There were three people in the group on the station platform at
Humboldt. The two who were standing were a white man and a white woman.
The man was tall, with breadth in his shoulders, five-and-thirty, and
rather good looking. His dress evidenced prosperity, and his manner
betokened long residence in a city--one of the cities east of the
Mississippi.
The woman also was tall; and graceful, and very pretty, and not over
twenty-five years of age. She was, without doubt, a bride, and--equally
without doubt--a fit mate for the man. She carried her chin high (a
trick common to those wearing eye-glasses) and moved with an air of
being quite sure of her social position. She was inconspicuously
dressed, but her gown, when she walked, rustled in the way that speaks
of silken linings. She looked like a woman whose boots were always made
to order, and who, each night, had an hour spent upon brushing her hair.
The third person in the group was an Indian. A Paiute fifty years old,
but who looked twenty years older. Old George. His little withered
brown face was puckered into a whimsical smile as with head aslant
he looked up from where he sat on the bench that was built round a
tree-box. This was his frequent seat when the trains came in, and here
he came daily to answer the inquisitive questions of people who deem
themselves well bred.
He was old, and much dirtier than even the others of his race. But he
afforded entertainment for the travelers whose pleasure it was to put
questions.
“Yep, me old. ‘Forty?’ I guess so. ‘One hundred?’ Maybe so; I no know.”
He chuckled. It was the same thing over and over again that they--on
the trains--asked him every day. Not a whit cared he what they asked,
nor was it worth while telling the truth. When they asked he answered;
saying the things they wanted to hear. And sometimes they gave him
nickels. That was all there was about it.
“Where did he live?” “What did he eat?” “Did he work?” his inquisitors
queried. “Was he married?” and “Had he any children?” “Had he ever
killed any white men?” Then they would note his maimed, misshapen
limbs. “How long ago had his leg been broken?” “In what way had he
crippled his hands?” But to all there were the same replies:
“I no know. Maybe so. I guess so.”
What did it matter? They were satisfied. And meddlers they were.
Yet----generally he got the waited-for nickel.
So today he answered even as they questioned. Then the woman
(pretty, and with an unmistakable air of good breeding) nodded
and said: “Good-by!” and the man (well-mannered, well-groomed and
self-complacent) gave him a silver quarter as he went back to the
“Pullman.”
“Henry, dear,” she asked, after they had settled themselves comfortably
again in their compartment of the sleeping-car, “how do such creatures
exist? Do they work, or only sit idly in the sun waiting for someone
to give them one or two nickels?”
“Oh, he is a confirmed beggar, one can see! They never work--these
Paiutes. Mere animals are they, eating, drinking and sleeping as
animals,” her husband replied. “So degenerate have they become since
the days when they were a wild tribe and warriors that they go through
life now in docile stupidity, without anything rousing them to what we
would call a live interest in their surroundings. I doubt very much if,
in the life of any one of them, there ever occurs any stirring event.
Perhaps it is just as well, for at least it gives them a peaceful old
age, and they can have no harassing recollections.”
“And no happy ones, either,” the woman said. “Think what it must be
to live out one’s allotted time of physical existence without ever
experiencing the faintest romance--without even a gleam of what love
means! I presume that the sense of attachment is unknown to them; such
affection as----”
“As ours?” he interrupted laughingly. “Well, rather unknown I should
say.”
The man looked with fond eyes into the eyes of the woman; then, as the
train pulled out of the station, they saw the old Indian limping away
toward his camp.
* * * * *
Are the individual histories of Indians--even Paiutes--even the
“degenerate tribes”--uneventful or wholly devoid of human interest? Let
us see.
Old George can tell you a different story, it may be. From his point of
view there is perhaps love; perhaps even romance. Much depends upon the
standpoint one takes. The hills that look high from the valley, seem
low looking down from the mountain.
When I first knew George (he was “Young George” then), he was married
and had children. Four; two boys and two girls. More than other
Indians, he aped the Whites in their ways, and was reckoned (for a
Paiute) a decent fellow. His camp was the best, his food the most
plentiful, and his children the best kept and cleanest. The mother
sewed well, and neither she nor the children ever went ragged. Among
Indians they were as the hard-working, temperate laborer’s family is
among the white men who work--work with their hands for a living.
George had money laid by--joint earnings of his own and of Susan, his
wife. He worked at the settlers’ wood-piles in winter, chopping wood;
and in summer he worked in the hay fields. She washed and ironed for
the white families. Wage was high in those days, and George and Susan
prospered. That was a contented little camp built there in the tall
sagebrush, and they were happy as needs be.