"We are passing.
See us passing by.
We are leaving the old behind us.
The new we seek to find. We are passing, passing by."
Crawling Elk followed, holding aloft a spear with a green plume; it was a turnip thrust through with a sharp-pointed, blackened stick, and behind him, two and two, came fifty of his young warriors carrying shining hoes upright, as of old they carried their lances, while at their shoulders, where quivers of arrows should have swung, dangled trim sheaves of green wheat and golden barley. The free fluttering of their feather-ornamented hair, the barbaric painting on their faces and hands, symbolized the old life, as the green arrows of the grain prefigured the new. Behind them rode their women, each bearing in her left hand a bunch of flowers. Those who could read wore on their bosoms a small, shining medal, and in their hair an eagle feather. No Tetong woman had ever worn a plume before.
Standing Elk, quaint and bent, rode by, singing a war-song, magnificent in his dress as war chief, leading some twenty young men. His hands were empty of the signs of peace, and his face was rapt with dreams of the past, but his young men carried long-handled forks which flamed in the sun, and bracelets of green grass encircled their firm, brown arms. They, too, were painted to signify their clan and their ancestry, and the "medicine" they affected was on their breasts. Their wives were close behind, each bearing a stalk of corn in bloom; their beaded saddles and gay blankets were pleasant to see. Every weapon bespoke warfare against weeds. Every ornament represented the better nature, the striving, the aspiration of its wearer.
Then came the school-children, adding a final note of pathos, poor little brown men and women trudging on foot to symbolize that they must go through life, plodding in the dust of the white man's chariot wheel—their toes imprisoned in a shapeless box of leather, their hair closely clipped, their clothing hot and restrictive. Each carried a book and a slate, and their faces were very intent and serious as they paced by on their way from the old to the new. They were followed by the school-band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," with splendid disregard of the broken faith of the government whose song it was.
And so they streamed by, these folk, accounted the most warlike of all red men, genially carrying out the wishes of their chief, illustrating, without knowing it, the wondrous change which had come to them; the old men still clinging to the past, the young men careless of the future, the children already transformed, and, as they glanced up, some smiling, some grave and dreaming, Elsie shuddered with a species of awe; it seemed as if a people were being disintegrated before her eyes; that the evolution of a race having proceeded for countless ages by almost imperceptible degrees was now and here rushing, as by mighty bounds, from war to peace, from hunting to harvesting, from primitive indolence to ordered thrift. They were, indeed, passing, as the plains and the wild spaces were passing; as the buffalo had passed; as every wild thing must pass before the ever-thickening flood of white ploughmen pressing upon the land.
Twice they circled, and then, as they all massed before him, Curtis rose to sign to them.
"I am very proud of you. All my friends are pleased. My heart is big with emotion and my head is full of thoughts. This is a great day for you and also for me. Some of you are sad, for you long for the old things—the big, broad plain, the elk, and the buffalo. So do I. I loved those things also. But you have seen how it is. The water of the stream never turns back to the spring, the old man never grows young, the tree that falls does not rise up again. So the old things come never again. We have always to look ahead. Perhaps, in the happy hunting-ground all will be different, but here now we must do our best to live upon the earth. It is the law that, now the game being gone, we must plough and sow and reap the fruit of the soil. That is the meaning of all we have done to-day. We have put away the rifle; we here take up the hoe.
"I am glad; my heart is like a bird; it sings when I see you happy. Listen—I will tell you a great secret. You see this young woman," he touched Elsie. "You see she wears the Tetong dress, the same as I; that means much. It signifies two things: Last year her heart was hard towards the Tetongs; now it is soft. She is proud of what you have done. She wears this dress for another reason; she is going to be my wife, and help me show you the good way." At this moment a chorus of pleased outcries broke forth. "Now, go to your feast. Let everything be orderly. To-night we will come to see you dance."
With an outburst of jocular whooping, the young men wheeled their horses and vanished under cover of a cloud of dust, while the old men and the women and the children moved sedately back to camp; the women chattering gayly over the day's exciting shows, and in anticipation of the dance which was to come.