“We kind o’ laid low, an’ nothin’ happened fer quite a while; but one night a fine bunch o’ hosses was run off jist when they’s a big lot o’ treasure goin’ over the line, an’ the management was sure mad. They told us ’uns agin somethin’ had to be done, an’ despert quick this time. So we got busy. We begun to round ol’ Pocatello up, an’ he seemed to smell a rat or somethin’ 71 wuss, an’ started up Pocatello Crick yander, that there cañon, see? He went almighty fast too when he got started; so did we, now I tell you, an’ we jist kep’ a-foller’n’, an’ foller’n’, an’ foller’n’, we did––a hull lot ov us––an’––an’––an’ Pocatello never come back.”
Then the old squaw-man tapped the ashes from his pipe, and rising said, “Well, I guess I’ll cinch up the cayuse an’ ride some this a’ternoon.”
THE BABYLESS MOTHER
Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.––Saint Matthew.
One of the many signs that the Indian is human is his slowness to learn. Ever since 1492 the whiter man has been trying to force some supposedly useful things into the mind of him of the darker skin. One of these is that he of the blanket has no rights that he of the dress coat is bound to respect. The Indian rises in practical debate to this question. His arguments are not words, but the rifle and the scalping-knife. The whiter man demurs when he receives his justice dished up to him in redskin style.
It is unreasonable to the Indian that the white man should take from him his hunting grounds and limit his access to the very streams whence his people for ages uncountable filled their pantries for the winter. 73 He has learned to his disgust (without place for repentance) that equivalents are equivocations, and that the little baubles the fathers of the tribes had for their broad acres were mostly worthless. The civilized trick of procuring the mystic sign manual known as signature had fastened on them the gyves of perpetual poverty.
In addition to this, the nation demanded they should send their children to the white man’s school in the far, far away Eastern land, where they could not see them and from which so many of the red-faced lads and lassies returned with that dread disease, pulmonary tuberculosis. But they were only Indians, and what rights had they? When boys and girls were not promptly surrendered, the soldiers were sent to chase them down. It would not seem good to us to have big, brawny Indians on horseback give chase to our children, and catch and tie them like so many hogs, to be carted off to a land unknown to us; but then these are only Indians. That makes all the difference imaginable.
Some years ago the Fort Hall Indians 74 went on their usual trip to the edge of Yellowstone Park––Jackson’s Hole––for the purpose of laying in their annual supply of elk and bear meat. The government had forbidden this, yet they went, with their indispensable paraphernalia and camp equipage, taking the squaws (and papooses, of course) to dress and care for whatever of provision fell into their hands.