fight—but in the early morning a terrible noise was heard below on
the plain, and when they rushed to see—behold the warriors in blue
were rushing to and fro on their horses, shouting, firing off their
appalling weapons. It was plain they were doing a war dance out of
wanton strength, and so terrible did they seem that the hearts of the
small people became as wax. “We can do nothing against such men; they
are demons; they hold the thunder in the palms of their hands. Let
us submit; perhaps they will grow weary of the heat and sand and go
away. Perhaps they will long for their wives and children and leave
us. We will wait.”
Others said: “Let us send our children—what will it matter? We can
watch over them, they will be near us, and we can see that they do
not forget our teachings. Our religion will not vanish out of their
minds.”
So the old men went again to the war chief, and, with bowed heads and
trembling voices, said: “We yield. You are mighty in necromancy and
we are poor and weak. Our children shall go to the Iron Khiva.”
Then the war chief gave them his hand and smiled, and said: “I do not
make war with pleasure. I am glad you have submitted to the commands
of my great chief. Live in peace!”
III
For two years the children went almost daily to the Iron Khiva, and
they came to love one of those who taught them—a white woman with a
gentle face—but the man in the black coat who told the children that
the religion of their fathers was wicked and foolish—him they hated
and bitterly despised. He was sour-faced and fearful of voice. He
shouted so loud the children were scared—they had no breath to make
reply when he addressed them.
But to even this creature they became accustomed, and the life of the
village was not greatly disturbed. True, the children began to speak
in a strange tongue and fell into foolish songs which did little
harm—they were, in fact, amusing, and, besides, when the cattlemen
came by and wished to buy baskets and blankets, these skilled
children could speak their barbarous tongue—and once young Kopeli
took his son who had mastered this hissing language, and went afar to
trade, and brought back many things of value. He had been to the home
of the Little Father, and the fort.
In short the Pueblans were getting reconciled to the Iron Khiva
and the white people, and several years went by so peacefully,
with so little change in their life and thought, that only the
most far-seeing expressed fear of coming trouble—but one night the
children came home in a panic—breathless and storming with excitement.
A stranger had arrived at the Iron House, accompanied by a tall old
man who claimed authority over them—the man who lived in the big
white man’s town—and they had said to the teacher, “we want six
children to take away with us into the East.”
This was incredible to the people of the cliff, and they answered:
“You were mistaken, you did not understand. They would not come to
tear our children from our arms.”
[Illustration: A Cow-puncher Visiting an Indian Village
_Far in advance of settlers, in those early days when every man
had to fight for his right of way, the American cow-puncher used
to journey along the waste hundreds of miles of the then far
Western country. Like a true soldier of fortune, he adventured
with bold carelessness, ever ready for war, but not love; for in
the Indian villages he visited there was no woman that such a man
as he was could take to his heart._
_Illustration from_
THE EVOLUTION OF THE COW-PUNCHER
_by_ Owen Wister
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _September, 1895_]
[Illustration: An Apache Indian
_In the ’eighties the habitat of the Apaches was in the Sierra
Madre Mountains in Arizona. When pursued the Apaches always
took to the mountains. They were hideously cruel. The settlers
entertained a perfect dread of these marauding bands, whose
onslaughts were so sudden that they were never seen. When they
struck, all that would be seen was the flash of the rifle,
resting with secure aim over a pile of stones or a bowlder,
behind which was the red-handed murderer._
_Illustration from_
SOME INDIAN RIDERS
_by_ Colonel Theodore Ayrault Dodge, U.S.A.
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _May, 1891_]
But the little ones were shivering with fear and would not go back to
the plain. They moaned and wept all night—and at sunrise the old men
went down to the Iron House, and said:
“Our little ones came home last night, crying. They said you had
threatened to carry them away into the East; what does this mean?”
Then the strange men said, “This is true. We want six of your
children to take away to school. We will not hurt them. They will
live in a big house, they will have warm clothing, they will want for
nothing. We are your friends. We want to teach your children the ways
of the white man.”
Passionately the grandsires responded. “We do not want to hear of
these things. Our children are happy here, their hearts will break if
you take them away. We will not submit to this. We will fight and die
together.”
Then the old white man who had been speaking became furious. His
voice was sharp and fierce. “If you don’t give up the children I will
take them. You are all fools—your religion is wicked, and you are not
fit to teach your children. My religion, my God, is the only God that
is true and righteous, and I will take your children in order that
you may be taught the true path and become as white men.”
Then the old men withdrew hurriedly, their lips set in a grim line.
Their return—their report, froze every heart. It was true then—these
merciless men of the East were planning to carry their children
into captivity. Swiftly the word passed, the goats were driven into
their corrals, the water bags were filled, the storehouses were
replenished. “We will not go down to the plain. Our children shall go
no more to the Iron House. If they take them, it will be when all our
warriors are dead.”
So it was that when the agent and the missionaries climbed the mesa
path they came upon a barricade of rocks, and men with bows and war
clubs grimly standing guard. They made little talk—they merely said,
“Go your ways, white men, and leave us alone. Go look to your own
sons and daughters, and we will take care of ours. The world is wide
to the East, go back to it.”
The agent said, “If you do not send your children down to school I
will call my warriors, and I will kill every man with a war club in
his hand.”
To this young Kopeli, the war chief, said: “We will die in defense of
our home and our children. We were willing that our children should
go down to the Iron Khiva—till now—now when you threaten to steal
them and carry them afar into captivity where we can never see them
again, we rebel. We will fight! Of what value is life without our
children? Your great war chief will not ask this hard thing of us. If
he does then he has our answer.”
Then with dark faces the white men went away and sent a messenger
across the desert, and three days later the sentinels of the highest
roof saw the bluecoat warriors coming again. Raising a wild song,
the war song of the clan, the cliff people hastily renewed their
defenses. They pried great rocks from the ledges, and set them where
they could be toppled on the heads of the invaders. They built the
barricades higher. They burnished their arrows and ground their
sickles. Every man and boy stood ready to fight and die in defense of
their right to life, and liberty, and their rocky home.
IV
Once again the timid prevailed; they said: “See this terrible white
man, his weapons are most murderous. He can sit where he is, in
safety, and send his missiles against our unprotected babes. He is
too great. Let us make our peace with him.”
So at last, for a third time, the elders went down to talk with the
conquerors, and said, “What can we do to make our peace with you?”
Then the tall, old man said, “If you will give us two of your
brightest sons to go away into the East we will ask no more, but
your other children must return to the Iron House each day as before.”
The elders withdrew, and the news flew about the pueblo, and every
mother looked at her handsomest son in sudden terror, and the men
assembled in furious debate. The war party cried out with great
bitterness of clamor, “Let us fight and die! We are tired of being
chased like wolves.” But at last up rose old Hozro, and said, “I
have a son—you know him. He is a good son, and he has quick feet and
a ready tongue. He is not a brawler. He is beloved of his teachers.
Now, in order that we may be left in peace, I will give my son.”
His short and passionate speech was received with expressions of
astonishment as well as approval, for the boy Lelo was a model
youth—and Hozro a proud father. “What will the mother say?” thought
all the men who sat in the council.
Then gray old Supela, chief priest and sage, rose slowly, and said,
“I have no son—but my son’s son I have. Him I will dedicate, though
he is a part of my heart. I will cut him away because I love peace
and hate war. Because if the white man rages against us he will
slaughter everybody.”
While yet they were in discussion some listening boys crept away and
scattered the word among the women and children. “Lelo and Sakoni are
to be bound and cast among the white men.”
There was wailing in the houses as though a plague had smitten them
again—and the mothers of the lads made passionate protestations
against the sacrifice of their sons—all to no purpose. The war chief
came to tell them to make ready. “In the morning we must take the
lads to their captors.”
But when morning came they could not be found in their accustomed
places, they had fled upon the desert to the West. Then, while the
best trailers searched for their footprints, the fathers of the tribe
went down and told the white chief. He said:
“I do not believe it, you are deceiving me.”
“Come and see,” said Hozro, and led the way round the mesa to the
point where the trailers were slowly tracing the course of the
fugitives.
“They are running,” said young Klee. “They are badly scared.”
“Perhaps they go to Oraibi,” said one of the priests.
“We have sent runners to all the villages. No, they are heading for
the great desert.”
They followed them out beyond all hope of water—out into the desolate
sand—where the sun flamed like a flood of fire and only the sparse
skunk-weed grew—and at last sharp eyes detected two dark flecks on
the side of a dune of yellow sand.
“There they are!” cried Klee, the trailer.
The stern old white man spurred his horse—the soldier chief did the
same—but Klee outran them all. He topped the sand dune at a swift
trot, but there halted and stood immovably gazing downward.
At last he came slowly down the slope and, meeting the white man, the
agent, and the soldier, he said, with a sullen, accusing face, and
with bitter scorn:
“There they are; go get them; my work is done!”
With wonder in their looks the pursuers rode to the top of the hill
and stood for a moment looking; then the lean hand of old Hozro
lifted and pointed to a little hollow. “There they lie—exhausted!”
But Klee turned and said, “They are not sleeping—they are dead! I
feel it.”
With a sudden hoarse cry the father plunged down the hill and fell
above the body of his son.
When the white men came to him they perceived that the bodies of the
boys lay in the dark stain of their own blood as in a blanket. They
were dead, slain by their own hands.
Then old Hozro rose and said, “White man, this is your work. Go back
to your home. Is not your thirst slaked? Drink up the blood of my
son and go back to the white wolves who sent you. Leave us with our
dead!”
In silence, with faces ashamed and heads hanging, the war chief and
stern old white man rode back to their camp, leaving the heroic
father and grandsire alone in the desert.
That night the great mesa was a hill of song, a place of lamentation.
Hozro and Supela were like men stunned by a sudden blow. The old
grandsire wept till his cry became a moan, but Hozro, as the
greatness of his loss came to him, grew violent.
Mounting his horse, he rode fiercely up and down the streets.
“Now, will you fight, cowards, prairie dogs? Send word to all the
villages—assemble our warriors—no more talk now; let us battle!”
But when the morning came, behold the tents of the white soldiers
were taken down, and when the elders went forth to parley, the
soldier chief said:
“You need not send your children away. If they come down here to the
Iron House that is enough. I am a just man; I will not fight you to
take your children away. I go to see the Great Father and to plead
against this man and his ways.”
“And so our sons died not in vain,” said Supela to Hozro, as they met
on the mesa top.
“Aye, but they are dead!” said Hozro, fiercely. “The going of the
white man will not bring them back.”
And the stricken mothers sat with haggard faces and unseeing eyes;
they took no comfort in the knowledge that the implacable white man
had fled with the blue-coated warriors.
THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE
THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE
The spring had been cold and wet, and pneumonia was common throughout
the reservation on the Rosebud, and yet the trained nurse whom the
government had sent out to preside over the little school hospital
had little to do.
She was a grimly conscientious person, but not lovable. Men had not
considered her in their home plans, and a tragic melancholy darkened
her thin, plain visage, and loneliness added something hard and
repellent to her devotional nature. She considered herself a martyr,
one carried to far countries for the love of the gentle Galilean. She
never complained vocably, but her stooping walk, her downcast eyes,
and her oft-bitten lips revealed her discontent with great clearness
to the red people, who interpret such signs by instinct.
“Why does she come here?” asked reflective old Tah-You, the sage of
the camp on the Rosebud.
“She comes to do you good, to give your children medicine when they
are sick,” replied the subagent, speaking in signs.
“She is not happy. Send her away. We do not need her. I am medicine
giver.”
“I can’t do that. Washington sent her. She must stay. She looks
unhappy, but she is quite content. When your children are sick you
should send them to her.”
To this Tah-You made slow answer. “For many generations we have
taken care of our own sick in our own way,” said he. “I do not think
Washington should require us to give up all our ways. You tell
Washington that we are able to care for our sick.”
It was only later that the agent found that the little hospital,
the pride of his eyes, had been tabooed among the tribe from the
very start. On the surface this did not appear. The children marched
over, two and two, each morning, and took their prevention medicine
with laughter, for it had a sweet taste, and the daily march was a
ceremony. Their teacher took occasion to show them the clean white
walls and the wide soft beds, and told them to tell their parents
that this beautiful little house was for any one who was sick.
To this they all listened with that patient docility which is their
most marked characteristic, and some of the old men came and looked
at the “medicine house” and spoke with the “medicine woman,” and
while they did not show enthusiasm, they were not openly opposed.
All this gave way to a hidden, determined aversion after one of the
employees had died in the place. The nurse, being sheathed in the
boiler iron of her own superstitions, could not understand the change
in the attitude of the red people. It was not her business to give
way to or even to take into account their own feelings. If they were
sick she insisted that the superintendent hale them forthwith to her
rooms and bind them on her beds of painful neatness. The opposition
of the old people she would put down with the bayonet if necessary.
A group of the old men came to the agent and said: “Friend, a white
man has died in the medicine house. That is bad. Among us we do not
let any one use the lodge in which one has died—we burn it and all
that is connected with the dead one. There is something evil which
comes from the clothing of one who is dead of a disease. We do not
wish our children to enter this medicine house.”
“Furthermore,” said Tah-You, “there are many bottles standing about
in the house, and they stink very strong—they make us sick even when
we go in for a few moments. It is not good for our children to sleep
there when they are ill.
“More than this,” continued Tah-You, prompted by another, “the
medicine woman drinks whisky in the night, and our children ought not
to see that their medicine woman is a drunkard.”
Slowly and painfully Mr. Williams explained that all the bed-clothes
were purified and the room made clean after a person died in it. Also
that the smell of the bottles was not harmful. As to the medicine
woman and her drinking, they were mistaken. She was taking some drink
for her cough.
“We do not believe in keeping a house for people to die in,” repeated
Tah-You. “Spirits and things evil hover round such a place. They cry
in the night and make a sick child worse. They are very lonely. It
is better that they come back to the tepee when they are ill. The
children are now frightened, and we want you to promise that when any
of them fall sick you will not send them to this lonesome house which
is death-tainted.”
The face of the agent hardened. To this end he knew the talk would
come. “Listen, friends. Washington is educating your children. He is
feeding them. He has sent also a medicine man and a medicine woman to
take care of you when you are ill. I have built a nice clean house
for you to be sick in. When your children are sick they must go
there. I will not consent to their returning to the tepee.”
This was the usual and unavoidable end of every talk. Every wish
of the red man was necessarily thwarted—for that is manifestly the
way to civilize them. They rose silently, sadly, with the patient
resignation to which they had schooled themselves, and passed out,
leaving the agent with a sneaking, heart-burning sense of being
woefully in the wrong.
In the weeks that followed, the smug little hospital stood empty,
for no sick one from the camp would so much as look toward its
glass-paneled door. The children no longer laughed as they lined
up for their physic. The nurse sat and read by the window, with no
duties but those of caring for her own bed. She had the professed
sympathy of all those who have keen noses for the superstitions
of other people, but none whatever for their own. She thought “the
government should force these Indians to come in and be treated.”
And as for Tah-You, these people of a creed were agreed that he was
the meanest Indian in the tribe, and it was his influence which stood
in the way of the medicine woman’s curative courses, and interfered
with the plan to convert them into Christian citizens. “The power of
these medicine men must be broken,” said the Rev. Alonzo Jones.
Once in a while a child was made to stay overnight in the dread,
sleek little rooms of the hospital, but each one escaped at the
earliest moment. In one case, when the sick one chanced to be an
orphan, she was made a shining decoy and coddled and fed on dainties
fit for a daughter of millions, in order that her enthusiastic report
of the currant jelly and chicken broth might soften the hearts of her
companions toward the hard-glazed walls and echoing corridors of the
little prison house. But it did not. She told of the smells, of the
awful silence and loneliness, of the sour-faced nurse who did many
most mysterious things in the deep of the night, and the other girls
shuddered and laughed nervously and said, “When we are sick we will
run away and go to camp.” The opposition deepened and widened.
The struggle came when Robert, the first sergeant of the school, the
captain of the baseball team, fell sick. He was a handsome, steady,
good-humored boy of twenty, of fine physical development, and a
good scholar. He spoke English readily and colloquially, and was
a cheering example of what a reservation school can turn out. The
superintendent trusted him implicitly, and found him indispensable
in the government of the school and the management of the farm
and garden, and the agent often invited him to his house to meet
visitors.
[Illustration: At an Apache Indian Agency
_This incident occurred in the days of the so-called “Indian
Ring,” when the Interior Department used to appoint as Indian
agents men whose sole object was to enrich themselves by stealing
the property of their savage wards. As a result of their reckless
operations there was constant friction between these agents and
the men of the army._
_Illustration from_
NATCHEZ’S PASS
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _February, 1901_]
[Illustration: The Adventure of Old Sun’s Wife
_When a mere maid, the chief of the Gros Ventres Indians kidnaped
her and, binding her securely to himself, rode off for his own
village. When within sight of their destination the girl stabbed
him, killing him. This feat not only won her the right to wear
three eagle feathers, but Old Sun, the rich and powerful chief of
the North Blackfeet Indians of Canada, made her his wife._
_Illustration from_
CHARTERING A NATION
_by_ Julian Ralph
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _December, 1891_]
Robert, after ploughing all one cold, rainy afternoon, took a griping
chill and developed a cough which troubled him for some days. He said
nothing about it, and kept on with his work when he should have been
in bed, for he dreaded the hospital, and was careful to minimize
all his bad symptoms, but one morning he found himself unable to
rise, and the doctor pronounced him a very sick boy—“Another case of
pneumonia,” said he.
Robert was silent as they moved him across the road into the men’s
ward of the little hospital; but his eyes, bright with fever, seemed
to plead for something, and when the agent bent down to ask him if he
wanted anything, the boy whispered, “Stay with me.”
“All right, Robert, I’ll watch with you to-night. I must go now, but
I’ll come back at noon.”
It was a long day for the sick boy, who watched and listened, giving
little heed to the nurse who was tirelessly active in ministering to
his needs. He knew just what was going on each minute. He listened
for the assembly bell at seven o’clock. He could see the boys in
their uniforms lining up in the halls. Now they were marching to
chapel. They were singing the first song—he could hear them. Now they
were listening to the little talk of the superintendent—and all was
quiet.
At last they went whooping to their games in the play hour just
before bedtime, and it seemed hard to lie there and hear them and be
alone and forgotten. “The teachers will come to see me,” he thought,
“and some of the boys.” But they did not come. It began to grow dark
at last, and the taciturn nurse lit a smoking lamp and sat down to
read. When she asked him a question it sounded like the snarl of a
cat, but her hands were tender and deft. Oh, it was hard to be sick
and lie still so long!
When the agent came in the boy said: “Major, tell my mother. Let her
come. Tell her I’m very sick, Major!”
“All right, Robert. I’ll take the first opportunity to send her word.
But she’s a long way off, you know. I hear she went to Tah-You’s old
camp. But I will watch with you, my boy. Go to sleep and rest.”
The boy grew very much worse in the night, and in his temporary
delirium he called piteously for his mother and in his native tongue,
and the agent told one of the policemen to carry word to the mother,
“Pawnee Woman,” that her son was sick. “Say to her that we are doing
all we can for him, and that he is in no danger,” he added.
That day was a long day to Robert, a day that was filled with moments
of delirium as a June day is filled with cloud shadows. Each hour
carried him farther from the white man’s religion and the white man’s
medicine—only his good agent comforted him; to him he clung with
ever-weakening fingers. The agency doctor, earnest to the limits of
his powers (you can’t buy great learning at eight hundred dollars per
year), drew the agent aside and said: “The boy is in for a siege,
Major. His temperature is rising in spite of everything. He must be
watched closely to-night.”
“I’ll look out for that,” said Williams. Weary as he was, he watched
again the second night, for the boy would not let him go, and his
heart was very tender toward him.