Some people seem to think that the Indian was created to keep before us a décolleté style of dress, adapted to the freedom of our institutions,—a traveller’s costume, most convenient for the administration of medical assistance, in case of such railroad divertisements and steamboat pyrotechnic displays as often enliven our journeyings.
An Indian Reservation.
(p. 81)
Others look upon the preservation of these remnants as providential fields for the employment of the patience of domestic missionaries. Young ladies contemplate them as the only living representatives of mythological Loves, the sole heirs to the bow and arrow. Others still admire them as our only legendary and poetic creations; the only ghostly figures that creep weirdly through our sharp-set American quadrilles.
But while such discordant notions rasp the American ear and conscience about their predecessors, there is a mode of hushing up all these family jars; one which seems to have been adopted in all ages, from the time of Joshua the son of Nun, down to the Irish wakes of our time, namely, to drown them all in the jubilant music procured and paid for at the expense of the estate to be divided up.
A few words in regard to Indian names. An affectionate and grateful regard for the painted races, which will soon be seen only in the picture-galleries and books of colored engravings, has sought to sow a crop of Indian names over our lakes, rivers, mountains, and towns. Unfortunately we have succeeded in keeping scarcely enough for seed. But one State has borrowed the name of the Indian himself,—Indian-ah?—she spelling it, however, in an un-English way, without a h, as if she had said,
“O, breathe not his name.”
The application of some of these names has been singularly felicitous, as Sing-Sing, where the State guests attempt no musical flights, but are made to hum quite another tune, if not to hush up altogether; Miss-ouri, whose ill-fated union in our Federal family has been attended with such left-handed rights,—State rights, Fanny Wrights, and, for a long time in Kansas, conflicting rights; Minnehaha, whose ringing laugh is during so long a portion of the year frozen in her soft throat; Kan-sas, suggestive of her capacity for billingsgate and free use of abusive language; Oregon, and yet inviting emigrants to her valuable mines while she laughs a cunning laugh under the protecting cap of Mount Hood; Wy-an-dot River, as if it had come to a sort of rocky comma, or interrupting ledge, over which it was pausing a moment for breath to take a hop-and-skip-and-carry-one overy leap; Pot-to-wat-o-my River, seeming like a whole family council around a skillet steaming over a fire, while the carrotty-headed mother was slightly walloping the youngest of the party for asking some improper question; Pawn-ee Fork, reminding one of those old-clothes shops kept by U. S., where the unsuspecting and improvident Indian, always in want, might be tempted to pledge his wild lands for a little ready cash, or a silver fork, or blue trinket; Man-hat-tan, as if to perpetuate the fact of the great head quality of the white man in dealing with the dusky ones for the purchase of the little island that carries as its name, a cover for the little transaction which transferred twenty-four dollars to the one, for the fourteen miles of real estate sandwiched between the North and East Rivers; Winne-bago, which sets one sneezing a coltish sneeze even at the head-waters of the Missis-sippi, and in her matronly presence; and a thousand other spicy aboriginal condiments, sprinkled, like pepper and salt over a luscious ham, over our continent, to make it more piquant and relishable in the taking.