Yellow Fox lapsed into another prolonged silence. The dancers and singers in the lodge had ceased. A heavy, sultry silence filled the night. When he spoke again his voice came low and muffled:
“I buried her after the manner of my people. I sang the songs of the dead. Above her grave I killed the pony that she rode. And then I went away upon the trail that was no more the trail of summer. But the winds in the grasses sang her name. Mignon! Mignon! I heard the rain winds singing in the first leaves. Mignon! Mignon! I heard the sighing of summer waters. Mignon! Mignon! I smelled the smell of spring. Everywhere it was—Mignon!—half sound, half smell—dream-sound, dream-smell—so thin—so thin.”
XVIII
A POLITICAL COUP AT LITTLE OMAHA
THE struggle for Congressional honours in the Third District of Nebraska was to be a hard one. The white voters of the District were about evenly divided between the two parties, and therefore the necessary elective majority was to be found among the Omaha Indians, whose reservation lies in this district.
So this remnant of the Dark Ages became of pivotal importance in Twentieth Century politics; and it was here, in the wildest land of the district, that the decisive battle of strategy must be fought.
For practical purposes, the intelligent white voter ceased to exist, and there was only a slothful, ignorant band of semi-savages who should choose by chance the national representative of educated thousands.
The typical reservation Indian is primarily a stomach, and secondarily nothing in particular. Let him fill his belly and he is easily handled. This axiom had been taken as a basis for action by the whiphands of the Democratic Party, who, accordingly, scattered broadcast throughout the reservation considerable quantities of the meat of superannuated bulls; sat in the feasts with cross-legged condescension; smoked the reeking stone pipes; drank hot soup with the suppressed shudders of a revolting stomach, and called the brown men “brothers.”