the strange garments he affects because he knows they are most
becoming. But there is a reason for each of the different
parts of his apparel, in spite of rather than on account of their
picturesqueness. The sombrero shades his face from the rain and sun,
the rattlesnake-skin around it keeps it on his head, the broad kerchief
that he wears knotted around his throat protects his neck from the
heat, and the leather leggings which cover the front of his legs
protect them from the cactus in Texas, and in the North, where the
fur and hair are left on the leather, from the sleet and rain as he
rides against them. The gauntlets certainly seem too military for such
rough service, but any one who has had a sheet rope run through his
hands, can imagine how a lasso cuts when a wild horse is pulling on
the other end of it. His cartridge-belt and his revolver are on some
ranches superfluous, but cattle-men say they have found that on those
days when they took this toy away from their boys, they sulked and
fretted and went about their work half-heartedly, so that they believe
it pays better to humor them, and to allow them to relieve the monotony
of the day’s vigil by popping at jack-rabbits and learning to twirl
their revolver around their first finger. Of the many compliments I
have heard paid by officers and privates and ranch-owners and cowboys
to Mr. Frederic Remington, the one which was sure to follow the others
was that he never made the mistake of putting the revolver on the left
side. But as I went North, his anonymous admirers would make this same
comment, but with regret that he should be guilty of such an error. I
could not understand this at first until I found that the two sides of
the shield lay in the Northern cowboy’s custom of wearing his pistol on
the left, and of the Texan’s of carrying it on the right. The Northern
man argues on this important matter that the sword has always been worn
on the left, that it is easier to reach across and sweep the pistol
to either the left or right, and that with this motion it is at once
in position. The Texan says this is absurd, and quotes the fact that
the pistol-pocket has always been on the right, and that the lasso
and reins are in the way of the left hand. It is too grave a question
of etiquette for any one who has not at least six notches on his
pistol-butt to decide.
Although Mr. Kleberg’s cowboys have been shorn of their pistols, their
prowess as ropers still remains with them. They gave us an exhibition
of this feature of their calling which was as remarkable a performance
in its way as I have ever seen. The audience seated itself on the top
of a seven-rail fence, and thrilled with excitement. At least a part of
it did. I fancy Mr. Kleberg was slightly bored, but he was too polite
to show it. Sixty wild horses were sent into a pen eighty yards across,
and surrounded by the seven-rail fence. Into this the cowboys came,
mounted on their ponies, and at Mr. Kleberg’s word lassoed whichever
horse he designated. They threw their ropes as a man tosses a quoit,
drawing it back at the instant it closed over the horse’s head, and
not, as the beginner does, allowing the noose to settle loosely, and
to tighten through the horse’s effort to move forward. This roping was
not so impressive as what followed, as the ropes were short, owing to
the thick undergrowth, which prevents long throws, such as are made
in the North, and as the pony was trained to suit its gait to that of
the animal it was pursuing, and to turn and dodge with it, and to stop
with both fore-feet planted firmly when the rope had settled around the
other horse’s neck.
[Illustration: REACTION EQUALS ACTION]
But when they had shown us how very simple a matter this was, they
were told to dismount and to rope the horses by whichever foot
Mr. Kleberg choose to select. This was a real combat, and was as
intensely interesting a contest between a thoroughly wild and terrified
animal and a perfectly cool man as one can see, except, perhaps, at
a bull-fight. There is something in a contest of this sort that has
appealed to something in all human beings who have blood in their veins
from the days when one gladiator followed another with a casting-net
and a trident around the arena down to the present, when “Peter” Poe
drops on one knee and tries to throw Hefflefinger over his shoulder.
In this the odds were in favor of the horse, as a cowboy on the ground
is as much out of his element as a sailor on a horse, and looks as
strangely. The boys moved and ran and backed away as quickly as their
heavy leggings would permit; but the horses moved just twice as
quickly, turning and jumping and rearing, and then racing away out
of reach again at a gallop. But whenever they came within range of
the ropes, they fell. The roping around the neck had seemed simple.
The rope then was cast in a loop with a noose at one end as easily as
one throws a trout line. But now the rope had to be hurled as quickly
and as surely as a man sends a ball to first base when the batsman is
running, except that the object at which the cowboy aims is moving at
a gallop, and one of a galloping horse’s four feet is a most uncertain
bull’s-eye.
It is almost impossible to describe the swiftness with which the rope
moved. It seemed to skim across the ground as a skipping-rope does when
a child holds one end of it and shakes the rope up and down to make it
look like a snake coiling and undulating over the pavement.
One instant the rope would hang coiled from the thrower’s right hand
as he ran forward to meet the horse, moving it slowly, with a twist
of his wrist, to keep it from snarling, and the next it would spin out
along the ground, with the noose rolling like a hoop in the front, and
would close with a snap over the horse’s hoof, and the cowboy would
throw himself back to take the shock, and the horse would come down on
its side as though the ground had slipped from under it.
The roping around the neck was the easy tossing of a quoit; the roping
around the leg was the angry snapping of a whip.
There are thousands of other ranches in the United States besides
those in Texas, and other cowboys, but the general characteristics are
the same in all, and it is only general characteristics that one can
attempt to give.
[Illustration]
VI
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION
VI
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION
THE American Indian may be considered either seriously or lightly,
according to one’s inclination and opportunities. He may be taken
seriously, like the Irish question, by politicians and philanthropists;
or lightly, as a picturesque and historic relic of the past, as one
regards the beef-eaters, the Tower, or the fishwives at Scheveningen.
There are a great many Indians and a great many reservations, and some
are partly civilized and others are not, and the different tribes
differ in speech and manner of life as widely as in the South the
clay-eater of Alabama differs from a gentleman of one of the first
families of Virginia. Any one who wishes to speak with authority on the
American Indian must learn much more concerning him than the names of
the tribes and the agencies.
The Indian will only be considered here lightly and as a picturesque
figure of the West.
[Illustration: THE CHEYENNE TYPE]
Many years ago the people of the East took their idea of the Indian
from Cooper’s novels and “Hiawatha,” and pictured him shooting arrows
into herds of buffalo, and sitting in his wigwam with many scalp-locks
drying on his shield in the sun outside. But they know better than that
now. Travellers from the West have told them that this picture belongs
to the past, and they have been taught to look upon the Indian as a
“problem,” and to consider him as either a national nuisance or as a
much-cheated and ill-used brother. They think of him, if they think of
him at all, as one who has fallen from his high estate, and who is a
dirty individual hanging around agencies in a high hat and a red shirt
with a whiskey-bottle under his arm, waiting a chance to beg or steal.
The Indian I saw was not at all like this, but was still picturesque,
not only in what he wore, but in what he did and said, and was full of
a dignity that came up at unexpected moments, and was as suspicious or
trustful as a child.
It is impossible when one sees a blanket Indian walking haughtily about
in his buckskin, with his face painted in many colors and with feathers
in his hair, not to think that he has dressed for the occasion, or goes
thus equipped because his forefathers did so, and not because he finds
it comfortable. When you have seen a particular national costume only
in pictures and photographs, it is always something of a surprise to
find people wearing it with every-day matter-of-course ease, as though
they really preferred kilts or sabots or moccasins to the gear to which
we are accustomed at home. And the Indians in their fantastic mixture
of colors and beads and red flannel and feathers seemed so theatrical
at first that I could not understand why the army officers did not look
back over their shoulders when one of these young braves rode by. The
first Indians I saw were at Fort Reno, where there is an agency for the
Cheyennes and Arapahoes. This reservation is in the Oklahoma Territory,
but the Government has bought it from the Indians for a half-dollar an
acre, and it is to be opened to white settlers. The country is very
beautiful, and the tall grass of the prairie, which hides a pony, and
shows only the red blanketed figure on his back, and over which in the
clear places the little prairie-dogs scamper, and where the red buttes
stand out against the sky, and show an edge as sharp and curving as
the prow of a man-of-war, gives one a view of a West one seems to have
visited and known intimately through the illustrated papers.
I had gone to Fort Reno to see the beef issue which takes place there
every two weeks, when the steers and the other things which make
up the Indian’s rations are distributed by the agent. I missed the
issue by four hours, and had to push on to Anadarko, where another
beef issue was to come off three days later, which was trying, as I
had met few men more interesting and delightful than the officers at
the post-trader’s mess. But I was fortunate, in the short time in
which I was at Fort Reno, in stumbling upon an Indian council. Two
lieutenants and a surgeon and I had ridden over to the Indian agency,
and although they allow no beer on an Indian reservation, the surgeon
had hopes. It had been a long ride--partly through water, partly over
a dusty trail--and it was hot. But if the agent had a private store
for visitors, he was not in a position to offer it, for his room was
crowded with chiefs of renown and high degree. They sat in a circle
around his desk on the floor, or stood against the wall smoking
solemnly. When they approved of what the speaker said, they grunted;
and though that is the only word for it, they somehow made that form of
“hear, hear,” impressive. Those chiefs who spoke talked in a spitting,
guttural fashion, far down the throat, and without gestures; and the
son of one of them, a boy from Carlisle, in a gray ready-made suit
and sombrero, translated a five-minutes’ speech, which had all the
dignity of Salvini’s address to the Senators, by: “And Red Wolf he
says he thinks it isn’t right.” Cloud-Shield rose and said the chiefs
were glad to see that the officers from the fort were in the room, as
that meant that the Indian would have fair treatment, and that the
officers were always the Indians’ best friends, and were respected in
times of peace as friends, and in times of war as enemies. After
which, the officers, considering guiltily the real object of their
visit, and feeling properly abashed, took off their hats and tried to
look as though they deserved it, which, as a rule, they do. It may be
of interest, in view of an Indian outbreak, to know that this council
of the chiefs was to protest against the cutting down of the rations
of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. Last year it cost the Government
one hundred and thirteen thousand dollars to feed them, and this year
Commissioner Martin, with a fine spirit of economy, proposes to reduce
this by just one-half. This means hunger and illness, and in some cases
death.
[Illustration: BIG BULL]
“He says,” translated the boy interpreter, gazing at the ceiling, “that
they would like to speak to the people at Washington about this thing,
for it is not good.”
The agent traced figures over his desk with his pen.
“Well, I can’t do anything,” he said, at last. “All I can do is to let
the people at Washington know what they say. But to send a commission
all the way to Washington will take a great deal of money, and the cost
of it will have to come out of their allowance. Tell them that. Tell
them I’ll write on about it. That’s all I can do.”
That night the chiefs came solemnly across parade, and said “How!”
grimly to the orderly in front of the colonel’s headquarters.
“You see,” said the officers, “they have come to complain, but the
colonel cannot help them. If Martin wants a war, he is going just the
best way in the world to get it, and then we shall have to go out and
shoot them, poor devils!”
I was very sorry to leave Fort Reno, not only on account of the
officers there, but because the ride to Anadarko must be made in stages
owned by a Mr. Williamson. This is not intended as an advertisement
for Mr. Williamson’s stages. He does not need it, for he is, so his
drivers tell me, very rich indeed, and so economical that he makes them
buy their own whips. Every one who has travelled through the Indian
Territory over Mr. Williamson’s routes wishes that sad things may
happen to him; but no one, I believe, would be so wicked as to hope he
may ever have to ride in one of his own stages. The stage-coach of the
Indian Territory lacks the romance of those that Dick Turpin stopped,
or of the Deadwood coach, or of those that Yuba Bill drives for Bret
Harte with four horses, with gamblers on top and road-agents at the
horses’ heads. They are only low four-wheeled wagons with canvas sides
and top, and each revolution of the wheels seems to loosen every stick
and nail, and throws you sometimes on top of the driver, and sometimes
the driver on top of you. They hold together, though, and float bravely
through creeks, and spin down the side of a cañon on one wheel, and
toil up the other side on two, and at such an angle that you see the
sun bisected by the wagon-tongue. At night the stage seems to plunge a
little more than in the day, and you spend it in trying to sleep with
your legs under the back seat and your head on the one in front, while
the driver, who wants to sleep and cannot, shouts profanely to his
mules and very near to your ear on the other side of the canvas.
[Illustration: ONE OF WILLIAMSON’S STAGES]
Anadarko is a town of six stores, three or four frame houses, the
Indian agent’s store and office, and the City Hotel. Seven houses in
the West make a city. I said I thought this was the worst hotel in the
Indian Territory, but the officers at Fort Sill, who have travelled
more than I, think it is the worst in the United States. It is possible
that they are right. There are bluffs and bunches of timber around
Anadarko, but the prairie stretches towards the west, and on it is the
pen from which the cattle are issued. The tepees and camp-fires sprang
up overnight, and when we came out the next morning the prairie was
crowded with them, and more Indians were driving in every minute, with
the family in the wagon and the dogs under it, as the country people
in the East flock into town for the circus. The men galloped off to
the cattle-pen, and the women gathered in a long line in front of the
agent’s store to wait their turn for the rations. It was a curious
line, with very young girls in it, very proud of the little babies in
beaded knapsacks on their backs--dirty, bright-eyed babies that looked
like mummies suddenly come to life again at the period of their first
childhood--and wrinkled, bent old squaws, even more like mummies, with
coarse white hair, and hands worn almost out of shape with work. Each
of these had a tag, such as those that the express companies use, on
which was printed the number in each family, and the amount of grain,
flour, baking-powder, and soap to which the family was entitled. They
passed in at one door and in front of a long counter, and out at
another. They crowded and pushed a great deal, almost as much as their
fairer sisters do in front of the box-office at a Patti matinée, and
the babies blinked stoically at the sun, and seemed to wish they could
get their arms out of the wrappings and rub away the tears. A man in
a sombrero would look at the tag and call out, “One of flour, two of
sugar, one soap, and one baking-powder,” and his Indian assistants
delved into the barrels behind the line of the counter, and emptied the
rations into the squaw’s open apron. She sorted them when she reached
the outside. By ten o’clock the distribution was over, and the women
followed the men to the cattle-pen on the prairie. There were not
over three hundred Indians there, although they represented several
thousand others, who remained in the different camps scattered over the
reservation, wherever water and timber, and bluffs to shield them best
from the wind, were to be found in common. Each steer is calculated to
supply twenty-five Indians with beef for two weeks, or from one and
a half to two pounds of beef a day; this is on the supposition that
the steers average from one thousand to one thousand and two hundred
pounds. The steers that I saw issued weighed about five hundred pounds,
and when they tried to run, stumbled with the weakness of starvation.
They were nothing but hide and ribs and two horns. They were driven
four at a time through a long chute, and halted at the gate at the end
of it until their owner’s names were marked off the list. The Indians
were gathered in front of the gate in long rows, or in groups of ten
or twelve, sitting easily in their saddles, and riding off leisurely
in bunches of four as their names were called out, and as their cattle
were started off with a parting kick into the open prairie.
The Apaches, Comanches, Delawares, and Towacomies drove their share
off towards their camps; the Caddoes and the Kiowas, who live near
the agency, and who were served last, killed theirs, if they chose
to do so, as soon as they left the pen. A man in charge of the
issue held a long paper in his hand, and called out, “Eck-hoos-cho,
Pe-an-voon-it, Hoos-cho, and Cho-noo-chy,” which meant that Red-Bird,
Large-Looking-Glass, The Bird, and Deer-Head were to have the next
four steers. His assistant, an Indian policeman, with “God helps them
who help themselves” engraved on his brass buttons, with the figure of
an Indian toiling at a plough in the centre, repeated these names
aloud, and designated which steer was to go to which Indian.
[Illustration: THE BEEF ISSUE AT ANADARKO]
A beef issue is not a pretty thing to watch. Why the Government does
not serve its meat with the throats cut, as any reputable butcher
would do, it is not possible to determine. It seems to prefer, on
the contrary, that the Indian should exhibit his disregard for the
suffering of animals and his bad marksmanship at the same time. When
the representatives of the more distant tribes had ridden off, chasing
their beef before them, the Caddoes and Kiowas gathered close around
the gate of the pen, with the boys in front. They were handsome,
mischievous boys, with leather leggings, colored green and blue and
with silver buttons down the side, and beaded buckskin shirts. They
sat two on each pony, and each held his bow and arrows, and as the
steers came stumbling blindly out into the open, they let the arrows
drive from a distance of ten feet into the animal’s flank and neck,
where they stuck quivering. Then the Indian boys would yell, and their
fathers, who had hunted buffaloes with arrows, smiled approvingly. The
arrows were not big enough to kill, they merely hurt, and the steer
would rush off into a clumsy gallop for fifty yards, when its owner
would raise his Winchester, and make the dust spurt up around it until
one bullet would reach a leg, and the steer would stop for an instant,
with a desperate toss of its head, and stagger forward again on three.
The dogs to the number of twenty or more were around it by this time in
a snarling, leaping pack, and the owner would try again, and wound it
perhaps in the flank, and it would lurch over heavily like a drunken
man, shaking its head from side to side and tossing its horns at the
dogs, who bit at the place where the blood ran, and snapped at its
legs. Sometimes it would lie there for an hour, until it bled to death,
or, again, it would scramble to its feet, and the dogs would start off
in a panic of fear after a more helpless victim.
The field grew thick with these miniature butcheries, the Winchesters
cracking, and the spurts of smoke rising and drifting away, the dogs
yelping, and the Indians wheeling in quick circles around the steer,
shooting as they rode, and hitting the mark once in every half-dozen
shots. It was the most unsportsmanlike and wantonly cruel exhibition I
have ever seen. A bull in a ring has a fighting chance and takes it,
but these animals, who were too weak to stand, and too frightened to
run, staggered about until the Indians had finished torturing them, and
then, with eyes rolling and blood spurting from their mouths, would
pitch forward and die. And they had to be quick about it, before the
squaws began cutting off the hide while the flanks were still heaving.
This is the view of a beef issue which the friend of the Indian does
not like to take. He prefers calling your attention to the condition
of the cattle served the Indian, and in showing how outrageously he is
treated in this respect. The Government either purchases steers for the
Indians a few weeks before an issue, or three or four months previous
to it, feeding them meanwhile on the Government reservation. The latter
practice is much more satisfactory to the contractor, as it saves him
the cost and care of these cattle during the winter, and the inevitable
loss which must ensue in that time through illness and starvation.
Those I saw had been purchased in October, and had been weighed and
branded at that time with the Government brand. They were then allowed
to roam over the Government reservation until the spring, when they
had fallen off in weight from one-half to one-third. They were then
issued at their original weight. That is, a steer which in October was
found to weigh eleven hundred pounds, and which would supply twenty or
more people with meat, was supposed to have kept this weight throughout
the entire winter, and was issued at eleven hundred although it had
not three hundred pounds of flesh on its bones. The agent is not to
blame for this. This is the fault of the Government, and it is quite
fair to suppose that some one besides the contractor benefits by the
arrangement. When the beef is issued two weeks after the contract has
been made, it can and frequently is rejected by the army officer in
charge of the issue if he thinks it is unfit. But the officers present
at the issue that I saw were as helpless as they were indignant, for
the beef had weighed the weight credited to it once when it was paid
for, and the contractor had saved the expense of keeping it, and the
Indian received just one-fourth of the meat due him, and for which he
had paid in land.
Fort Sill, which is a day’s journey in a stage from Anadarko, is an
eight-company post situated on the table-land of a hill, with other
hills around it, and is, though somewhat inaccessible, as interesting
and beautiful a spot to visit as many others which we cross the ocean
to see. I will be able to tell why this is so when I write something
later about the army posts. There are any number of Indians here, and
they add to the post a delightfully picturesque and foreign element.
L Troop of the Seventh cavalry, which is an Indian troop, is the
nucleus around which the other Indians gather. The troop is encamped
at the foot of the hill on which the post stands. It shows the Indian
civilized by uniform, and his Indian brother uncivilized in his
blanket and war-paint; and although I should not like to hurt the
feelings of the patient, enthusiastic officers who have enlisted the
Indians for these different troops for which the Government calls, I
think the blanket Indian is a much more warlike-looking and interesting
individual. But you mustn’t say so, as George the Third advised. The
soldier Indians live in regulation tents staked out in rows, and with
the ground around so cleanly kept that one could play tennis on it,
and immediately back of these are the conical tepees of their wives,
brothers, and grandmothers; and what Lieutenant Scott is going to do
with all these pretty young squaws and beautiful children and withered
old witches, and their two or three hundred wolf-dogs, when he marches
forth to war with his Indian troop, is one of the questions his brother
officers find much entertainment in asking.
[Illustration: INDIAN BOY AND PINTO PONY]