The thirteenth of June found everything running smoothly at the camp and
the boys having the time of their lives. The crews were well organized
and taking good care of the work assigned to them. Of course there had
been many cases of neglect and carelessness but they had been overcome
in one way or another and the boys felt quite proud of their management.
The cows were milked regularly, the woodpile replenished to the
satisfaction of the cook, the camp kept in good order and the class work
zealously performed.
All of these things were of importance, for on them depended the annual
trip to the White Earth Indian Reservation. The former classes had all
gone and no one wanted to see the custom broken. The president of the
corporation had made formal application to Professor Roberts for three
days’ absence for the whole class and preparations for the trip were
busily under way. Pack sacks were being stuffed with all the necessary
provisions and bedding, and through it all a running discussion of the
plans for the celebration made the whole camp vibrate with heated
argument. Lacking other forms of amusement an argument was always
welcome. Many a time an argument on predestination, or some other
equally abstract question, developed oratory which could be heard half a
mile away.
The object of the trip in question was the annual celebration of the
Peace Festival on the White Earth Indian Reservation, commemorating the
treaty of peace between the Sioux and the Chippewa tribes. Years ago the
forests of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota had been the hunting grounds
of the Sioux till the Chippewas, driven westward by the warlike Five
Nations (who had in turn been driven out by the Whites) forced them out
into the open prairies. For years the Sioux, returning to the forests to
avoid the severity of the winter on the plains, had clashed savagely
with the Chippewas. Finally a treaty of peace had been made and every
year they celebrated that peace at White Earth with horse races, canoe
races, war dances and other festivities.
“Have you fellows decided yet how you are going?” Merton asked, stopping
in the door of the lecture hall, where a half-dozen fellows were fussing
over their preparations.
A confused babel immediately broke forth. “No,” Bill announced
complacently, “nobody has decided anything but me; I’m going to stay
home to take care of the ‘caows.’”
“Well,” Merton continued, “I’m going to start right after lunch, and
I’ll be glad of all the company I can get. The rest of you may decide
what you please.”
“When do you expect to get there?” Bill asked.
“Tomorrow noon,” Merton answered confidently.
“Yes, you will,” Bill answered contemptuously. “It’s fifty good country
miles.”
“Yes,” Merton said, “fifty-five of them. I’m good for it.”
No one was willing to back down, so no one answered him, though each one
had his own private opinion about it.
True to his word Merton wriggled into his pack sack immediately after
lunch and called for volunteers. Scott was the only one ready to join
him at once, and those two swung off up the road, leaving the others
still hovering around undecided.
“Good-bye, fellows,” Merton called back to them. “We’ll see you at White
Earth if you ever get there.”
“Don’t you be sarcastic,” Greenleaf called after them, “we’ll be there
to welcome you.”
The two boys trudged on steadily; not very fast—for the road was too
long ahead of them—but at a pace which would land them many miles on
their road by nightfall.
“If we only knew the road,” Scott said, “it would not be so bad; but
there is no telling how far we shall have to walk to get there.”
“No, and they say there are no settlers in that country except Indians.
They _could_ tell us the way, but most likely they won’t.”
“Someone was telling me,” Scott said, “that there is a lumber camp over
there somewhere with a logging road running where we want to go. I hope
we can strike it.”
“That would help some.”
They had no trouble for the first eight miles. The road lay straight,
though exceedingly rough, before them; but at that point they came to
the first obstacle, a fork in the road.
“The more traveled one ought to be it,” Merton suggested, and they took
it without more ado—for there was no use in wasting time in choosing
when they had no possible way of determining the right course. For half
a mile they had followed the rough winding road when they came to a
tumbledown cabin and there the road stopped.
“Might have known that if we’d stopped to think about it,” Merton
growled, as they immediately retraced their steps. “This fellow makes
all the travel there is on that road, going to the store.”
They soon reached the main road again—if such it could be called. Scott
blazed a tree with his tomahawk and wrote the directions on it. “Might
as well save them the trouble,” he explained, “even if it does help them
to catch up with us.”
For nine miles more they jogged on steadily and were beginning to think
that things were not as bad as they had been painted when they came to
another fork where the road split up into two indistinct tracts, neither
one of them sufficiently plain to justify anyone in following it with
the hope of ever reaching a town however remote. They had not seen a
soul since they left camp and there certainly seemed very little chance
of their meeting anyone on either of those roads.
“Neither one of them looks good to me,” Merton grunted. “Let’s eat some
lunch and then toss up for it.”
It seemed the only thing to do, and in a few minutes they were eating
hungrily. They had brought a canteen with them, and it was well that
they had—for they had not passed anything, even at the tumbledown cabin
which looked like good drinking water.
“There is one thing sure,” Scott said; “we have been traveling pretty
steadily westward and must be north of where we want to go. Then we want
to take the south road.”
“Yes,” Merton assented, “and if we get out there five miles or so before
we find that we are wrong we’ll beat it across country to the northwest
till we strike the right road instead of coming back here. We can’t lose
much that way.”
“No,” Scott agreed, “nothing but ourselves.”
“Well,” Merton said, looking apprehensively down the road, “let’s be
going. We don’t want those other fellows to catch up with us here and
think we’re stumped on this fork in the road.”
They scrambled to their feet and set out briskly, for, as Scott
explained, if it was the wrong road they wanted to find it out before
dark, as it would not be very easy to travel across country through the
woods in the night. The road did not get any better or any worse, nor
give any other signs of its ultimate destination. They had been
traveling in this way for two hours when they heard a dog barking ahead
of them, and soon they spied a small shack.
“Now for some Indian talk,” Merton exclaimed disgustedly.
He was not disappointed. In the doorway of the rickety old shack sat an
old man, smoking an old blackened clay pipe, his eyes fixed on them in
watery indifference. He must have been very old, Scott thought he looked
at least a thousand. His face was a mass of deep-cut wrinkles forming
the precipitous cliffs and mountain valleys of a bold relief map. His
palsied head shook violently and his scanty white locks fluttered
nervously against the high cheek bones. No one but an Indian could have
looked so old.
Merton addressed himself to the old man but had little hope of getting
an answer. “Can you tell us whether this is the road to White Earth?”
The old man’s expression changed not a particle, but he gurgled almost
inaudibly, an incoherent stream of Chippewa. It did not enlighten them
much, but it produced some effect, for a girl suddenly appeared in the
doorway behind him and looked them over curiously. As Scott looked at
her his poetic visions of beautiful Indian maidens faded away.
“_That’s_ not Minnehaha,” he mumbled; “that’s a cinch.”
She was thin to emaciation, and unspeakably dirty. One eye was
apparently closed with a loathsome disease, giving her face a sinister,
leering expression. She did not look like a promising subject, but
Merton tried her.
“_Bojou, bojou_,” he used the greeting of the old French _coureurs des
bois_. “We are trying to get to the Peace Celebration at White Earth.
Can you tell us whether this is the road?”
The old man mumbled some more Chippewa. The girl stared at them
sullenly. Scott took out half a dollar and looked at it thoughtfully.
The girl’s good eye caught the gleam of the silver instantly. “Frazee
camp, ten mile. Straight trail,” she exclaimed, pointing to a faint
track leading on westward from the house, and thrusting her hand eagerly
over the old man’s shoulder for the money. Scott dropped it into her
hand quickly, lest she should touch him, and with another exchange of
“_Bojou_” they took to the trail again. Anybody but an Indian living in
that unfrequented place could not have resisted the temptation to watch
them on their way, but the girl turned indifferently into the cabin and
the old man did not so much as turn his eyes to look after them.
“It’s about ten to one that she’s stringing us,” Merton said cheerfully,
“but this is about as near right as we can go now and it will be great
luck if we do strike that camp.”
“It’s only half past eight,” Scott said, “and we ought to make the camp
tonight if it is there. There’s a good moon. Wasn’t that girl a fright?”
“That’s the way most of them look around here. They nearly all have
trachoma. I have seen some pretty ones, but mighty few. Let’s hit it up
a little. We don’t want to get to that camp too late, or we can’t get
in.”
The pace became too hot to permit of further conversation, and Scott
amused himself revising his Indian ideas and speculating on what the
Celebration would be like. The spectacle at the cabin had changed his
expectations. The long June twilight made the road plain before them
till ten o’clock and by that time the moon was high in the heavens. By
eleven o’clock they were beginning to think that the sight of that half
dollar had led the “beautiful Indian maiden” to invent a lumber camp for
the occasion, when they heard the snort of a locomotive at no great
distance ahead of them.
“There, by George!” Scott exclaimed. “She was honest, if she was
homelier than sin.”
“The next question,” Merton said, “is that locomotive going or coming?”
The sound had ceased, and they hurried forward to investigate. They
found that it was only the “swipe” cleaning out the engine. They could
see his figure flitting here and there around the engine in the dim
light of a lantern. He heard them coming and stopped to see who it
was—the camp had been asleep for two hours. When he saw their packs he
took them for lumberjacks looking for a job.
“Nothing doing here,” he growled, without further greeting. “The camp’s
full up, and the boss has a waiting list.”
“He’s lucky,” Merton commented. “We’re not looking for jobs. We’re
trying to get to White Earth. Will there be any train out in that
direction in the morning?”
“Five o’clock,” the man growled, “if I can get this old teakettle
cleaned out by that time. Where did you come from?” In the daytime he
would probably have ignored their existence, but the loneliness of the
night and his curiosity made him sociable.
“Itasca Park,” Merton answered. “How near will the train take us to
White Earth?”
“Some hike,” he said, ignoring the question. “Going to the Peace
Celebration, I suppose?”
“Yes, we just want to see the doings. How near did you say the train
would take us?”
He seemed loath to answer them. “’Bout eight miles,” he finally
answered. “Reckon you fellows must be tired if you have hiked from
Itasca. You can sleep there in that shack if you want to. I’ll call you
in the morning.”
It seemed to the boys that they had hardly closed their eyes when they
were awakened by the engine and found it broad daylight. The man had
forgotten to call them, and they had just time to crawl onto the caboose
when the train pulled out, lurching along over the uneven track. The
little Shaw engine with its upright cylinders and geared connections
made a noise which would indicate a tremendous speed, but the train
barely crept along and they were an hour and a half going the fifteen
miles to the junction where they had to walk once more. As they had
eaten their breakfast in the caboose they started out at once on the
road the brakeman showed them, and by nine o’clock they came within
sight of the Peace Celebration.
A small rolling prairie lay before them, completely surrounded by forest
and surrounding a very pretty little lake. The festivities had not yet
started, but it was a lively scene, nevertheless. The tepees and wigwams
of the Indians were scattered over the whole plain in most picturesque
fashion. Indian braves in full regalia strolled leisurely about or sat
smoking contentedly in front of their tepees, while here and there the
booths of the squaws displaying all manner of Indian baskets, beaded
belts and moccasins presented bold patches of color. Many visitors
thronged the camps, bargaining for souvenirs and asking foolish
questions of the Indian chiefs who never answered them. It was a
peaceful scene, and would have served as a model in point of order for
many a white man’s fair. The Indian policemen did their work well,
patrolling the camp continuously on their moth-eaten little ponies.
“Well, Scotty,” Merton cried. “Here we are, at nine o’clock in the
morning. We sure were lucky. Those other fellows can’t get here before
noon, anyway, and they’ll be all in. That train was the clear stuff.”
“Yes,” Scott said, “fifteen miles is a pretty good lift, even on a train
like that. Let’s pick out a place for a camp and fix things up.”
They selected a site on a little knoll on the shore of the lake, where
they soon had their dog-tent up and were sitting as comfortably in front
of it as any chief in the tribes. They commanded a pretty good view of
the whole field and could tell from the movement of the crowd what was
going on.
As they learned from one of the policemen that the program would not
open till the afternoon with pony races, foot races, canoe races and a
big parade, they decided to content themselves with a general view that
morning and wait for the other fellows.
At eleven-thirty they saw them coming straggling in along a road from
the north and hurried to meet them.
“Where have you been all the forenoon?” Scott called tauntingly.
“I suppose you have been here all of five minutes,” Morris sneered, “or
are you on your way home?”
“No,” Merton said, “we’re not quite ready to go home, but we _have_ been
here two hours. We came over from the lumber camp on the logging train.
What time did you leave the camp?”
“We did not see any camp,” Morris answered sullenly. “We have not seen a
soul since we left home.”
They had taken the north fork of the road, which carried them north of
the camp, but had the virtue of being five miles shorter. They had put
up for the night in a deserted log cabin on the edge of a swamp, where
they had been eaten up by the mosquitoes, and had been walking since
five o’clock that morning. It was a rather peevish crowd, and the luck
of the others in getting a lift on the logging train did not improve
their temper. While they talked they walked over to the camp, put up the
rest of the tents and cooked dinner. An hour’s rest set them all up, and
they were ready for anything the afternoon might bring forth.
The program opened with the grand parade. It was quite an imposing
sight. There were some three hundred Indians of the two tribes. They
formed at opposite ends of the grounds, rode solemnly forward till the
columns met, and joined forces in one big parade. The two oldest chiefs
rode side by side at the head of the procession, decked in all the
extravagance of paint and feathers that the savage mind could invent. To
them it was a solemn occasion—for they could remember the times when
they had opposed each other in bitter strife—and they sat their ponies
in stately dignity. The lesser chiefs followed, and the young bucks
brought up the rear. They slowly circled the entire grounds amidst the
cheers of the onlookers.
The procession finally came to a halt on a little knoll which commanded
a view of the lake on one side and the level race track on the other.
Here the chiefs seated themselves solemnly in a large circle supported
by a larger circle of braves. One of these brought the ancient peace
pipe, lighted it at the fire in the middle of the circle and handed it
to the oldest chief. The old man puffed solemnly a few times, and handed
it on to his neighbor. At last the circuit was completed and the sacred
rite was ended. The far-away look in the eyes of the older chiefs showed
that their thoughts were wandering back to the bloody scenes of their
early days and that they were counting again the scalps they had taken
in those relentless fights.
These rites ended, the young men hurried away to prepare themselves for
the contests to come. As an athletic exhibition it was really pathetic.
The competitors were in miserable physical condition; the half-starved
ponies ran in a listless way, and the foot racers would have stood very
little show in a high school track meet. The canoe races were slow, for
the men who took part in them were so accustomed to letting their squaws
do the paddling that they made a poor showing.
“It takes all the glamour of romance to throw any interest into that,”
Scott remarked. “We enjoy it because they are real Indians, but I’ll bet
they would not stand a ghost of a show in our Fourth of July
Celebration.”
“We ought to have brought along one of the oxen and entered him in the
horse race,” Steve whispered.
They had wandered down one of the streets to look over the baskets and
bead work when an unearthly hubbub broke out on the knoll they had just
left.
“Something doing now, fellows,” Merton yelled, as he led the crowd back
in the direction of the sound at full speed.
“Sounds like a cross between a dog fight and a heron rookery,” Bill
muttered, as he slowly overhauled Merton in the race. Their dash had
caused a veritable stampede of all the visitors in the street, and long
before they reached the scene of the disturbance they were leading a
fair-sized mob.
At the edge of the knoll they stopped short and gazed on the scene in
amazement. Everything was peaceful enough, but prancing around the fire
with a weird, halting step were the braves of the tribe, daubed with war
paint and chanting their wild war song. It was a most monotonous
performance which went on unceasingly without the slightest change, but
there was a certain fascination about it which kept everyone silent for
some time. Unconsciously the onlookers rehearsed in their minds the
scenes of Butler’s raid and imagined these savages lashing themselves in
this way into blood-thirsty fury. Or possibly some of those old chiefs
looking on so grimly were in the force which destroyed Custer’s little
troop. The same people watched and watched and then came back to see it
again.
All evening as the boys wandered from booth to booth bargaining with the
squaws for beaded moccasins and belts, or danced in the pavilion they
could hear that monotonous “Ki yi, ki yi, ki yi, ki yi,” pervading
everything. And late in the evening when they went to bed in their
little camp that dull drone which had at one time caused so many
sleepless nights put them to sleep.
In the morning they continued their shopping. It was a good-natured
crowd composed of people from all over the country with some from the
cities, and two troops of boy scouts. The boys found the squaws shrewd
bargainers, with a thorough knowledge of the value of money and a pretty
good idea of the white man’s craze for Indian trinkets. Nor were they
all as ugly as the one Scott and Merton had seen at the little cabin.
Some of them were strikingly handsome and their richly beaded, bright
colored garments added much to their barbaric beauty. It was a good deal
of fun arguing with them.
Immediately after lunch the boys packed their duffel and started for
home, for Merton had learned that the logging train went east about
three o’clock. Their trip home was uneventful. They spent the night at
the lumber camp and came in sight of the school about three o’clock in
the afternoon.
“Well, boys,” Bill called in a fatherly tone from a comfortable seat on
the front porch, “how did you enjoy the circus?”
Fifteen miles back up the road the opinion might have been different,
but now that they were home they all declared it great, and as time went
on it became “greater.”