LITMIR.BIZ

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attacks, and the woman felt that her task was easy in comparison. The Indian child rules the family. They are rarely, if ever, corrected. No Indian mother was ever known to strike her child. If they want anything they cry until they get it – and they know how to cry. In play they are as mirthful and boisterous as any white child. They ride mock horses, and play mud ball. The Indian boy prepares willow sticks, peels off the bark, then rolls the wet clay into balls, and, sticking the ball on the end of the twig, he throws it at a mark with great speed and accuracy. Perhaps the most popular sport among the children is what they term the stick game. Again willow rods are used without the bark, only this time they are cut short enough to be rigid, and they drive them with great velocity up an inclined board. When the stick leaves the board it speeds like an arrow far in the distance. Every Indian boy and girl owns a pony, from which they are almost inseparable, and which they ride with fearless abandon.

      While men are off in search of game the women make bead work of a most bewitching order, meanwhile watching the pappoose, fastened completely in its wooden bead-covered cradle, only the head protruding. The cradle is hung from a lodge pole or the bough of a tree, rattles and bells playing in the breeze. Other women gather in the shade and play the game of plum stone, a gambling game. They use the stones of the wild plum, which they colour with fanciful devices, and toss them up in a wooden bowl.

      The wooing of Indian lovers varies with the tribes. One pair of lovers seal their vows by standing a little removed from the parental lodge, with a blanket covering their heads. In another tribe the negotiations are made entirely through the parents, when the transaction resolves itself into a barter, so many ponies for a bride; while in still another tribe, when a love fancy strikes a young man, he arranges to meet the young woman who has attracted him as she goes to the river for water. They pass each other in the path without any recognition. This occurs two or three times. Finally if the young girl welcomes these attentions she looks toward him as they pass. That night he comes to the lodge of her parents, remains outside, beating a tomtom and singing the love song. The young girl then goes out to meet him and they sit outside and talk. The next morning the mother asks her daughter about the affair, and then the mother invites the young man to come and dine with them and sit around the campfire. Thus the courtship proceeds until he finally says, “I will take this girl for my wife,” and the two go to their own lodge. The Indian has an unwritten code of family morals to which he most rigidly adheres. In some tribes no Indian will cross the threshold of another if the wife of that man is alone, and in others no brother goes into the house where his sister is unless she has a companion. This is an ancient law and belongs to many tribes. The Crows have an eccentric custom that a sister after marriage is not allowed to be seen in public with her brother. Should an Indian alienate the affections of the wife of another Indian or steal his horse the injured one would be justified in taking his rifle and killing the offender. The whole camp would sanction the action on the ground that it would rid the camp of bad blood.

      The Indian's civility and hospitality, both to his own kind and to strangers, has been a marked feature of his character from the coming of the white man to the present day. When Columbus touched the shores of the New World the friendly Caribs gave him hearty welcome. The heart's right hand of fellowship was stretched out in welcome and hospitality as explorers and settlers landed on American soil. Dignity, generosity, and courtesy marked the attitude of the Indian toward these new white strangers. The character generally attributed to the Indian is that of a savage, but this blemish came upon him through contact with the white man. Their ingenuous and trustful nature quickly degenerated as they were enslaved, betrayed, and slain. Advantage was taken of their ignorance and kindness. Then came on a race war unparalleled in ferocity and barbarism. The inexorable march of civilization regardless of ethics swept on until we heard the Indians' war cry and failed to see the diviner grace of friendship. The Indian returned with interest every injury and hardship, every bitter assault and wicked aggression. He paid in full all accounts in the coin of pitiless revenge. These shadows obliterate our thought of him as courtier and hospitable host. The Indian will divide his last crust and then go hungry himself that you may have his half of the crust. Had it not been for Indian generosity in furnishing supplies of food, the early settlers in both New England and Virginia must have perished with hunger. Every guest entering an Indian wigwam is met by all the graces of hospitality – in cordial greeting – in a splendid home feeling.

      Indian trails are no longer worn deep through the prairie sod, they have been growing ever more dim and indistinct. It is to-day, the “thin red line,” a swift gathering of all that is left, in the gloaming, after the sunset.

      THE STORY OF THE CHIEFS

      The American mind could conceive a republic but not an Indian. America could conquer the Old World and rise redeemed and victorious when rent by the awful whirlwind of internal strife. But the red man defied her. His call rang across the plain like an autumn storm through the forests, and his fellow red men answered like clustering leaves. History shudders at the tale. Now look over the shoulder. When the fiery tongue of the Revolution blazed into the undying speech of liberty, Madison, Mason, Patrick Henry, and Edmund Randolph uttered their declaration that like a sunbeam has been written upon every page of the nation's history: “All men are by nature equally free and have inherent rights – namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Upon the inviolability of this sublime doctrine the early colonists fought for liberty, and the nation flung a battle line more than two thousand miles long, and engaged at arms over two millions of men, in order to procure liberty for another race. Once again, set each luminous word in this declaration over against the disposition and destiny that we have imposed upon the North American Indian. And then picture these famous Indian chiefs, gathered from many widely scattered wigwams; hear again and for the last time a life story that rounds itself out into an epic of sorrow; listen for the heavy footfalls of departing greatness; watch the grim faces, sternly set toward the western sky rim, heads still erect, eagle feathers, emblems of victory, moving proudly into the twilight, and a long, solitary peal of distant thunder joining the refrain of the soul – and it is night.

      Chief Plenty Coups

      Chief Plenty Coups, chief of the Crow Nation, was exalted to the head of all the Crows because of his untarnished valour on the field of battle, because of the supremacy of his statesmanship, and his loyalty to the interests of his tribe. He derived his name, “many coups,” from the fact that he was able to add eagle feather after eagle feather to his coup stick, counting coups in victory. When a lad of sixteen his brother was killed by the Sioux. The boy, bewildered with grief, climbed for two days, struggling to reach the summit of some high peak in the Crazy Mountains, there to give vent to his grief and pray for revenge. While he prayed to the sun he mutilated his body. Upon those lonely heights, never before desecrated by human footsteps, he dedicated his life to battle. Before he was twenty-six he had counted a coup of each kind and was made a chief, and named “Many Achievements.” At sixty-three years of age he stands as erect as a solitary pine on a lonely hill crest. He has the bearing and dignity of a royal prince and wears his honours and war dress with all the pride and courtliness of a patrician. He glories in the fact that from his earliest days he has never fought the white man, but his life has been a long series of conflicts with other Indian nations. Before the white man ever placed his footsteps upon Indian soil his days were filled with struggle in warding off the blows of hostile tribes who sought the women and the horses of his own people. Then, to use his own expression: “The Great Father ordered that we should stop fighting and live in peace, and since that time we have had allotments of land, schools have been built for the education of our children, and as an illustration of the feelings of my heart to-day, I am at peace with all the tribes, they are all my brothers, and I meet them all as one man. I shall live for my country and shall remain in peace, as I feel peaceful toward my country.” The reign of this great chief over his tribe is one of benignity and beneficence. He is greatly concerned in his last days to raise up young men who shall know the rights and opportunities of his people and who shall thus have influence at Washington, which he has many times visited and where he is always welcome. The smile of Chief Plenty Coups is worth crossing many miles of prairie to see. It was eminently fitting that this great chief on the grounds of his own Indian tribe should receive the chiefs attending the last Great Indian Council.

      Chief

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