_To Richard Wilby, Esq., Eton College, Windsor_.
My Dear Dick,--It is very good of you, among your severe studies at Eton,
to write to your Uncle. I am extremely pleased to hear that your
football is appreciated in the highest circles, and shall be happy to
have as good an account of your skill in making Latin verses.
I am glad you like "She," Mr. Rider Haggard's book which I sent you. It
is "something like," as you say, and I quite agree with you, both in
being in love with the heroine, and in thinking that she preaches rather
too much. But, then, as she was over two thousand years old, and had
lived for most of that time among cannibals, who did not understand her,
one may excuse her for "jawing," as you say, a good deal, when she met
white men. You want to know if "She" is a true story. Of course it is!
But you have read "She," and you have read all Cooper's, and Marryat's,
and Mr. Stevenson's books, and "Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn,"
several times. So have I, and am quite ready to begin again. But, to my
mind, books about "Red Indians" have always seemed much the most
interesting. At your age, I remember, I bought a tomahawk, and, as we
had also lots of spears and boomerangs from Australia, the poultry used
to have rather a rough time of it.
I never could do very much with a boomerang; but I could throw a spear to
a hair's breadth, as many a chicken had occasion to discover. When you
go home for Christmas I hope you will remember that all this was very
wrong, and that you will consider we are civilized people, not Mohicans,
nor Pawnees. I also made a stone pipe, like Hiawatha's, but I never
could drill a hole in the stem, so it did not "draw" like a civilized
pipe.
By way of an awful warning to you on this score, and also, as you say you
want a _true_ book about Red Indians, let me recommend to you the best
book about them _I_ ever came across. It is called "A Narrative of the
Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, during Thirty Years' Residence
among the Indians," and it was published at New York by Messrs. Carvill,
in 1830.
If I were an American publisher, instead of a British author (how I wish
I was!) I'd publish "John Tanner" again, or perhaps cut a good deal out,
and make a boy's book of it. You are not likely to get it to buy, but
Mr. Steevens, the American bookseller, has found me a copy. If I lend
you it, will you be kind enough to illustrate it on separate sheets of
paper, and not make drawings on the pages of the book? This will, in the
long run, be more satisfactory to yourself, as you will be able to keep
your pictures; for I want "John Tanner" back again: and don't lend him to
your fag-master.
Tanner was born about 1780; he lived in Kentucky. Don't you wish you had
lived in Kentucky in Colonel Boone's time? The Shawnees were roaming
about the neighbourhood when Tanner was a little boy. His uncle scalped
one of them. This made bad feeling between the Tanners and the Shawnees;
but John, like any boy of spirit, wished never to learn lessons, and
wanted to be an Indian brave. He soon had more of being a brave than he
liked; but he never learned any more lessons, and could not even read or
write.
One day John's father told him not to leave the house, because from the
movements of the horses, he knew that Indians were in the woods. So John
seized the first chance and nipped out, and ran to a walnut tree in one
of the fields, where he began filling his straw hat with walnuts. At
that very moment he was caught by two Indians, who spilled the nuts, put
his hat on his head, and bolted with him. One of the old women of the
tribe had lost her son, and wanted to adopt a boy, and so they adopted
Johnny Tanner. They ran with him till he was out of breath, till they
reached the Ohio, where they threw him into a canoe, paddled across, and
set off running again.
In ten days' hard marching they reached the camp, and it was worse than
going to a new school, for all the Indians kicked John Tanner about, and
"their dance," he says, "was brisk and cheerful, _after the manner of the
scalp dance_!" Cheerful for John! He had to lie between the fire and
the door of the lodge, and every one who passed gave him a kick. One old
man was particularly cruel. When Tanner was grown up, he came back to
that neighbourhood, and the first thing he asked was, "Where is Manito-o-
geezhik?"
"Dead, two months since."
"It is well that he is dead," said John Tanner. But an old female chief,
Net-ko-kua, adopted him, and now it began to be fun. For he was sent to
shoot game for the family. Could anything be more delightful? His first
shot was at pigeons, with a pistol. The pistol knocked down Tanner; but
it also knocked down the pigeon. He then caught martins--and measles,
which was less entertaining. Even Indians have measles! But even
hunting is not altogether fun, when you start with no breakfast and have
no chance of supper unless you kill game.
The other Red Indian books, especially the cheap ones, don't tell you
that very often the Indians are more than half-starved. Then some one
builds a magic lodge, and prays to the Great Spirit. Tanner often did
this, and he would then dream how the Great Spirit appeared to him as a
beautiful young man, and told him where he would find game, and
prophesied other events in his life. It is curious to see a white man
taking to the Indian religion, and having exactly the same sort of
visions as their red converts described to the Jesuit fathers nearly two
hundred years before.
Tanner saw some Indian ghosts, too, when he grew up. On the bank of the
Little Saskawjewun there was a capital camping-place where the Indians
never camped. It was called _Jebingneezh-o-shin-naut_--"the place of two
Dead Men." Two Indians of the same _totem_ had killed each other there.
Now, their _totem_ was that which Tanner bore, the _totem_ of his adopted
Indian mother. The story was that if any man camped there, the ghosts
would come out of their graves; and that was just what happened. Tanner
made the experiment; he camped and fell asleep. "Very soon I saw the two
dead men come and sit down by my fire opposite me. I got up and sat
opposite them by the fire, and in this position I awoke." Perhaps he
fell asleep again, for he now saw the two dead men, who sat opposite to
him, and laughed and poked fun and sticks at him. He could neither speak
nor run away. One of them showed him a horse on a hill, and said,
"There, my brother, is a horse I give you to ride on your journey home,
and on your way you can call and leave the horse, and spend another night
with us." So, next morning, he found the horse and rode it, but he did
not spend another night with the ghosts of his own _totem_. He had seen
enough of them.
Though Tanner believed in his own dreams of the Great Spirit, he did
_not_ believe in those of his Indian mother. He thought she used to
prowl about in the daytime, find tracks of a bear or deer, watch where
they went to, and then say the beast's lair had been revealed to her in a
dream. But Tanner's own visions were "honest Injun." Once, in a hard
winter, Tanner played a trick on the old woman. All the food they had
was a quart of frozen bears' grease, kept in a kettle with a skin
fastened over it. But Tanner caught a rabbit alive and popped him under
the skin. So when the old woman went for the bears' grease in the
morning, and found it alive, she was not a little alarmed.
But does not the notion of living on frozen pomatum rather take the gilt
off the delight of being an Indian? The old woman was as brave and
resolute as a man, but in one day she sold a hundred and twenty beaver
skins and many buffalo robes for rum. She always entertained all the
neighbouring Indians as long as the rum lasted, and Tanner had a narrow
escape of growing up a drunkard. He became such a savage that when an
Indian girl carelessly allowed his wigwam to be burned, he stripped her
of her blanket and turned her out for the night in the snow.
So Tanner grew up in spite of hunger and drink. Once, when starving, and
without bullets, he met a buck moose. If he killed the moose he would be
saved, if he did not he would die. So he took the screws out of the lock
of his rifle, loaded with them in place of bullets, tied the lock on with
string, fired, and killed the moose.
Tanner was worried into marrying a young squaw (at least _he_ says he did
it because the girl wanted it), and this led to all his sorrows--this and
a quarrel with a medicine-man. The medicine-man accused him of being a
wizard, and his wife got another Indian to shoot him. Tanner was far
from surgeons, and he actually hacked out the bullet himself with an old
razor. Another wounded Indian once amputated his own arm. The ancient
Spartans could not have been pluckier. The Indians had other virtues as
well as pluck. They were honest and so hospitable, before they knew
white men's ways, that they would give poor strangers new mocassins and
new buffalo cloaks.
Will it bore you, my dear Dick, if I tell you of an old Indian's death?
It seems a pretty and touching story. Old Pe-shau-ba was a friend of
Tanner. One day he fell violently ill. He sent for Tanner and said to
him: "I remember before I came to live in this world, I was with the
Great Spirit above. I saw many good and desirable things, and among
others a beautiful woman. And the Great Spirit said: 'Pe-shau-ba, do you
love the woman?' I told him I did. Then he said, 'Go down and spend a
few winters on earth. You cannot stay long, and you must remember to be
always kind and good to my children whom you see below.' So I came down,
but I have never forgotten what was said to me.
"I have always stood in the smoke between the two bands when my people
fought with their enemies . . . I now hear the same voice that talked to
me before I came into the world. It tells me I can remain here no
longer." He then walked out, looked at the sun, the sky, the lake, and
the distant hills; then came in, lay down composedly in his place, and in
a few minutes ceased to breathe.
If we would hardly care to live like Indians, after all (and Tanner tired
of it and came back, an old man, to the States), we might desire to die
like Pe-shau-ba, if, like him, we had been "good and kind to God's
children whom we meet below." So here is a Christmas moral for you, out
of a Red Indian book, and I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New
Year.