Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860

by Henrietta Christian Wright

1823-1893

At twelve o'clock on a summer night, nearly a half century ago, a young man of twenty-three stood in the shadow of a great Indian camp watching intently the scene before him. On the farther side of the camp a number of Indians were gathered about the fire, which threw into relief their strong, handsome frames, for they were all young and formed, as they stood there, the hope and ambition of their tribe. Suddenly a loud chant broke the silence of the night, and at the same time the young braves began circling around the fire in a grotesque, irregular kind of dance. The chant was now interrupted by bursts of sharp yells, and the motions of the dancers, now leaping, now running, again creeping slyly, suggested the movements of some stealthy animal; this was, in fact, what was intended, for the young warriors were the "Strong Hearts" of the Dacotahs, an association composed of the bravest youths of the tribe, whose totem or tutelary spirit was the fox, in whose honor they were now celebrating one of their dances.

The stranger, who stood looking on at a little distance away, since the superstitions of the tribe would not allow him to approach too near the scene of the solemnities, was Francis Parkman, a Harvard graduate, who had left civilization for the purpose of studying the savage form of Indian life face to face.

Parkman was born in Boston in 1823. He was noted as a child who threw himself body and soul into whatever happened to be the pursuit of the hour, and thus illustrated even in childhood the most striking feature of his character. During a residence in the country from his eighth to his twelfth year he was seized with a passion for natural history, and bent all his energies to collecting eggs, insects, reptiles, and birds, and to trapping squirrels and woodchucks, practising in the meantime shooting in Indian fashion with bow and arrow. At twelve he forsook natural history and found chemistry the only interest in life. For four years longer he now secluded himself largely from family life and youthful companions, while he experimented in his amateur laboratory. Acids, gases, specific gravity, and chemical equations were the only delight of his life, and he pursued his experiments with all the ardor of the old seekers of the philosopher's stone. But at sixteen the charms of chemistry faded, and he became again a haunter of the woods, but was saved in the end from becoming a naturalist by an equally strong passion for history, a passion so real that at eighteen he had chosen his life-work, that of historian of the French in the New World. With the idea of his work had also come the conception of its magnitude, and he calmly looked forward to twenty years of hard and exacting labor before realizing his hopes. Still, mastered by the spirit of thoroughness, he spent all his vacations in Canada, following in the footsteps of the early French settlers. Here in the forest, he slept on the earth with no covering but a blanket, exhausted his guides with long marches, and exposed his health by stopping neither for heat nor rain. Fascinated by the visions of forest life and with the pictures which the old stories called up, Parkman entered upon the literary preparation for his work with zeal. Indian history and ethnology were included in his college course, while he spent many hours that should have been devoted to rest in studying the great English masters of style. He was graduated at twenty-one, and after a short trip to Europe started for the Western plains to begin his historical studies from nature.

For months he and a college friend had followed the wanderings of a portion of the Dacotahs in their journey across the Western prairies to the Platte River, where they were to be joined by thousands of others of their tribe, and take part in the extermination of the Snake Indians, their bitter enemies. They had suffered from the heat and the dust of the desert; they had hunted buffalo among the hills and ravines of the Platte border, and had slept night after night in open camps while wolves and panthers crawled dangerously near. To all intents and purposes their life was that of the Indian of the plains, an alien to civilization, a hunter of buffalo, and an enemy to all human beings except those of his own nation.

It was in the year 1846, three years before the discovery of gold in California, and the great West was still a land of forests, and the home of wandering tribes of Indians. From the Mississippi to the Pacific coast the country was entirely unsettled, with the exception of a few military forts and trading-posts. Here the Indian lived as his race had lived from time immemorial. Dressed in his robe of skins, with his gay moccasins on his feet, his dog-skin quiver at his back, and his powerful bow slung across his shoulder, the Dacotah of that day was a good specimen of a race that has almost disappeared. The only two objects in life were war and the hunt, and he was ready at a moment's notice to strike his tent and engage in either.

Six or eight times during the year the Great Spirit was called upon, fasts were made, and war parades celebrated preliminary to attacks upon other tribes, while during the remainder of the time he hunted the buffalo which supplied him with every necessity of life. The coverings for their tents, their clothing, beds, ropes, coverings for their saddles, canoes, water-jars, food, and fuel, were all obtained from this animal, which also served as a means of trading with the posts. The Indians had obtained rifles from the whites in a few cases, but they still largely used the bow and arrow, with which their predecessors on the plains had hunted the mammoth and mastodon in prehistoric ages. Their arrows were tipped with flint and stone, and their stone hammers were like those used by the savages of the Danube and Rhine when Europe was still uncivilized.

While civilization had laid a chain of cities and towns around the borders of the continent, the American Indian of the interior remained exactly as his forefathers had been. And it was to study this curious specimen of humanity, whose like had faded from almost every other part of the world, that Parkman had come among them. He wished to reveal the Indian in his true character, and he thought he could only do this by living the Indian life. And so, for six months, he shared their lodges, their feasts, hunts, and expeditions of war. He became acquainted with their beliefs in the Great Spirit, the father of the universe, and in the lesser spirits which controlled the winds and rain, and which were found inhabiting the bodies of the lower animals. He learned to know the curious character of their "medicine-men" and their witch-doctors, and all their strange superstitions regarding the mysteries of life and death and the origin of man.

Suffering constantly from physical ills, and in danger of death at any moment from the treachery of the red men, Parkman yet was able to maintain his position among them with dignity, and to be acknowledged worthy of their hospitality, and he took advantage of this to make his study of them thorough. The Dacotahs were a branch of the Sioux, one of the fiercest of the tribes of the plains. In his journey with them Parkman traversed the regions of the Platte, which was one of the best known routes to Oregon and California. Frequent parties of emigrants passed them on their way to new homes, and those, with the traders' posts and occasional bands of hunters, gave them their only glimpses of white faces. Reaching the upper waters of the Platte, they branched off for a hunting trip to the Black Hills, and then returning, made the passage of the Rocky Mountains, gained the head-waters of the Arkansas, and so returned to the settlements.

It was a trip full of danger and adventure, but Parkman had gained what he wanted—a picture of Indian life still preserved in the solitudes of the plains and mountains as inviolate as the rivers and rocks themselves. A few years later the discovery of gold in California changed this condition almost as if by magic. The plains and mountains became alive with unnumbered hosts of emigrants on their way to the gold fields. Cities and towns sprung up where before Indian lodges and buffalo herds had held sway. Year by year the Indians changed in character and habits, adopting in some measure the dress of the whites and their manner of living. The true Indian of the plains passed out of history, and but for Parkman's visit, even the memory of him as an example of the picturesque freedom of savage life, might have been lost.