THE TRUE AMERICAN.
The true American would rather work himself into luxury or the lunatic asylum than to hang like a great wart upon the face of nature.
CHESTNUT-BURR—XII "THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT."
Sitting Bull before the Council of the Sioux Nation—An Impressive Speech—Civilization and the Paleface Doing their Deadly Work—The Moccasins of a Mighty Nation.
The following speech of Sitting Bull has been specially translated and reported by our Indian editor, who is also wholesale and retail dealer in deceased languages, and general agent for home-made Sioux rhetoric and smoke-tanned Indian eloquence. New laid Indian laments with bead trimmings. Compiler of novel and desirable styles of war dances. Indian eloquence furnished to debating clubs and publishers of school readers:
"Warriors and war-scarred veterans of the frontier; Once more the warpath is overgrown with bunch grass, and the tomahawk slumbers in the wigwam of the red man. Grim-visaged war has given place to the piping times of peace. The cold and cruel winter is upon lus. It has been upon us for some time.
"The wail of departed spirits is on the night wind, and the wail of the man with the chilblain answers back from the warrior's wigwam.
"Children of the forest, we are few. Where once the shrill war-whoop of the chieftain collected our tribe like the leaves of the forest, I might now yell till the cows come home without bringing out a quorum.
"We are fading away before the march of the paleface, and sinking into oblivion like the snowflake on the bosom of the Stinking Water.
"Warriors, I am the last of a mighty race. We were a race of chieftains. Alas! we will soon begone. The Bull family will soon pass from the face of the earth. Ole is gone, and John is failing, and I don't feel very well myself. We are the victims of the paleface, and our lands are taken away.
"A few more suns, and the civilization, and valley tan, and hand made sour mash, and horse liniment of the paleface will have done their deadly work.
"Our squaws and pappooses are scattered to the four winds of heaven; and we are left desolate.
"Where is The-Daughter-of-the-Tempest? Where is The-Wall-Eyed-Maiden-With-the-Peeled-Nose?
"Where is Victoria Regina Dei Gracia Sitting Bull? Where is Knock-Kneed Chemiloon? Where are Sway-Back Sue and Meek-Eyed Government Socks?
"They have sunk beneath the fire-waters of the goggle-eyed Caucasian. They have succumbed to the delirum triangles, and when I call them they come not. They do not hear my voice. Their moans are heard upon the still night air, and they cry for revenge. Look at the sad remnant of the family of Sitting Bull, your chief. One sore-eyed squaw is left alone. Her face is furrowed o'er with the famine of many winters, and her nose is only the ruin of its former greatness. Her moccasins are worn out, and the soldier pants she wears are too long for her. She is drunk also. She is not as drunk as she can get, but she is hopeful and persevering. She has also learned to lie like the white man. She is now an easy, extemporaneous liar. When we gather around the campfire and enact our untutored lies in the gloaming, Lucretia Borgia Skowhegan Sitting Bull, with the inspiration of six fingers of agency coffin varnish, proceeds to tell the prize prevarication, and then the house adjourns, and nothing can be heard but the muffled tread of the agency corn beef, going out to get some fresh air. Lucretia Borgia is also becoming slovenly. It is evening, and yet she has not donned her evening dress. Her back hair is unkempt, and her front hair is unbung. Pretty soon I will take a tomahawk and bang it for her. She seems despondent and hopeless. As she leans against the trunk of a mighty oak and scratches her back, you can see that her thoughts are far away. Her other suspender is gone, but she don't care a cold, smooth clam. She is thinking of her childhood days by the banks of Minnehaha.
"Warriors, we stand in the moccasins of a mighty nation. We represent the starving remnant of the once powerful Sioux. Our pirogue stands idly on the shore. I don't know what a pirogue is, but it stands idly on the shore.
"When the spring flowers bloom again, and the grass is green upon the plains, we will once more go upon the warpath. We will avenge the wrongs of our nation. I have not fully glutted my vengeance. I have seven or eight more gluts on hand, and we will shout our war-cry once more, and mutilate some more Anglo-Saxons. We will silence the avenging cries of our people. We will spatter the green grass and gray greasewood with the gore of the paleface, and feed the white-livered emigrant to the coyote. We will spread death and desolation everywhere, and fill the air with gum overshoes and remains. Let us yield up our lives clearly while we mash the paleface beyond recognition, and shoot his hired man so full of holes that he will look like a suspension bridge.
"Warriors, there is our hunting ground. The buffalo, the antelope, the sage hen and the jackass rabbit are ours. Ours to enjoy, ours to perpetuate, ours to transmit. The Great Spirit created these animals for the red man, and not for the bilious tourists, between whose legs the chestnut sunlight penetrates clear up to his collar bone."
"Then we will ride down on the regular army, when he is thinking of something else, and we will scare him into convulsions, and our medicine men will attend to the convulsions while we sample the supplies.
"Then we will take some cold sliced Indian agent and some bay rum, and go on a picnic.
"Warriors, farewell. Be virtuous and you will be happy; but you will be lonesome, sometimes. Think of what I have said to you about the council fire, and govern yourselves accordingly, We will not murmur at the celluloid cracker and cast iron codfish ball, but in the spring we will have veal cutlets for breakfast, and peace commissioner on toast for dinner. The squaw of Sitting Bull shall have a new plug hat, and if the weather is severe, she shall have two of them.
"Warriors, farewell. I am done. I have spoken. I have nothing more to say. Sic semper domino. Plumbago erysipelas, in hock eureka, sciataca, usufruct, lim-burger, gobraugh."
CHESTNUT-BURR XIV—THE AMENDE HONORABLE.
Lingering Traditions—The Molder of Public Opinion—No Mirth in making the Amende Honorable—Four Minutes to Decide.
It is rather interesting to watch the manner which old customs have been slightly changed and handed down from age to age. Peculiarities of old traditions still linger among us, and are forked over to posterity like a wappy-jawed teapot or a long-time mortgage. No one can explain it, but the fact still remains patent that some of the oddities of our ancestors continue to appear, from time to time, clothed in the changing costumes of the prevailing fashion.
Along with these choice antiquities, and carrying the nut-brown flavor of the dead and relentless years, comes the amende honorable. From the original amende in which the offender appeared in public clothed only in a cotton-flannel shirt, and with a rope about his neck as an evidence of a formal recantation, down to this day when (sometimes) the pale editor, in a stickful of type, admits that "his informant was in error," the amende honorable has marched along with the easy tread of time. The blue-eyed molder of public opinion, with one suspender hanging down at his side, and writing on a sheet of news-copy paper, has a more extensive costume, perhaps, than the old-time offender who bowed in the dust in the midst of the great populace, and with a halter under his ear admitted his offense, but he does not feel any more cheerful over it.
I have been called upon several times to make the amende honorable, and I admit that it is not an occasion of mirth and merriment. People who come into the editorial office to invest in a retraction are generally very healthy, and have a stiff, reserved manner that no cheerfulness of hospitality can soften.
I remember of an accident of this kind which occurred last summer in my office, while I was writing something scathing. A large man with an air of profound perspiration about him, and plaid flannel shirt, stepped into the middle of the room, and breathed in the air that I was not using. He said he would give me four minutes in which to retract, and pulled out a watch by which to ascertain the exact time. I asked him if he would not allow me a moment or two to go over to the telegraph office and to wire my parents of my awful death. He said I could walk out of that door when I walked over his dead body. Then I waited a long time, until he told me my time was up, and asked what I was waiting for. I told him I was waiting for him to die, so that I could walk over his dead body. How could I walk over a corpse until life was extinct?
He stood and looked at me first in astonishment, afterward in pity. Finally tears welled up in his eyes, and plowed their way down his brown and grimy face. Then he said that I need not fear him. "You are safe," said he. "A youth who is so patient and so cheerful as you are—who would wait for a healthy man to die so that you could meander over his pulseless remnants, ought not to die a violent death. A soft-eyed seraph like you, who is no more conversant with the ways of this world than that, ought to be put in a glass vial of alcohol and preserved. I came up here to kill you and throw you in the rainwater barrel, but now that I know what a patient disposition you have, I shudder to think of the crime I was about to commit."