WARDS OF OUR NATIVE LAND.
The Indians' Admirers and Critics--At School and After--Indian Courtship
and Marriage--Extraordinary Dances--Gambling by Instinct--How
"Cross-Eye" Lost his Pony--Pawning a Baby--Amusing and Degrading Scenes
on Annuity Day.
Opinions differ materially as to the rights and wrongs, privileges and
grievances, and worthiness and worthlessness of the North American
Indian. Some people think that the red man has been shamefully treated
and betrayed by the white man, and that the catalogue of his grievances
is as long as the tale of woe the former is apt to tell, whenever he can
make himself understood by a sympathetic listener.
Holders of this opinion live for the most part in districts where there
are no Indians located.
There are others who think that the Indian has been absurdly pampered by
the Government, and that it would be as sensible to try to change the
arrangement of seasons as to attempt to prevent the survival of the
fittest, or, in other words, to interfere with the gradual, but in their
opinion inevitable, extermination of the Indian.
Those holding this extreme view are for the most part those who live
near Indian reservations, and who have had opportunities of studying the
red man's character.
Both views are of course unduly severe. As a useful citizen the Indian
varies considerably, and it is rather as an interesting study that we
approach the subject.
Civilization has a very peculiar effect upon the American Indian. The
schools for Indian children are well managed, and the education imparted
should be sufficient to prevent the possibility of a relapse into the
unsatisfactory habits and the traditional uncleanliness of the different
tribes. Sometimes the effect of education is excellent. There are many
Indians to be found who have adopted civilized modes of living, and who
have built up homes and amassed little fortunes by farming, raising
cattle and trading. Some of the Indians, notably those of the five
civilized tribes or nations in Indian Territory, resemble white men in
appearance very much. They will sometimes work side by side with swarthy
Caucasians, whose skin has been tanned by exposure to the sun, and
except for the exceptionally high cheek bone and the peculiarly straight
hair, there is little to distinguish the Indian from the white man.
But these cases are exceptions to the general rule, which is that
education is looked upon by Indians as a degradation rather than
otherwise. Great difficulty is often experienced in persuading parents
to allow their children to be taken to the training schools at all, and
so much compulsion is often necessary that an appearance of kidnaping is
imparted. The first thing that is done with an Indian boy or girl
admitted to one of these schools, is to wash the newcomer with
considerable vigor from head to foot, and to cut off the superfluous,
and, generally speaking, thickly matted hair.
The comfort of short hair, neatly combed and brushed, seldom impresses
itself upon the youthful brave. For obvious reasons this is, however,
insisted upon, and while the boy is at school he is kept neat and clean.
Directly, however, he returns to his tribe he is in danger of relapsing
into the habits of his forefathers. Too often he is sneered at for his
neatness. His short hair is looked upon as an offense, and he is
generally willing to fall in with tribal fashions, abandon his neat
clothing, and let his hair grow and his face accumulate the regulation
amount of dust and dirt.
The Indian trader and the pioneer generally will tell you that the only
good Indian is a dead Indian. He will repeat this adage until it becomes
wearisome in its monotony. Then, perhaps, he will vary it by telling you
that of all the mean Indians the educated one is the meanest. This is
only true in some instances, but it is a fact that education does not
invariably benefit the Indian at all.
Almost all Indians are passionately fond of dancing. Several books have
been written descriptive of the various dances of different tribes. Some
of them have a hidden meaning and dangerous significance, while others
are merely for the purpose of amusement and recreation. For these dances
the Indians generally put on the most fancy costumes they have, and
their movements are sometimes graceful and sometimes grotesque. The sign
dance, as seen in some of the Southwestern tribes, is a curious one. One
of the belles of the tribe leads a man into the dancing apartment, which
consists of one of two tepees thrown together. In one are the tomtom
beaters, in the other the dancers. In this room the couple begin to
dance, making signs to each other, the meaning of which may be: "Well,
what do you think of me? Do you like me? Do you think me pretty? How do
I affect you?" and so on, the signs all being closely watched by the
spectators, who applaud, giggle, chuckle or laugh uproariously by turns,
as the case may be. Such a dance is a questioning bee, a collision of
wits on the part of two really facetious Indians.
Wit is a universal trait of the savage. Some white men draw. All Indians
draw. Some white men are cunning. All Indians are cunning. Some white
men are humorous. All Indians are witty. Dry wit, with a proverbial
philosophy in it which would have delighted the soul of Tupper, is
indigenous to the Indian. The Indian is the finest epigrammist on earth.
His sentences are pithy and sententious, because short--never long and
involved. A book of Indian wit and wisdom would have an enormous sale,
and reveal the very core of his thought on a typical scale.
The Indian flirt is sweet, saucy, subtle, seductive. She has the art of
keeping in stock constantly about her a score of bucks, each one of whom
flatters himself that he, and he alone, is the special object of her
admiration. Every tribe has had its belle. Poquite for the Modocs,
Ur-ska-te-na for the Navajos, Mini-haha for the Dakotas, Romona for the
neighboring bands. These belles have their foes among Indian women, but,
however cordially hated, they never brawl or come to blows.
Love-making is one of the interesting night scenes in an Indian camp.
When a young man wants to court a pretty red couquette, he stands at the
door of his lodge on a bright day and flashes a ray of light from his
sun-glass on the face of his sweetheart far away. She sees the ray as it
falls on her, and follows in the direction whence it is thrown, right or
left. She understands the secret of these flash lights. Soon the lovers
meet, each under a blanket; not a word, not a salutation is exchanged;
they stand near each other for a time and then retire, only to repeat
the affair day after day.
At last, upon some favorable night, the Indian youth visits the door of
her lodge; she comes out and sits down on the ground beside him; still
no word is spoken. At last she arises from the ground; he also rises,
and standing before her, throws his blanket over both of them. No sooner
has he done so than she doffs her blanket, letting it fall upon the
ground, which is the admission on her part that she loves him, and does
him obeisance as her future lord and master.
Every Indian camp at night is full of such lovers, with wooings as
sweet, lips as willing, embraces as fond, lives as romantic, hearts as
true, and elopements as daring and desperate as ever graced a Spanish
court. The old people come together with their friends and hold a
council. "How many ponies can he pay for her?" has a good deal to do
with the eligibility of the suitor. That night he brings his articles of
dowry to the door of his fiancee. If they are still there next morning,
he is rejected; if not, accepted.
No formal marriage ceremony is gone through as a rule. The heart is the
certificate and the Great Spirit the priest. Under the tribal government
of the Indians, the rights of women were respected and clearly defined.
She was the head of the house, and all property, save an insignificant
amount, descended at death to her. She was in many tribes personified as
the principal object of worship, prayer and adoration, in the tutelary
goddess of the tribe. Now all is changed. The Indian of to-day is not
the Indian of fifty years ago, and cannot be studied in the same light.
His manners, customs and habits are all changed, and polygamy, more and
more, creeps in with all its appalling degradations.
On special occasions an entire tribe is gathered under an open space in
the cottonwoods to celebrate their principal dances. Hands are wildly
waved above the heads of the dancers around a central fire of logs,
piled in a conical heap. Around this blazing pile runs the dark circle
which was built at sunset, inclosing sacred ground, which must not be
trespassed on. The old chanter stands at the gate of the corral and
sings. The men built the dark circle in less than an hour. When done,
the corral measures forty paces in diameter. Around it stands a fence
eight feet high, with a gate in the east ten feet wide.
At night-fall many of the Navajo people move, temporarily, all their
goods and property into the corral, and abandon their huts or hogans.
Those who do not move in are watchers to protect their property, for
there are thieves among the Navajos. At 8 o'clock a band of musicians
enters, and, sitting down, begins a series of cacophonous sounds on a
drum. As soon as the music begins, the great wood pile is lighted. The
conflagration spreads rapidly and lights the whole landscape and the
sky. A storm of red, whirling sparks fly upward, like bright golden bees
from out a hive, to a height of a hundred feet. The descending ashes
fall in the corral like a light shower of snow. The heat soon grows so
intense that in the remotest parts of the enclosure it is necessary for
a person to screen his face when he looks towards the fire.
Suddenly a warning whistle is heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen
forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout
and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of
living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves,
and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in single file, they
throw their bodies into diverse attitudes, some graceful, some strained,
some difficult, some menacing, and all grotesque. Now they face the
east, now the west, now the south, now the north, bearing aloft their
slender wands, tipped with eagle down, holding and waving them with
surprising effects. Their course around the fire is to the left, east,
west, south, north, a course invariably taken by all the dancers of the
night.
When they have circled the fire twice, they begin to thrust their wands
toward it. Their object is to try to burn off the tip of eagle down.
They dash up to the fire, crawl up to it on their faces, run up holding
their heads sidewise, dart up backward and approach it in all sorts of
attitudes. Suddenly, one approaching the flaming pile throws himself on
his back, with his head to the fire, and swiftly thrusts his wand into
the flames. Many are the unsuccessful attempts, but at length, one by
one, they all succeed in burning the downy balls from the end of their
wands. As each accomplishes his feat, it becomes necessary, as the next
duty, to restore the ball of down, which is done by refitting the ring
held in the hand with down upon it, and putting it on the head of the
aromatic sumac wand.
The dance customs and ideas differ with the tribes and localities.
Sometimes the dance is little more than an exhibition of powers of
endurance. Men or women, or both, go through fatiguing motions for hours
and even days in succession, astounding spectators by their disregard of
the traditions of their race, so far as idleness is concerned. Other
dances are grotesque and brutal. On special occasions weird ceremonies
are indulged in, and the proceedings are sensational in the extreme.
Of the ghost dance and its serious import, readers of the daily papers
are familiar. Of the war dances of the different tribes a great deal has
also been written, and altogether the dance lore of the American Indian
is replete with singular incongruities and picturesque anomalies.
Dancing with the Indian is often a religious exercise. It involves
hardship at times, and occasionally the participants even mutilate
themselves in their enthusiasm. Some of the tribes of the Southwest
dance, as we shall see later, with venomous snakes in their hands,
allowing themselves to be bitten, and relying on the power of the
priests to save them from evil consequences.
The Indians gamble as if by instinct. On one occasion the writer was
visiting a frontier town just after its settlement. Indians were present
in very large numbers, and in a variety of ways they got hold of a good
deal of money. The newcomers from the Eastern States were absolutely
unprepared for the necessary privations of frontier life. Hence they
were willing to purchase necessary articles at almost any price, while
they were easily deluded into buying all sorts of articles for which
they had no possible need. The Indians, who are supposed to be
civilized, took full advantage of the situation, and brought into town
everything that was of a salable character, frequently obtaining three
or four times the local cash value.
With the money thus obtained they gambled desperately. One Indian, who
boasted of the terrible name of "Cross-Eye," brought in two ponies to
sell. One of them was an exceptionally ancient-looking animal, which had
long since outlived its usefulness, and which, under ordinary local
conditions, could certainly have been purchased for $4.00 or $5.00. A
friendly Indian met Mr. "Cross-Eye", and a conversation ensued as to the
value of the pony and the probable price that it would realize. The two
men soon got angry on the subject, and finally the owner of the pony bet
his animal's critic the pony against $20.00 that it would realize at
least the last-named sum.
With this extra stimulus for driving a good bargain, the man offered his
pony to a number of white men, and finally found one who needed an
animal at once, and who was willing to pay $20.00 for the antiquated
quadruped. "Cross-Eye" made a number of guttural noises indicative of
his delight, and promptly collected the second $20.00.
He had thus practically sold a worthless pony for $40.00, and had it not
been for his innate passion for gambling, would have done a very good
day's business. A few hours later, however, he was found looking very
disconsolate, and trying very hard to sell some supposed curiosities for
a few dollars with which to buy a blanket he sorely needed. His
impecuniosity was easily explained. Instead of proceeding at once to
sell his second pony, he turned his attention first to gambling, and in
less than an hour his last dollar had gone. Then, with the gamester's
desperation, he had put up his second pony as a final stake, with the
result that he lost his money and his stock in trade as well. He took
the situation philosophically and stoically, but when he found it
impossible in the busy pioneer town to get even the price of a drink of
whisky for his curiosities, he began to get reckless, and was finally
escorted out of the town by two or three of his friends to prevent him
getting mixed up in a fight.
When the Indians have enough energy they gamble almost day and night.
The women themselves are generally kept under sufficient subjection by
their husbands to make gambling on their part impossible, so far as the
actual playing of games of chance is concerned. But they stand by and
watch the men. They stake their necklaces, leggings, ornaments, and in
fact, their all, on the play, which is done sometimes with blue wild
plum-stones, hieroglyphically charactered, and sometimes with playing
bones, but oftener with common cards. Above the ground the tom-tom would
be sounded, but below ground the tom-tom was buried.
An Indian smokes incessantly while he gambles. Putting the cigarette or
cigar to his mouth he draws in the smoke in long, deep breaths, until he
has filled his lungs completely, when he begins slowly to emit the smoke
from his nose, little by little, until it is all gone. The object of
this with the Indian is to steep his senses more deeply with the
narcotizing soporific. The tobacco they smoke is generally their own
raising.
"The thing that moved me most," writes a traveler, describing a visit to
an Indian gambling den, "was the spectacle in the furthest corner of the
'shack' of an Indian mother, with a pappoose in its baby-case peeping
over her back. There she stood behind an Indian gambler, to whom she had
joined her life, painted and beaded and half intoxicated. The Indian
husband had already put his saddle in pawn to the white professional
gambler for his $5.00, and it was not five minutes before the white
gambler had the saddle and $5.00 both. Then, when they had nothing else
left to bet, so intense was their love for gambling, they began to put
themselves in pawn, piecemeal, saying: 'I'll bet you my whole body.'
That means 'I'll put myself in pawn to you as your slave to serve you as
you will for a specified time.'
"So it was that this Indian mother stood leaning back wearily against
the wall, half drunk and dazed with smoke and heat, when all at once the
Indian who lived with her said to her in Indian: 'Put in the baby for a
week. Then pay-day will come.' It was done. The baby was handed over.
That is what civilization has done for the Indian. Its virtues escapes
him; its vices inoculate him."
One of these vices is gambling. The Indian is kept poor all the year
round and plucked of every pinfeather. That is the principal reason why
he steals, not only to reimburse himself for loss, but also to avenge
himself upon the white man, who he knows well enough has constantly
robbed him.
Gambling, as witnessed in the Indian camp at night, is a very different
affair from the cache. The tom-tom notifies all that the bouts with
fortune are about to begin. During the game the music is steadily kept
up. In the intervals between the games the players all sing. Crowds
surround the camp. When a man loses heavily the whole camp knows it in a
few minutes, and not infrequently the wife rushes in and puts a stop to
the stake by driving her chief away. Gambling is the great winter game.
It is often played from morning till night, and right along all night
long. Cheating and trickery of every sort are practiced.
"Lizwin" or "mescal" are the two drinks made by the Indians themselves,
one from corn and the other from the "maguay" plant. The plains Indians
drink whisky. To gamble is to drink, and to drink is to lose. Gambling
is the hardest work that you can persuade an Indian to do, unless
threatened by starvation. Different tribes gamble differently.
The Comanches, undoubtedly, have by far the most exciting and
fascinating gambling games. The Comanche puzzles, tricks and problems
are also decidedly superior to those of any other nation. The gambling
bone is used by the Comanches. The leader of the game holds it up before
the eyes of all, so that all can see it; he then closes his two hands
over it, and manipulates it so dexterously in his fingers that it is
simply impossible to tell which hand the bone is in. In a moment he
suddenly flings each closed hand on either side of him down into the
outreaching hand of the player next to him.
The game commences at this point. The whole line of players passes, or
pretends to pass, this bone on from one to another, until at last every
hand is waving. All this time the eyes along the opposite line of
gamblers are eagerly watching each shift and movement of the hands, in
hopes of discovering the white flash of the bone. At last some one
descries the hand that holds the bone, or thinks so. He points out and
calls out for his side. The hand must instantly be thrown up. If it is
right, the watching side scores a point and takes the bone. The sides
change off in this way until the game is won. The full score is
twenty-one points. The excitement produced by this game is at times
simply indescribable.
The Utes play with two bones in each hand, one of which is wrapped about
with a string. The game is to guess the hand that holds the wrapped
bone. The plum-stone game is played by the plains Indians. It is only
another name for dice throwing. The plum-stones are graved with
hieroglyphics, and counts are curiously made in a way that often defies
computation by white men. The women gamble quite as much as the men,
when they dare, and grow even more excited over the game than their
lords. Their game, as witnessed among the Cheyennes, is played with
beads, little loops and long horn sticks made of deer foot.
The children look on and learn to gamble from their earliest childhood,
and soon learn to cheat and impose on their juniors. Their little
juvenile gambling operations are done principally with arrows. Winter
breeds sloth, and sloth begets gambling, and gambling, drink. There is
no conviviality in Indian drinking bouts. The Indian gets drunk, and
dead drunk, as soon as he possibly can, and finds his highest enjoyment
in sleeping it off. His nature reacts viciously under drink, however, in
many cases, and he is then a dangerous customer.
The women of many tribes are a most pitiable lot of hard working, ragged
and dirty humanity. Upon them falls all the drudgery of the camp; they
are "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and bend under immense
burdens piled upon their backs, while thousands of ponies browse,
undisturbed, in every direction. As the troops are withdrawn, the squaws
swoop down upon the deserted camps, and rapidly glean them of all that
is portable, for use in their domestic economy. An Indian fire would be
considered a very cheerless affair by the inmates of houses heated by
modern appliances; but such as it is--a few sticks burning with feeble
blaze and scarcely penetrating the dense smoke filling the tepee from
the ground to the small opening at the top--it consumes fuel, and the
demand is always greater than the supply, for the reason that an Indian
has no idea of preparation for future necessities. If the fire burns,
all right; when the last stick is laid on, a squaw will start for a
fresh supply, no matter how cold and stormy the weather may be.
The poetical Indian maiden may still exist in the vivid imagination of
extreme youth, but she is not common to-day. The young girls affect gay
attire, and are exempt from the hardships of toil which are imposed on
their elder sisters, mothers and grandams, but their fate is infinitely
worse. Little beauty is to be discerned among them, and in this regard
time seems to have effaced the types which were prevalent a few years
ago.
Annuity day is a great event in the life of every Agency Indian, and if
the reader would see Indian life represented in some of its most
interesting features, there is no more suitable time to select for a
visit to any Agency. It is a "grand opening," attended by the whole
tribe; but the squaws do not enjoy quite the freedom of choice in the
matter of dress goods, or receive such prompt attention from the clerks
as our city ladies are accustomed to. Even at 9 o'clock in the morning,
notwithstanding the fact that the actual distribution would not take
place until noon, the nation's wards are there, patiently waiting for
the business of the day to begin. Stakes have been driven into the
ground to mark the space to be occupied by each band, and behind them,
arranged in a semicircle, are the different families, under the charge
of a head man. The bands vary in numbers, both of families and
individuals, but they all look equally solemn as they sit on the ground,
with their knees drawn up under their chins, or cross-legged like Turks
and tailors.
The scene now becomes one of bustle and activity on the part of the
Agency people, who begin rapidly filling wagon after wagon with goods
from the store-houses. Blankets of dark blue material, cotton cloth,
calico of all colors and patterns, red flannel, gay woolen shawls, boots
and shoes that make one's feet ache to look at them, coffee pots, water
buckets, axes, and numerous other articles, are piled into each wagon in
the proportion previously determined by conference with the head men. A
ticket is then given to the driver, bearing the number of the stake and
the name of the head man. Away goes the wagon; the goods are thrown out
on the ground in a pile at the proper stake, and that completes the
formal transfer to the head man, who then takes charge of them, and,
with, the assistance of a few of the bucks designated by himself,
divides the various articles, according to the wants of the families and
the amount of goods supplied.
During the rush and fury of the issue and division of the goods, the
sombre figures in the background have scarcely moved. Not one has
ventured to approach the center where the bucks are at work, measuring
off the cloth, etc.; they are waiting for the tap of the bell, when they
will receive just what the head man chooses to give them. There is no
system of exchange there; it is take what you get or get nothing. In a
great many cases they do not use the goods at all, but openly offer them
for sale to the whites, who, no doubt, find it profitable to purchase at
Indian prices.
As soon as the issue is completed, a crowd of Indians gather in front of
the trader's store to indulge their passion for gambling, and in a short
space of time a number of blankets and other articles change hands on
the result of pony races, foot races or any other species of excitement
that can be invented. There is a white man on the ground who is, no
doubt, a professional runner, and the Indians back their favorite
against him in a purse of over $30.00, which the white man covers, and
wins the race by a few inches. The Indians will not give up, and make
similar purses on the two succeeding days, only to lose by an inch or
two. There is a master of ceremonies, who displays a wonderful control
over the Indians. He makes all the bets for the red men, collecting
different amounts for a score or more, but never forgetting a single
item or person.
Ration day brings out the squaws and dogs in full force; the one to pack
the rations to camp, and the latter to pick up stray bits. A few at a
time the squaws enter the store-house and receive their week's supply of
flour, coffee, sugar, salt, etc., for themselves and families. The beef
is issued directly from the slaughter-house, and the proceeding is
anything but appetizing to watch. The beeves to be killed are first
driven into a corral, where they are shot by the Indian butchers; when
the poor beasts have been shot to death, they are dragged to the door of
the slaughter-house and passed through the hands of half-naked bucks,
who seem to glory in the profusion of blood, and eagerly seek the
position on account of the perquisites attached to it in the way of
tempting (?) morsels which usually go to the dogs or on the refuse heap.
The beef is issued as fast as it can be cut up, at the rate of half a
pound a day for each person, regardless of age; bacon is also issued as
a part of the meat ration.