood. The nerveless arm that I saw in his lodge could
then draw the six-foot arrow to its head, and make the cord of deer
sinews writhe and moan as in pain.
He saw that peace and industry would perhaps be of great benefit to
his tribe, and after much communion with himself and consultation
with the elders, concluded at no distant day to turn his face toward
the rising sun, and learn the strange and barbarous ways of the
Pale-faces. He had been told they were as numberless as the leaves of
the forest when the hot sirocco that comes from the southern islands
shakes them with its fiery breath.
Marching over these great and silent plains under the blazing sun, he
had learned in some instinctive way that the Pale-faces would build
cities there, and people them with busy men and women.
Weeping Weasel had seen the _Pongo_ or smoke-man in the North that
traversed its iron rails faster than his fleetest pony could gallop.
He had seen a small wire stretched on poles through which he could
but dimly comprehend that the men who lived at the rising sun talked
with their brothers who lived at the setting sun.
But before starting on a journey so fraught with peril, he thought
best to call to his aid teachers—those of good repute among the
Pale-faces. Through a missionary he secured the services of two
devotees from Massachusetts, who came and opened a school for the
boys and girls of his tribe.
It is true that in visage and mien these teachers did not resemble
the dusky beauties of the Kiowa race. The ringlets worn at the
side of the face, the eyes that looked through strange pieces of
glass, the mysterious scrolls which they held in their hands, and
the sounding fall of a heavy foot instead of the dewy touch of the
moccasin, were not calculated to inspire love and respect from
untutored savages.
Still, with the devotion of their calling, and in their desire
to do good, these mistaken and misguided women taught on. But one
fatal day they were surprised by Weeping Weasel while teaching the
children that the world is round. The Kiowas believed it to be flat.
Weeping Weasel, with the decision worthy a general of iron nerve and
unflinching courage in the right, seized and burned them at the stake.
He scattered their ashes to the four winds of heaven, and in a long
address to the Historical Society of Boston, asked that others with
less pernicious doctrines be sent. It is perhaps needless to state
that even the old Bay State, with its advanced ideas and unyielding
principles, could find no more volunteer missionaries for that work.
Therefore Weeping Weasel must needs start upon his pilgrimage toward
the rising sun.
The night previous to his departure all the tribes assembled, and
with the great Southern Cross gleaming and burning, they performed
the sacred rites and mysteries of the sun dance. A hundred fires
flamed brightly. Amid the yells of warriors and the shrieks of those
fainting from self-inflicted tortures, there arose the monotonous
chants of the women as they prayed for the safety of their chief.
At break of day he left them, and a great silence fell upon the tribe
as they mournfully sought their separate lodges.
Day by day Weeping Weasel traveled north and east, sleeping at night
under the stars, his food procured by bow and arrow, his drink taken
from limpid streams.
At last he came to the country of the “Smoke-man,” and taking passage
was borne swiftly over mountains and through the valleys to some
bluffs upon the boundary of a great State, where other Indians had
held their councils years before, and where he determined to commence
his researches and investigations.
His pilgrimage becoming known, the chief was hospitably lodged in the
house of a Christian gentleman of that town who was a land agent.
Among the Kiowas the title to all lands and the occupancy thereof
were considered sacred. Even in their forays against other tribes
they contended for supremacy, not for a title to the country. Indeed,
so strong was this honesty implanted in the breast of the savage and
barbarous Indian, that once, after a great battle with the Comanches,
rather than do violence to this principle he had ceded to them a
thousand square miles of his own country, deeming that better than
to question such undoubted right.
The land agent showed him, in his office, maps of lands which bore
strong resemblance to those occupied by his tribe. Upon leaving, this
same Christian gentleman followed him across the State to a city with
a great bridge and offered to sell, beseeching him to buy, for a
merely nominal sum, thousands and thousands of acres upon which his
tribe had dwelt from time immemorial. Weeping Weasel determined not
to incorporate the land usages of the Pale-faces amongst his people.
In the towns and camps of the Kiowas, great attention had been paid
to the sanitary conditions of their immediate surroundings. This was
necessary for the life and health of individual members of the tribe.
In that city by the bridge he found the people in a certain locality
stricken unto death by a strange pestilence. Upon investigating the
cause, he learned they all had drank water from a certain well.
Weeping Weasel concluded that, if he were the chief in this locality,
there would be sewers and water-mains; or failing these, the
inhabitants who refused or were too indolent to carry water from the
river would receive a punishment, compared with which the cholera
would be a lingering and painless death. But Weeping Weasel was an
untaught, rude, and barbarous savage.
The “Father of Waters” next attracted the attention of this curious
pilgrim. Compared with all other rivers he had ever seen, it was as
the sun to the faintest twinkling star. He worshiped it as a god. Day
by day he sat upon the banks, watched it through all changing moods,
loved it best when angry currents brought down yellow mud from the
far North, and worshiped it most when the setting sun’s ocher light
fell upon its surging waters, enveloping beautiful islands.
There floated upon its broad expanse numberless strange monsters,
propelled in some mysterious way. Weeping Weasel found they carried
grain, fruit, and other produce from one part of the country to
another, and then first began to understand the law of trade—of
barter and sale. He took passage upon one of these palaces,
descending a hundred miles; saw the busy towns upon the banks of his
idol, filled, as he thought, with crazy men and women. Why all this
rush, ceaseless activity and strife for wealth, he questioned.
Returning at night, and standing upon the deck with head uncovered
in the reverent attitude a savage always assumes when awe-stricken
in the presence of nature, he suddenly became conscious of a strange
throbbing through every fiber of the monster. He also saw abreast
another monster all aglow with fire; men were shouting and running
like mad! Every few minutes its huge furnace doors were opened, and
the blazing fires fed with pitch and resin. The vessel shook in every
joint; men and women were crowding the deck all hoarse from shouting;
money was freely changing hands; from the smoke-stacks long lines
of fire trailed out through the darkness; the gurgling water at the
bow was thrown in spray upon the deck. Suddenly there was a terrible
roar, a great flash of fire, then darkness came, and Weeping Weasel
knew no more until he found himself safe upon the river’s bank.
He was told that a hundred men, women, and children had been
sacrificed that night. Burning with anger and righteous indignation,
Weeping Weasel attended the coroner’s inquest; the evidence was
conflicting; no one in particular seemed to have been to blame; it
was an accident. Weeping Weasel went forward to offer his testimony;
a savage could not take the oath. The coroner’s jury promptly
acquitted all of blame, even the poor Indian, and the event was soon
forgotten. Weeping Weasel determined that the civilization of the
steamboat should never be introduced among his people.
Again he turned his face to the east, and traveled across a great
State where the fields were waving with ripening grain. Neat
farmhouses had been erected on every side. The corn and wheat that he
saw growing seemed to him of no use. Who would require it?
On these undulating plains with cattle, sheep, and horses, where
peace and plenty seemed to reign and the merry voices of children
were heard at sunset, our untutored savage began to think perhaps was
the civilization of which he had dreamed. Still he had the Indian’s
caution, and arrived at conclusions slowly.
He determined to abide three days in the most peaceful and quiet
village, and chose one with two churches, a bank, and store.
Upon awakening the first morning, he found that the store had been
robbed and burned during the night. The following day the two
churches were in fierce dispute over some minor point of doctrine.
The third morning it was learned that the bank cashier had absconded
with all the funds, leaving hundreds of families destitute.
The Kiowas did not steal from each other; the simple faith in the
Great Spirit which they had in common furnished no cause for dispute;
and the custodian of the tribe’s public goods never ran away with
them. They never had thought of such an occurrence; and the event was
so improbable that those barbarous savages had not even prescribed a
mode of punishment for it.
Weary, harassed, tormented, and worn out even at the commencement
of his pilgrimage, Weeping Weasel would gladly have turned his face
toward the setting sun; but patience being one of the great virtues
of the Kiowas, he again girded up his loins and proceeded on his
journey.
But a great fear was coming upon his superstitious soul. One
afternoon, years before, while hunting, Weeping Weasel had fallen
asleep by the side of a spring that bubbled from beneath an immense
boulder, which was sufficiently large to protect him from the sun’s
rays. As he slept, there appeared before him the god Stone-Shirt,
followed by Pantasco, or he who robs the living; Kay-Wit, he who robs
the dead; and Quite-Qiu, who robs both living and dead. All passed
before the sleeping warrior, to whom Stone-Shirt foretold in the sign
language this pilgrimage and the events which would follow.
Weeping Weasel could only dimly comprehend on awaking, that in case
of failure he was to be turned into one of the three horrid shapes
shown him by Stone-Shirt; and, forever shut out from the Great Spirit
and the happy hunting grounds, his soul, without arms to defend
itself, must wander and fall through unfathomable space and darkness.
When he saw the terrible anxiety, woe, and despair written upon the
faces of fathers, mothers, and children whom the vandal acts of the
faithless cashier had ruined, Weeping Weasel concluded to ever pray
that he be not turned into the horrid shape which steals from the
living.
In the robbery of the store the proprietor had been killed; and as
this ignorant savage gazed upon the form of the man who had died
while defending his property, Weeping Weasel, in the agony of his
soul, prayed to Stone-Shirt that he be spared, both in this his
mortal, and in his future spiritual, existence, assuming the form of
him who robs the dead.
In the dispute between the churches, so much rancor and venom had
been developed that men who were peacefully lying, as they had
lain for years, in the little cemetery of the town, were publicly
discussed, and motives and opinions the worst imputed to them.
Happily they were ignorant of all this.
The living were slandered and the dead vilified. Brother became
the enemy of brother, sisters were estranged, husbands and wives
separated. Again Weeping Weasel besought Stone-Shirt, and with the
sweat of mortal agony upon his brow, that, if he must, he would face
either of the two horrible shapes to be spared the form of the one
who robs both the living and the dead.
Weeping Weasel soon found himself in a great city by a lake. Here
he was lodged in the house of a gray-haired and respectable man, a
pillar of the church, and one who gave largely, in an indiscriminate
way, to churches and the poor. He had no time to investigate
charities, and only contributed to them because he had money, or
perhaps to ease the gnawings of a conscience not altogether dormant.
Weeping Weasel was taken to church, where an eloquent preacher
held his audience spell-bound as he impressed upon it the evils of
gambling. To all his strictures the gray-haired man responded with
fervent “Ahmens!”
The next morning his host escorted Weeping Weasel to a great mart of
trade in that populous city. There the savage Indian remembered the
immense wheat and corn fields he had passed as he journeyed east. He
saw the reverend gentleman who had spoken so eloquently on the sin
of gambling stealthily enter a broker’s office and sell thousands
and thousands of bushels of grain which he did not own, and never
would. His gray-haired entertainer, who had so graciously responded
“Ahmen!” stood in the center of hundreds of other men, all of whom
were shouting and howling as he drove grain up and down by a nod of
his head; men were ruined and families made destitute by this man,
who called gambling a sin.
Weeping Weasel learned, but it was difficult to grasp the idea, that
crops were bought and sold before they were sown; that they became
a football upon “Change,” even while growing; and when finally sent
to market they ruined thousands. He found that all this disastrously
affected the poor brethren of the Pale-faces, and that children were
hungry in consequence. The chief decided he would grow only enough
corn to satisfy the wants of his people, and would forever remain
silent in regard to the gambling transactions.
Once in the history of the Kiowa tribe an old and respected warrior
had been selected to build a lodge in which public meetings were
to be held. He was to be paid from the goods owned in common. To
the dismay and horror of all, it was found that this rude architect
had not been honest; he had demanded more buffalo hides than were
needed for the building, and the best he had conveyed to his own
lodge, and afterward sold to wandering traders. When the man’s crime
became known he was seized, and the elders sat around him with
stern visages. His trial was short; he was bound on the top of the
dishonestly built lodge, and met his death in its flames.
Weeping Weasel was shown a great hall of justice in that city where
the granite was the finest and the workmanship the most skillful.
He was told that the builder had taken the best granite and sold
it to the traders among the Pale-faces. Thinking this had just
been discovered, our barbarous Indian went early the next morning
to witness the destruction of the building and cremation of the
dishonest builder. He waited until noon, and as the building
still stood and no torch had been applied, Weeping Weasel turned
sorrowfully away just in time to see the false builder drinking
champagne at a fashionable restaurant with his friends. This phase
of civilization would not do for the fierce and warlike Kiowas.
The right of husbands to exact obedience, and the duty of wives to
obey, was one of the laws of the Kiowas, as unalterable as if written
upon tablets of stone. So strongly was this doctrine implanted in the
breast of the savage that once, in a foray against a Northern tribe,
a favorite squaw of Weeping Weasel’s had, in direct disobedience to
his command, followed a distance of two days’ march and entered his
lodge at nightfall. She was beautiful then; but when I saw her on the
banks of the Red River she was disfigured. A broken collar bone and
a flattened nose were the results of her disobedience. She returned
quickly; her only cause of anxiety being that she could not travel
nights for fear of passing her own village.
But among the Pale-faces Weeping Weasel learned that the custom
was different. He found the wife frittered away her time while the
husband was at the counting-room or office. If he commanded her to
abstain from the round dances, she danced them; if he ordered her
east, she went west; if he asked her to attend church, she preferred
the opera; if he expressed a desire for the sea-shore, she chose the
mountains of New Hampshire. Weeping Weasel, with the cunning of the
savage, decided that this should never be told the squaws of his
nation.
As no man, intent upon a great mission, can hope to escape annoyances
and observation from the idle, vulgar, and indolent, this warrior
from the South found that his wearing apparel, the dress of his
fathers, and the habit of his tribe, was a matter of curious comment
even among those busy people. His clothes were good enough for him,
and there were no fashion plates and paper patterns in use among the
Kiowas. Still, at a council held at one time for the general good of
the tribe, a daring innovator had, as a protection against snakes
while marching, suggested that the boots of the Pale-face be adopted.
A pair had been found amongst their war plunder at one time, and had
been examined curiously by all the tribe.
In an institution for the sick, Weeping Weasel saw in a padded cell
a maniac, confined and chained to the floor. He held a wisp of straw
in his mouth, his clothes were torn to tatters, his hands cut and
bleeding, foam issued from his mouth and mingled with blasphemy
from his lips. His cries for salvation from invisible enemies were
piteous. The matted hair and bloodshot eye told the Indian a tale as
graphic as the pictured rocks of his own tribe. He found that the man
was young, rich, and respected. He asked the nature of the disease,
and was carelessly told that it was “snakes in his boots.” Sadly
Weeping Weasel asked that the wire be at once ordered to carry a
message to his tribe for the immediate destruction of the boots found
among their plunder. He also wondered why the Pale-faces did not at
once destroy the serpent whose terrible folds were coiling around the
youth of their country.
All this time Weeping Weasel’s perceptions were being quickened and
his reasoning powers enlarged. The Kiowas had always considered
the marriage tie sacred. It was true a man might have many wives,
enough to do all the work of his lodge, while he used his energies
only for war or in the pursuit of game. But once taken, the man and
woman were bound for life. No power on earth could dissolve the tie.
Infidelity in either was punished by death. But in that great city
he found courts open as the day, in which shameless men and brazen
women sought the strong arm of the law to break and tear asunder the
most sacred and binding of oaths. Weeping Weasel learned that only
a publication in an obscure newspaper was necessary to satisfy the
goddess whom Weeping Weasel had seen represented as blind-folded,
with scales in her hand. Incompatibility of temperament was often the
cause alleged. This the Indian could not understand. Among the Kiowa
husbands and wives such a thing was unknown. The husband commanded,
the wife obeyed. Weeping Weasel found after a time that this term
was used to indicate that wives had become tired of their husbands,
or husbands had grown weary of their wives. It often meant dishonest
and unholy loves, and could be construed as indicative of a thousand
things when the cord that first bound two people together had become
a gnawing, corroding chain of iron.
The ignorant savage had not as yet found any advantage to be gained
from the civilization of the Pale-faces. Weary and sick at heart,
the pilgrim pushed on until he reached the chief city of the great
nation. He had begun to comprehend the numbers of the Pale-faces
and their strength. His brain was confused. He was so torn by
conflicting emotions that he feared his judgment would become warped
and valueless. Arriving in the great city, he learned that a man with
unlimited power had betrayed his trust and plundered the city’s
treasury of millions. Yet the blind goddess had thrown around him
all possible shields to cover his glaring rascality. He had banded
with him an army of thieves. Again a great hall of justice had been
the means used to rob and plunder the people at will. Before public
exposure the thing had been a byword and a jest at the clubs.
The man who had done all this had risen to power from the ranks of
the common people. Weeping Weasel wondered if he had risen to power
by his rascality. But conscious that he was ignorant and a savage, he
rejected the thought as unmanly.
When a warrior among the Kiowas betrayed a public trust he was
terribly punished. But one such case had ever been handed down in the
traditions of their tribe. In that instance the culprit had been led
in a circle surrounded by all his tribe—every man, woman, and child
was present—the silence was fearful; then the body of the victim was
covered with the broad leaves of the prickly pear, and they were one
by one set on fire. The punishment seemed to have been effectual.
Next morning our Indian appeared at the city hall to witness the
torture; again he waited until noon, and as no steps had been taken
against the wrong-doer, he concluded, to say the least, that the
white man was slow in punishing criminals.
The Kiowas had always paid great attention to the rearing of their
children, and especially exercised great care and foresight over
the girls, who were to become future mothers of the warriors of the
tribe. No Indian girl of six or twelve years could be absent from her
lodge after the fall of evening dew. She knew no lovers until she had
arrived at the age and estate of womanhood. Among the Pale-faces this
custom did not obtain. Weeping Weasel saw misses of tender age, in
pinafores, give large parties to other children; boys were invited.
He saw childish eyes sparkle with bandied jest and compliments
fit only for mature years. He saw children, excited by the dance,
intoxicated with music, satiated with rich food, spend the best hours
of the night in gay and reckless dissipation.
At certain seasons of the year the Chickasaw plum furnished much of
the food used by his tribe. If the pure white dust was brushed from
its surface when half-ripe, it never fruited in perfection. Weeping
Weasel found that the Pale-faces often brushed the dust of the plum
from the cheek of childhood.
The Kiowa woman was to him the model of physical beauty; her large
waist, broad, strong shoulders, the strength of limb, elastic,
springing step, and downcast eyes were such as he deemed fitting for
women who were to rear the future braves of their race.
Among the Pale-faces he found that maternity was a burden to be
avoided; that the waist was contracted by springs of steel; the body
thrown forward at an angle upon the hips by strong pieces of wood
placed under the heels; the face was covered by a vile compound
which looked like flour, or was painted as the savage paints when
he marches to battle or prepares for the sun dance. Curious to
ascertain the exact value of all this nonsense he made calculation,
and learned that the muslin and silk, velvet and ribbons, paint and
powder, flowers and bits of steel, amounted to about four hundred
and fifty-three dollars. That is to say, in the Kiowa computation,
forty-five and a half horses.
Weeping Weasel determined to be silent upon this manifest absurdity
of the Pale-face women.
The Kiowa women wore the hair straight down their backs and combed
away from their eyes. The daughters of the Pale-faces cut theirs
short in front and allowed it, except when curled by hot irons,
which the damp strangely affected, to fall into their eyes. The
meaning and mystery of this Weeping Weasel never attempted to fathom.
Besides the Great Spirit whom the Kiowas worshiped in common, each
Indian had a personal god to whom alone he was responsible. This god
was the conscience of the savage, and above it was only the commands
of the Great Spirit. His religion was always with him; it was his
shield and strength in the day of battle, his comfort in time of
peace: he heard it in the whispering of the wind and the sighing
of the trees; he recognized it in the rustle of the growing grass
and the ripening grain; he felt it in the songs of birds and the
whirr of insects’ wings. It warned him in the broken watch-spring
buzz of the deadly rattlesnake; in the forms of the clouds he saw
it; in the flush of morning and the darkness of evening he knew it.
It was his only ideal of the estate of future happiness where game
would be plenty and peace eternal. The bark on which these mysteries
were written was to him sacred. The savage accepted as truth its
teachings, which long generations of Kiowas had confirmed.
He went while in that city to hear a speaker—silver-tongued and
magnetic, who had all the graces which belong to the polished orator;
his voice was like the sound of bells to the Indian, whose nature is
ever open to the charm of this God-like gift. But he heard the man
revile, distort, and falsify the religion of the white man. He heard
him read from the sacred book, with laughing mien and careless jest,
most solemn promises. The mysteries of the creation and the origin of
the Pale-faces became in the mouth of this man as intangible as the
will-o’-the-wisp he had seen floating over his Southern swamps.
Listening to him, and applauding to the echo, were sons and daughters
of the Pale-faces. Fair women and intelligent men accepted as
eternal truth the words of the speaker. Weeping Weasel was ashamed,
astonished, dismayed! In this desecration of religion the wild Indian
of the Southern plains thought he could dimly comprehend the future
downfall of a great nation.
The pilgrim lost hope. Still he determined to pursue the subject to
its bitter end, and went one bright morning to the City of Churches.
Business had ceased, and the streets were quiet. In a darkened
temple, rich with stained glass, the air heavy with burning incense,
and stirred only by the notes of a great organ as it kept time
to the voices of boys who sang in angelic tones the litany of the
church, he heard an eloquent preacher tell of the wickedness and sin
of two great cities; and how, because not ten righteous men could
be found therein, they were destroyed from the face of the earth.
He also listened to the story of the wife who looked back, and was
turned into a pillar of salt. The next morning Weeping Weasel bought
a canopy of asbestos roofing, and thereafter never appeared in the
streets of either of the cities without carrying it above his head.
Again he was shown the great marts of trade, larger than the grain
exchange of another city. Here men bought and sold scraps of paper
and the country’s gold. It was the same old scenes. Stocks went up
and down by a nod of the head, and again men were made poor in a
moment. The ruined ones were driven from the exchange, and forever
after, with wild eyes and fevered pulse, they haunted its doors and
talked, with the strange infatuation of the Indian hemp-eater, of the
rise and fall of the stocks that had ruined them.
One terrible day Weeping Weasel saw a coin that the Pale-face used
in exchange for goods become enhanced in value three times. Wild,
haggard men clung to railings for support, so faint they could not
stand. Two unprincipled members of the exchange were the agents of
this scheme. When night came, the credit of the country had been
nearly ruined. The two conspirators slunk to a hotel that was soon
surrounded by a howling mob. Trade and industry were impaired,
commerce nearly swept from the sea and land, and credit almost lost
by the act of those two men. Weeping Weasel again determined that
gambling should forever be prohibited among his people, even the
throw of the six cherry stones for a quart of Chickasaw plums.
Among the Kiowas the public singer of the tribe’s heroic deeds was
a warrior, always well paid for his services. He had the warmest
seat in the lodge, and at the feast of dog-meat the tenderest piece;
but the newspaper man of the Pale-faces was lean, ill-fed, and most
lightly paid. Weeping Weasel found that medicines for the cure of all
diseases were sold in bottles, and that the proprietors waxed rich.
The savage concluded that all the Pale-faces could drink, but that
few could read.
In settling disputes among the Kiowas, all matters in question were
referred to a council composed of fifteen elders of the tribe. Each
principal laid his case before the tribunal with all the clearness
possible, in order that a just decision might be reached. Among the
Pale-faces the Indian found a class of men skilled in the preparation
of causes in dispute. From long practice, close study, and great
care, these men, who talked only of others’ rights and not of their
own, had become so skillful that white was made black, and black
white, as each argued his own point. Doubt was thrown upon the most
open and public transactions. Witnesses swore to the most improbable
events, and to occurrences they had never seen. In their harangues
before the elders each quoted the same statutes in the same words,
as applicable to his side of the cause. There were fierce disputes
and incessant wrangling. Weeping Weasel determined that this kind of
practice should never obtain a footing in his tribe.
The Kiowas had always considered sacred the life of each member of
the tribe. In their rude and barbarous code there was no deviation
from the rule of “blood for blood;” it was as unchangeable as the
“Laws of the Medes and Persians.” In a court of justice Weeping
Weasel saw a man arraigned who had wantonly slain a brother by
sending a bullet through his heart. The crime had been seen by many;
there was no conflicting evidence; it was premeditated; but again the
counselors covered the case with doubt. The murderer had a bright,
intelligent face and an undimmed intellect. Weeping Weasel heard
him acquitted on the ground of temporary emotional insanity. The
proceedings of that court were unfit for the uncivilized Kiowa.
Among the Kiowas, the position of medicine-man was one of great honor
and trust, but extremely hazardous to the incumbent. When a warrior
sickened the medicine-man was at once summoned. With rude rites, much
beating of drums and strange incantations, he sought to drive away
the disease. Sometimes he was unsuccessful and the patient died. When
the corpse of his mismanagement was ready for burial the medicine-man
was summoned, and he always came. He was divested of all his titles
to respect, all the trophies he had gained by successful practice of
physic, and manfully met his death on the scaffold with his victim.
Such was not the custom among the Pale-faces. Everywhere Weeping
Weasel saw gilt-lettered signs of the medicine-man of the whites;
yet the Pale-faces died, and the same medicine-man ministered to
another. The savage also noticed that in this strange country the
physician never attended the burial of his victim. Weeping Weasel
concluded that the death of the doctor had once been a custom among
the Pale-faces, but having fallen into disuse the fraternity attended
no funerals for fear it might be revived.
Among the medicine-men of the Pale-faces, Weeping Weasel found a
class who with pictures and posters attracted the eye to fabulous
certificates of wonderful cures. They resided in great houses wherein
were all comforts, and where, with endless noise and show, they
professed to cure all diseases by water, by physic, by pills, by
powders, by plasters, by new and strange remedies, even by the laying
on of hands. He found that while regular practitioners were allowed
to live, these people fared better even than they. They waxed fat
and grew rich upon the credulity of an ignorant public. They lived
and moved in the open glare of the noonday sun. After all he had
seen, Weeping Weasel ceased to wonder at the strange epidemics that
sometimes prevailed among the Pale-faces.
He saw long trains, drawn by the mysterious Pongo man, and managed by
underpaid and careless workmen, collide with other trains, and as a
result men and women were killed and children maimed; yet no one was
punished.
Our pilgrim now turned his face toward the capital of the great
nation. One of the three horrible shapes shown him by Stone-Shirt
must inevitably become his. But he did not look back. Civilization
had caused him to think of the exhortations of the Pale-faced
preacher. He “remembered Lot’s wife.”
The Massachusetts school teachers had displayed in rude letters
on the walls of the lodge in which they taught this text from the
scriptures: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” In the city in
which Weeping Weasel had just arrived he found that an officer of
the Pale-face warriors was a defaulter to the sum of many thousands
of the coins of his people. He was shamefully untrue! His position
and name had been used to further defraud. There were no extenuating
circumstances—there could be none. But the officer escaped, and no
one followed and brought him back. Weeping Weasel was glad that he
had burned the teachers at the stake, for he concluded they had
willfully misrepresented the text hung upon the walls of the lodge,
and that it should have read, “No man pursueth when the wicked flee.”
In the Kiowa tribe all the councils were held and the proceedings
argued in a grave and dignified manner. The pipe, signifying good
will and friendship, was first passed around. Each warrior touched it
with his lips. That day on the banks of the Red River, when Weeping
Weasel attempted to tell me of the councils of the elders of the
white man, his breath was short, and much of what he said was lost.
In that city he was told offices were bargained for; the daughters
of the Pale-faces solicited them for their husbands and friends. He
saw a cabinet minister fall from his high place through the sale of
paltry positions.
Worn, harassed and broken in spirit, his pilgrimage useless, as no
good could, in his opinion, come to the savage from the white man’s
civilization, Weeping Weasel turned his face towards the setting sun.
He traveled as before, sleeping at night under the stars, and again
his drink came from limpid streams; but his food was procured by a
revolver and magazine gun of the Pale-faces. Civilization had taught
him the deadly effect of these weapons which he afterward used upon
his enemies and the Pale-faces themselves.
He returned to his tribe. His coming was seen from afar. Without a
word he entered his lodge: he had no greeting for his faithful wives
who clustered around him.
Three days passed, and then Weeping Weasel told to his people the
story of his pilgrimage, told what he had seen and heard, and the
conclusions he had drawn therefrom. With barbarous splendor he was
tried for the crime of falsehood, which is capital among Indians, all
the men, women and children of the tribe serving as judges.
In a great amphitheater of rock, at the junction of the Pecos with
the Rio Bravo del Norte, where the swift rush and meeting of the two
rivers forms a whirlpool from which nothing can escape, the public
trials of the tribe were held, the people sitting for days in solemn
judgment. If sentence of death was decreed the body was thrown into
this fearful eddy, and watched by all the tribe as it whirled,
leaped, and sprang in the boiling water until its final disappearance.
For generations and generations the gray and frowning rocks had
witnessed the trials of offenders among the Kiowas. On one side rose
sloping to the bluff a half-circle of trees. So thickly grew the
branches of those pines and cedars that but scant sunlight could
filter through them. Custom had decreed that if, at the moment of
passing sentence, a ray of light should penetrate those thickly
mingled branches and fall upon the face of the criminal, one-half of
the sentence should be remitted.
The trial was as great as the occasion. Eagle Face, the oldest
medicine-man of the tribe, was master of ceremonies. Flowing Hair,
the favorite wife of Weeping Weasel, who had at one time, during five
days of starvation, fed her first-born boy with blood drawn from her
breast, was there, but silent, in her great fear, as became an Indian
woman. Circumstances were against the pilgrim. Those wild savages
could by no argument be brought to believe that there were such
uncivilized people upon the face of the earth. If it were true, how
could they live together? It was decided that sentence of death must
be passed.
The chief, proud and defiant, took his stand against the half-circle
of trees. Below, the pool was lashing itself into anger from a rising
river. Flowing Hair had thrown herself at his feet as if to interpose
her womanly strength against the dread sentence of an undeviating
Indian code. At that moment a broad, imprisoned ray of light that
had been entangled among the pines escaped and fell, in all its
trembling warmth and pitying tenderness, upon the face of the wild
Indian who had told the truth. In its soft caress it embraced the
form of his fainting squaw.
Weeping Weasel escaped capital punishment, but was deposed from civil
authority over the Kiowas, and was only obeyed as their supreme
war-chief. His sentence further banished him, when stricken by death,
from his tribe and from burial with his brethren. This was why I
found him while dying, surrounded only by his family, on the banks of
the Red River.
On the night of his death, to comfort a poor, dying soul, whose
future seemed bright enough—although his religion was not mine—I told
him, in the sign language, which his glazed and closing eyes could
but dimly see, that, in my opinion, his tribe was nearer civilization
than he dreamed, since to advanced ideas his sentence seemed just,
and that he had only suffered the fate of all reformers.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 21, 23: Three occurrences of ‘General Cullom’ replaced by
‘General Cullum’.