nothing in particular. Let him fill his belly and he is easily handled.
This axiom had been taken as a basis for action by the whiphands of
the Democratic Party, who, accordingly, scattered broadcast throughout
the reservation considerable quantities of the meat of superannuated
bulls; sat in the feasts with cross-legged condescension; smoked the
reeking stone pipes; drank hot soup with the suppressed shudders of a
revolting stomach, and called the brown men “brothers.”
This had all worked very well in the latter days of September, and
there had been considerable rejoicing in local Democratic circles over
the bright prospects for a sweeping majority.
It was not until the first of October that the opposition suddenly
hurled a thunderbolt out of the blue sky of its seemingly serene
inactivity. The Agent, holding his appointment under a Republican
administration, announced at a weekly land payment that $100,000 of the
considerable sum held in trust by the Government would be paid pro rata
to the Omahas during the month. It was after this announcement that the
local leaders of the Republican Party became active. They explained to
their brothers how surpassingly good it was of them to bring about this
payment. Would their brothers forget this at the November election? Of
course not!
So it happened that the bull meat lost its power of persuasion and for
several weeks there was not a brown Democrat on the reserve. Thus, at
the opening of the big payment on a Monday morning two weeks before
election, the Democratic candidate for Congress found himself staring
Defeat in the face (which was brown) after having enjoyed several weeks
of victory (which was premature).
The “big payment” has always been picturesque and is now fast becoming
impossible. It may be defined as the spectacular bow of the Present to
the Past, with which Civilisation lowers its proud plume and says to
the Savage Age: “Sorry I swiped your land; take that and don’t feel
sore!” Or words to that effect.
The opening days of the big payment were warm with the lazy warmth of
the mellow, golden hours of late October. The untilled hills of the
reservation thrust themselves up into the autumn glare, unashamed of
their poverty of soil. The Agency building nestled forlornly in a creek
valley surrounded by the yellow, wrinkled hills.
In the early morning a lazy string of vehicles began to pour into
the Agency from the dozen or more roads that outraged the compass
with their crazy windings, and seamed the bronze face of the prairie
with ugly scars. Carts, buggies, waggons, carriages, some of glaring
newness, weighted down to the axles with squaws, papooses and the
inevitable mortgage; others in an epileptic stage of decay, with the
weary air of having borne the weight of outlawed paper for many moons;
ponies, long-haired, and emaciated with many unconsoling feeds of post
and halter, carrying at once upon their sawlike backs their sweating,
heavy masters, and (heavier than these) the seeming consciousness of
long-dishonoured promissory notes; these constituted the grotesque
Republican procession that streamed into Little Omaha, as the Agency
is called, on that morning in October.
It was as a tribal exodus. The entire tribe of twelve hundred odd men,
women, and children was leaving its shacks and tepees that morning, in
search of the minted eagles of the Government, just as, of old, they
moved in a hungry body upon the trail of the bison.
As the vanguard of this grand but dilapidated army of the primitive
world closed in upon the Agency, it was met by the vanguard of the
greater commercial army of civilisation, and a wordy skirmish ensued.
These were the inevitable collectors who hang about an Indian payment
like a crowd of crows scenting a carcass. One might have heard such a
conversation as this above the tumult of the meeting races:
“Well, Big Bear, goin’ to pay that note to-day?”
“Ugh?”
“I say [voice raised a key], are you goin’ to pay that note—_muska
zhinga, wabugazee_ [money, note]?”
“_Unkazhee!_” (Don’t understand.)
“Damn your black hide, Big Bear, you can talk as good as I can! I say,
[voice raised to a shriek] if you don’t pay that note, I’ll come over
to your place and take every dodgasted, straw-bellied _shonga_ [pony]
you’ve got!”
“Gad up!”
And the delinquent debtor put the whip to his long-haired, shambling
mortgages and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
The Omaha is a genius for contracting debts. At the beginning of the
big payment, the aggregate debts of the tribe were roughly estimated at
$200,000, the living representative of long-digested groceries, starved
ponies, shattered vehicles and forgotten alcoholic debauches.
The Government, in the wisdom of blindness, had caused large placards
to be posted at the entrances to the Agency grounds, bearing this
order: “No collector of any description shall be allowed within a
radius of half a mile from the pay station.” Accordingly, the burly
Indian police strutted about in blue clothes and brass buttons
obstreperously hustling the white creditors over the half-mile line,
where they lounged in disconsolate groups along the dusty highway,
playing mumble-peg, pitching horseshoes, and verbally sending the
entire tribe to the devil.
“Be cussed if I don’t hate to see the Twentieth Century kicked
downstairs this way by the Dark Ages! Cussed if I don’t!” Thus a little
wiry, pale-faced undertaker was heard to exclaim. His name was Comfort
and he appeared to be a positive misery both to himself and to the
delinquent relatives of the many good Indians he had laid away.
Beside the little undertaker, there were lawyers, bankers’ clerks,
grocerymen, liverymen, middlemen, butchers, doctors, and a half
dozen politicians, there for the purpose of whipping the brown
voters into line. There were men like wolves, bears, dogs, goats,
roosters, beetles, scorpions. The little undertaker was the scorpion;
a middleman was like a bear; there was a banker’s clerk like a goat;
and a thin, angular, tall politician, with a body appropriately like an
interrogation point, who slunk about like a hungry wolf.
By ten o’clock the last stragglers of the tribe had arrived and the
Agency grounds were filled with circles of sweating, brown men, women,
and children, passing the stone pipe, tranquilly awaiting the coming of
the Agent, whose name, upon a reservation, is a shout.
By 10:30 the Agent appeared, riding down the dusty road from his
residence. He was preceded by mounted police of pompous bearing, who
shouted “The Agent! Make way for the Agent!” to the circles of their
tribesmen who sat in the dust of the highway.
A short while afterward the loungers at the half-mile line heard the
voice of a crier at the door of the pay station, calling the first name
on the roll in the golden autumnal silence.
“_Nuzhee Mona! Geegoho!_” (Rain Walker! Come here!)
Then the fact that Mr. Rainwalker, a leader of the tribe much indebted
to the white man, was about to be paid, became volatile as ammonia, and
the fluttering of time-yellowed legal paper was heard along the waiting
line of creditors.
“Owes me $6.46 with interest for four years!”
“Me $25 and interest—outlawed!”
“I’ve got the old cuss’s note for fifty!”
“I buried his fourth and sixth wives,” squeaked the little undertaker,
“seven and nine years ago, respectively!”
Such exclamations ran down the line like a volley in different
variations of vocal emphasis.
“Wonder how he’s votin’,” mused the hungry wolf of a politician.
“To the devil with politics!” roared the bear of a middleman; “I want
the rent back I advanced him!”
At that moment Mr. Rainwalker was seen to leave the station, mount
his pony, and proceed down the dusty road toward the half-mile line.
It had doubtless occurred to him that during past winters it had been
necessary to eat, and he was coming forth to make peace with the
groceryman.
At sight of the approaching debtor, the lounging line of creditors
sprang to its feet and stood at attention. The grocer, who spoke the
Omaha tongue fluently and had a snug fortune laid away in consequence,
walked rapidly in advance of the others and met Mr. Rainwalker at the
line, followed by the straggling crowd of expectant creditors like a
trailing cloud of hungry crows.
Mr. Rainwalker had a large, round, pockmarked face that looked for the
world like a pumpkin pie overbaked by a careless cook, with a monstrous
nose in the centre of it. He sat placidly upon his pony, that had
all the salient points of a starved cow, and dozed luxuriously at the
shortest halt. The old chief seemed the visible body of an optimistic
joke, sitting upon the bone heap of a tragedy!
The grocer had barely collected the greater share of the old man’s
check, when he became the centre of a noisy, gesticulating crowd of
creditors. It was the chatter of the crows about the carrion.
“You know you promised me that you would settle that note!” said the
goatlike bank clerk in his bleating voice.
“How about that rent money I advanced, Rainwalker?” roared the
bear-like middleman.
“I want my money for them wives I buried for you—_two of ’em_!”
squeaked the scorpionlike undertaker, holding up two explanatory
fingers and thrusting his thin, pale face into the mêlée.
“Ugh!” the old man answered rather unsatisfactorily.
“If you don’t pay me,” shrieked the incensed little undertaker, “I’ll
go right out on the hill and _dig up them boxes, by God_!”
“_Muska ningay!_” (no money) said the old man. “No pay ’em chil’n’s
money tall. All time lie to us. Goan votem Dimmiticrat, guess.”
And with this statement, bearing with it the fate of a national
representative, the old chief kicked the tenacious slumber out of his
pony and rode back to the Agency.
“Eh?” ejaculated the politician; “Votin’ Democratic, eh? Well, I’ll
be cussed! It’ll snow us under! Why in thunder do they refuse to pay
the money to the minor children? I tell you, gentlemen, it’ll snow us
under!”
“Drat politics!” squeaked the little undertaker. “Wisht I’d a-buried
’em all afore now. Cussed if I don’t go right out on that there hill
and dig them boxes up!”
The day wore on with an alarming recrudescence of Democracy among the
red men (who are not red, but chocolate). In the afternoon, the little
undertaker chased White Horse, another leading man of the tribe, into
the brush and returned with a broad grin upon his face.
“Beats the devil!” ejaculated the thin politician, “where a body
sometimes finds merriment! How’s he votin’, Comfort?”
“Votin’ Democrat—the whole cussed posse of ’em! But I don’t give a
cuss—Democrat or Republican money’s all the same to me. I got $15; one
of his kids I planted five years ago; died of Cuban itch; four-foot
pine box! He, he, he! I don’t give a cuss how they’re votin’.”
That night there was a meeting of Republican politicians at the Agency
office. A most alarming landslide had begun that day, bearing disaster
to the ranks of the Grand Old Party.
“Some more of those confounded departmental rulings!” exclaimed the
Agent to the company present. “It’s this grandmotherly solicitude
for the Indian that makes him an irresponsible scamp. Why, if the
Government had turned them all loose to sink or swim a decade ago,
Natural Law would, by this time, have solved the much mooted Indian
question. But what are we to do?” And the Agent stroked his Van Dyke
beard in perplexity.
“We’ve got to do something,” said the lean wolf with the body like a
question mark; “and there’s only one thing to do—get Meekleman here.
You remember how he wheedled them into line four years ago. If there’s
a man in the world who can bring them around, it’s Meekleman. And we’d
better get McBarty here, too. The two of them may be able to kick up a
successful powwow.”
Charles D. Meekleman was a Nebraska politician who was almost a
statesman, and had held important positions in Washington official
circles. McBarty was the Republican candidate for Congress. It was
decided that they should be sent for at once.
It was Friday evening when the two great men arrived; and upon Saturday
morning they came forth and allowed themselves to be gazed upon freely.
McBarty was a heavy-set, middle-sized man, with an earnest expression
of countenance, and the rather bewildered air of a candidate being led
forth to sacrifice for the first time. Meekleman was tall, superbly
built, clad in the faultless manner and bearing about him that air of
refinement which had won him from his rural constituents the name of
“Gentleman Charlie.” The manner of his shaking hands with any comer
was most consummate flattery; and although it was done with an air of
magnanimous condescension, there was something masterful in his eyes,
looking down kindly from his heavy brows, as from a battlemented tower,
that established the utmost confidence. He had the happy faculty of
disposing of a boiled potato at a farmhouse with a refined dignity
acquired over many a French dish at the banquets of the distinguished;
and the manner in which he addressed a bunch of squaws and bucks as
“ladies and gentlemen,” was surpassingly suave.
The two great men strolled leisurely, arm in arm, down the dusty road
to the pay station, stopping often to shake hands with the Omahas,
and radiating smiles like small human suns. When they had reached the
pay station, Mr. Meekleman approached the Agent, busy signing checks,
and said in his big, clear, slow voice, that it might be heard by the
lounging Indians: “Major, I wish you would announce to the gentlemen
that I want to talk to them this evening over at Fire Chief lodge.
Tell the gentlemen that I am very much grieved for them, and that I
shall endeavour to right their wrongs;” and he raised his heavy brows
and condescendingly smiled upon the brown loungers, while the Agent
instructed a policeman to make the announcement.
That evening a party consisting of the Agent, Messrs. Meekleman and
McBarty, and several local politicians, proceeded on foot to Fire Chief
lodge, which is a large octagonal shack placed in a lonesome valley a
mile distant from the Agency.
“Brace up, Mac!” said Meekleman, as the two walked along the lonesome
prairie road. “To-night I shall have the honour to make a man of
you—the Honourable James McBarty! Have a cigar and try to keep cool.”
“Yes, thanks. I was just feeling a little surprised at the lonesome
road that seems to lead to Congress—that was all. Do you really suppose
we can win them over?”
“Well, you shall see,” returned Meekleman. “Follow my suit and don’t
make faces at the soup; for one really must drink soup, you know, to
be Congressman from this district. I say, Mac, did you ever smoke
killikinick? Well, anyway, I advise you to smoke it to-night till the
back of your neck aches. Ha, ha! There is really no royal road to
Congress, Mac!” And Meekleman slapped the candidate upon the shoulder
and filled the great prairie silence with jovial laughter.
As the party neared the lodge, from which the light of the fire within
streamed out through the windows into the moon haze, they heard the
sound of the drum and the singing that accompanies an Indian feast; a
wild melodious flight of notes, threaded with the snarl of the drum
like the beat of a fevered temple, rising in ecstasy, like the wail of
a fitful night wind in the scrub oaks of a bluff, and falling suddenly
to die in a guttural note like the burr of a wounded rattlesnake. A
barbaric music filled with the sounds of Nature and old as the wrinkled
prairie!
“This,” said Meekleman, stopping near the entrance to listen to the
deep, beautiful voices within, “This, McBarty, is the Indian of
romance. Now for the bitter truth—and the soup!”
As they entered the long, narrow passageway leading into the lodge,
they saw before them a large octagonal room with a wood fire blazing in
the centre. About the dusky walls the huge, perverted shadows of the
singers flitted in grotesque dances as they swayed in the ecstasy of
song. A circle of brown men sat about the sputtering fire over which a
large iron kettle steamed forth the scent of beef. Near the circle sat
the smaller circle of drummers about a washtub with a cowhide stretched
across it.
Within the larger circle near the fire, sat a squaw, cutting bits of
beef from a quantity of ribs that she held conveniently in her lap.
“Shade of Mrs. Rorer!” exclaimed the would-be Congressman in a whisper
to his companion; “is _that_ the soup?”
“Hist!” returned Meekleman; “one should be willing to suffer for his
country!”
At the entrance of the great men, the singing ceased abruptly, and the
singers turned their sullen, brute-like eyes upon their visitors and
grunted.
“Are there any of the leading men here?” asked Meekleman of the Agent.
Rainwalker and White Horse were both present.
“Ah!” said Meekleman, pointing to an unusually homely old Indian; “who
is that black scamp with the big face and the re_mark_ably stupendous
nose?”
“Rainwalker,” replied the Agent; “a leader; it would be well to make
peace with him first.”
Meekleman approached the old chief with his soft, white hand extended
and his face the picture of rapture.
“Well, well, Rainwalker! Here you are! I’m glad to see you, Mr.
Rainwalker! How well you look; I needn’t ask about your health; your
complexion could scarcely be surpassed!”
Mr. Rainwalker turned a shade lighter with pride and grinned, returning
the great man’s salutation with a large bunch of beef-scented silence.
Meekleman sat down cross-legged in the circle and took the circulating
stone pipe in his turn, smoked heroically and drank large quantities
of hot soup. The sullen faces of the firelit circle brightened.
Old Rainwalker began to talk in his own tongue, staring meanwhile
meditatively into the fire. For several minutes his deep musical voice
ran on with occasional dignified pauses and gestures indicating that he
spoke of the great white man beside him. Meekleman gave an Indian youth
a coin to act as interpreter.
“He says,” said the youth, “that you all time walk with good people and
eat good stuff, but you are not too good, he says, to smoke and eat
with us, he says. He likes you pretty much, guess.”
The old chief talked again for some time, and then lapsed into
dignified silence.
“He says,” continued the youth, “that you have lived in the same lodge
with the Big Father at Washington, and you can get the money for the
chil’ns, he guess. That’s what he says.”
“Tell my dear brother,” said Meekleman, “that my heart is warm toward
my brown brothers, and that the children shall have their money. Tell
him that I played with the Big Father when he was a little boy, and
that I know the Big Father would be terribly angry if he knew that the
children had been refused their money. Tell him that I will see that
they get it.”
This short speech translated, sent a murmur of joy around the circle.
White Horse arose from the opposite side of the circle and brought a
cup of hot soup to his white brother as a special favour.
“And now,” said Meekleman, arising majestically as befitted the
erstwhile playmate of the President, “I shall introduce to you Mr.
McBarty. He will go to Washington for you and he will do many good
things for the Omahas.”
Mr. McBarty came forth and fell to shaking the brown hands of the
grown-up children. He started with Rainwalker, who carefully rubbed his
left hand upon his blanket before presenting it to the future saviour
of his race. Then after having shaken all the hands, including that of
the squaw who stripped beef from the ribs, the potential Congressman
fell heroically upon the soup and the killikinick.
An old Indian placed cross-legged near a wood fire with the feel of hot
soup in his belly, invariably becomes reminiscent. Old White Horse sat
staring into the sputtering flame with his face as expressionless as
a stone statue of Buddha, and his voice began in a low, musical tone,
rising as his memory quickened, and modulated with great oratorical
skill, for which he was noted in the tribe. His words translated ran
thus:
“These new times are not like the old times. When we old men were young
and the bison still bellowed on the prairies, we were strong and swift
and wise. Now we are weak and slow and not wise. I cannot understand.
It is all like a day when there is fog everywhere. When we were young
and fought the Pawnees and the Sioux, there were no bigger, wiser men
than Nuzhee Mona [Rainwalker] and Shonga Ska [White Horse]. Look at us
now! We are old and slow and we cannot see far to-day. Once when I was
young I found a sick bison bull wandering in the hills. He was weak and
half blind and he had lost the trail. We are weak and half blind and we
cannot find the old trail. I cannot understand.”
“Ah, ah, ah!” A groan ran about the firelit circle, intent upon the old
wise man’s word.
“We cannot find Wakunda [God] any more. He is not in the valleys any
more, nor on the hills. We cannot talk to the big white Wakunda. What
can we old men say to our foolish people when they need wise words?
Every day they are more like badgers. They eat much, drink firewater,
and are very foolish. But we have these white brothers and we will
listen to them. Their wisdom is the new wisdom; we will listen to them.”
“Ah, ah!” assented the listeners.
For an hour the circle sat staring into the flame, thinking of the old
times. Then without a word, Rainwalker and White Horse arose and passed
out of the lodge and the others followed.
“Well,” said Meekleman to McBarty, as they walked along the lonesome
road toward the Agency, “I have the honour to address the Hon. James
McBarty!”
The other did not answer for several minutes.
“Meekleman,” said McBarty at length, “don’t you suppose I _can_ do
something for these poor devils?”
“Ah, McBarty,” returned Meekleman, “I am afraid you will never be a
politician!”
Upon the following Monday morning when the tribe gathered for the
continuation of the big payment, the news began to circulate that the
great white man had gone to see the Big Father at Washington about
the payment of the money to the minor children. As this news was
authenticated by White Horse and Rainwalker themselves, it was readily
believed, and in one day four hundred brown votes swung over to the
Republican faith again.
On Tuesday, a week before election, there was not a brown Democrat on
the reserve. This state of affairs continued on through the week until
Friday evening, at which time no word had come from the Big Father.
The Democratic candidate for Congress, Judge Roberts, had arrived at
the Agency during the week to battle in person against the impending
calamity. All week he and his retainers led the forlorn hope. But on
Friday afternoon, when the news so impatiently awaited by the Indians
had not yet arrived, the all but lost cause began to gain a foothold in
a persistent rumour that hinted that maybe the Indian had been fooled
after all. Maybe Meekleman didn’t intend to intercede for the Indians
at all; and accordingly, one by one, the brown men wondered, doubted,
wavered and lost hope, until by Saturday evening, when the pay station
closed, there had begun a restless, slow, and certain movement among
the Omahas toward the Democratic ranks.
When Monday morning came, twenty-four hours before the opening of the
polls, the political condition of the Omahas could have been summed up
in one laconic conversation:
“Well, _cuggie_, [friend] how are you voting?”
“Dimmiticrat, guess!”
McBarty strolled leisurely about among the Omahas with an enigmatical
smile upon his face, seeming to be unconscious of the crushing defeat
he was, apparently, about to receive. The day wore on and hour by
hour grew the triumph of the Judge, who now already felt himself the
“Gentleman from Nebraska.”
At five o’clock in the evening the two candidates were seen talking
together at the door of the pay station.
“Well, Mac,” said the Judge, “it’s looking a little dark for you. I
swear, a week ago I would have sold my chances for a cent!”
McBarty repeatedly looked up the dusty government trail leading north
from the station with an expression of anxiety.
“Well,” he said, “allow me to congratulate the Hon. John Roberts of
Nebraska!” He smiled gravely as he shook the hand of his rival. “All I
regret now,” he added, “is that I drank that soup!”
“Thanks!” replied the Judge. “It really seems a shame, however, that
one should go to Congress at the hands of these savages, eh?”
“Yes,” said McBarty, taking a long gaze up the trail; “it is a shame,
to be sure!”