II

MY first wish for an Indian was to add to the effect of my wigwam. I’ve always been rather partial to the Indian race because there is a tradition (which cannot be verified) that my great grandmother, Abigail Eastman Webster, had a slight infusion of Indian blood. She was a noble looking woman, I have been told, with rather a dark skin and large black eyes. Her son, Daniel Webster, possibly owed to her his swarthy complexion and wonderful eyes, like “Lanterns on a dark night,” as the Websters were mostly of a florid complexion, and addicted to red hair.

I feared my dear old Indian (my first purchase) might look too much like an advertisement as he carried a bunch of cigars in his right hand, so this was removed and replaced by a tomahawk.

Next I suspected my unnamed brave might feel lonely; any way he looked so, as he was from the busy Bowery of New York, so I begged friends to aid me in providing him with an attractive spouse.

Many hunted but in vain; at last there was a squaw reported from Leicester, Mass., but alas! she had lost both feet. With the usual pedal appendages she would have cost $35.00, “but seeing as how she was crippled, she might go for $15.00.”

I bought her and she looks all right with her stumps of ankles set deep in the ground and heavy stones around them to keep her firmly planted. The couple seem very real and human to me and I am often startled in the twilight by coming on the pair without thinking that they are always there. I intend to put a Cupid in the bushes near by or behind a sassafras tree, to make it a little more exciting. I regret not giving them any names but may do so, if I can decide on something appropriate. I have a splendid portrait of Tecumseh, but that name does not seem right.

And what a long list there is; I will only give a few, as Massasoit, Squanto, Black Hawk, Pontiac, Red Jacket, Leather Stocking, Quizquiz, Katsa, Red Cloud, Many Horns, Spotted Wolf, Yeh-toot-sah, Yok-ki-e-to, and finally the name I like best, “Samoset,” that good Indian who was the first to welcome the Puritans in 1621, saying “Welcome Englishmen, Welcome Englishmen!” He told the Pilgrims to possess the land, as those to whom it had belonged were swept away by a pestilence. So Samoset, it shall be and the woman? No “set” to her for her knees have no bend to them, “Squaw-without-feet” is true and sounds like some of their queer names.

A Young and Pretty Mother
A Brave Gazing
A Highland Chieftain
On the Watch

I own that I am a bit superstitious about Indians and fancy I am liked and protected by them, after several unusual experiences which I take this opportunity to refer to the Society for Psychical Research. In California, years ago, just after I had put up my wigwam at home, I was barking as for the last twenty years with a chronic bronchial irritation and was urged to visit a remarkable healer who had “suddenly been controlled by the spirit of a cultivated woman, a medical missionary, who had been most successful in India but who had died after a few years of brilliant practice.” Making an engagement two weeks in advance, which was necessary, owing to the great rush to be cured, I took a massage treatment and greatly enjoyed the talk of the returned missionary, which was all at once broken up by her place in the rubber’s mind being usurped by a powerful American Indian who, through the medium, kept up a vigorous yet not rough rubbing, slapping and putting hot hands all about my throat; talking too as he worked, so enthusiastically. I think he was a pretty knowing individual for this is what he said. “Ugh! Ugh! Wah! Wah! This Squaw, she talkem heapum, she now quite bad off, but Ugh Wah! we patch her up! Will make her pokagee! Yes, Pokagee!” Then he left as quickly as he came and I noticed that poor Mrs. Seldon was breathing hard and was in a profuse perspiration. When she opened her eyes, she sighed and inquired in her own quiet, gentle way, “Have you had a good rub?” That evening, I went to a Reception for some of the Professors of Stanford University with the promise of being “Pokagee” still in my head and as one of the gentlemen was a teacher of the Indian languages and dialects, I ventured in a timid, hesitating manner to inquire “May I ask if there is such a word as Pokagee in any Indian dialect?”

And the learned man replied at once, “Certainly.”

“Please tell me what it means.”

“It is used to express cured, or in perfect health.”

“O, thank you,” I said, “and just one more question—what tribe has that word?”

“The Pottawatamie.”

And strange to relate my Astral Masseur had belonged to that particular tribe. I forgot to say that he spoke of his pleasure over the Tepee I had built on my grounds and said the Indians long ago loved to walk and hunt in my woods. And he added, “They like to go to Tepee now; seems like their own place.”

Again a friend took me to one of the best known and most valued medical women in New York for a shampoo and a treatment of my face which certainly did need to be steamed and electrified. Imagine the general astonishment when another Indian spirit kindly “controlled” the masseuse, (something which she affirmed had never happened before) and he wished to encourage me about my heart as several doctors still in the flesh had been criminally or at least brutally frank about its condition and I was naturally alarmed. And he said “No need worry about heart; you no got bad heart, only what I call nervous heart. You got scared but you stay out doors and let books alone. When you go home go to the Tepee and stand by it, and some of us will go walk with you. We are often there.”

Whatever that was, it did me much more good than the physicians, who frightened me into an abnormal and utterly useless despondency, but whose charges were so high as to increase my temperature and heart action. So me for the Medicine Man of Mystery—with thanks. Excuse this personal digression.

Goddess of Liberty and three other Attractive Ladies