|ONE of the attractions of life at the Cheyenne Indian agency, is the
reserved seat ticket to the regular slaughter-house matinee. The agency
butchers kill at the rate of ten bullocks per hour while at work, and so
great was the rush to the slaughter-pens for the internal economy of
the slaughtered animals, that Major Love found it necessary to erect a
box-office and gate, where none but those holding tickets could enter
and provide themselves with these delicacies.
This is not a sensation, it is the plain truth, and we desire to call
the attention of those who love and admire the Indian at a distance of
2,000 miles, and to the aesthetic love for the beautiful which prompts
the crooked-fanged and dusky bride of old Fly-up-the-Creek to rob the
soap-grease man and the glue factory, that she may make a Cheyenne
holiday. As a matter of fact, common decency will not permit us to enter
into a discussion of this matter. Firstly, it would not be fit for the
high order of readers who are now paying their money for _The Boomerang_;
and secondly, the Indian maiden at the present moment stands on a lofty
crag of the Rocky mountains, beautiful in her wild simplicity, wearing
the fringed garments of her tribe. To the sentimentalist she appears
outlined against the glorious sky of the new west, wearing a coronet of
eagle's feathers, and a health-corset trimmed with fantastic bead-work
and wonderful and impossible designs in savage art.
Shall we then rush in and with ruthless hand shatter this beautiful
picture? Shall we portray her as she appears on her return from the
great slaughter-house benefit and moral aggregation of digestive
mementoes? Shall we draw a picture of her clothed in a horse-blanket,
with a necklace of the false teeth of the pale face, and her coarse
unkempt hair hanging over her smoky features and clinging to her warty,
bony neck? No, no. Far be it from us to destroy the lovely vision of
copper-colored grace and smoke-tanned beauty, which the freckled student
of the effete east has erected in the rose-hued chambers of fancy. Let
her dwell there as the plump-limbed princess of a brave people. Let her
adorn the hat-rack of his imagination--proud, beautiful, grand, gloomy
and peculiar--while as a matter of fact she is at that moment
leaving the vestibule of the slaughter-house, conveying in the soiled
lap-robe--which is her sole adornment--the mangled lungs of a Texas
steer.
No man shall ever say that we have busted the beautiful Cigar Sign
Vision that he has erected in his memory. Let the graceful Indian queen
that has lived on in his heart ever since he studied history and saw the
graphic picture of the landing of Columbus, in which Columbus is just
unsheathing his bread knife, and the stage Indians are fleeing to the
tall brush; let her, we say, still live on. The ruthless hand that
writes nothing but everlasting truth, and the stub pencil that yanks
the cloak of the false and artificial from cold and perhaps unpalatable
fact, null spare this little imaginary Indian maiden with a back-comb
and gold garters. Let her withstand the onward march of centuries while
the true Indian maiden eats the fricasseed locust of the plains and
wears the cavalry pants of progress. We may be rough and thoughtless
many times, but we cannot come forward and ruthlessly shatter the red
goddess at whose shrine the far-away student of Black-hawk and other
fourth-reader warriors, worship.
As we said, we decline to pull the cloak from the true Indian maiden of
to-day and show her as she is. That cloak may be all she has on, and no
gentleman will be rude even to the daughter of Old Bob-Tail-Flush, the
Cheyenne brave.