CHAPTER XXVIII.
BACK TO EUROPE.
After peace was restored Buffalo Bill secured Government authority and selected a band of Indians—composed equally of the “active friendly,” headed by Chiefs Long Wolf, No Neck, Yankton Charley, Black Heart, and the “band of hostages” held by the military under Gen. Nelson A. Miles at Fort Sheridan, and headed by the redoubtable Short Bull, Kicking Bear, Lone Bull, Scatter, and Revenge—for a short European tour, and they left Philadelphia in the chartered Red Star steamer Switzerland. The significance of this fact should still forever the tongue of those who, without rhyme, truth, or reason, have tried to stain a fair record, which has been justly earned; and by its very prominence, perhaps, difficult to maintain.
Coming direct from the snow-clad hills and blood-stained valley of the Mauvaise Terre of last winter’s central point of interest, it can not be denied that an added chapter to Indian history, and the Wild West’s province of truthfully exhibiting the same, is rendered more valuable to the student of primitive man, and to the ethnologist’s acquaintance with the strange people whose grand and once happy empire (plethoric in all its inhabitants needed) has been (rightfully or wrongfully) brought thoroughly and efficiently under the control of our civilization, or (possibly more candidly confessed) under the Anglo-Saxon’s commercial necessities. It occurs to the writer that our boasted civilization has a wonderful adaptability to the good soils, the productive portions, and the rich mineral lands of the earth, while making snail-like pace and intermittent efforts among the frigid haunts of the Esquimaux, the tangled swamps of Africa, and the bleak and dreary rocks of Patagonia.
A sentimental view is thus inspired, when long personal association has brought the better qualities of the Indian to one’s notice, assisting somewhat to dispel the prejudices engendered by years of savage, brutal wars, conducted with a ferocious vindictiveness foreign to our methods. The savageness of Indian warfare is born in the victim, and probably intensified by the instinctive knowledge of a despairing weakness that renders desperate the fiery spirit of expiring resistance, which latter (in another cause) might be held up for a courage and tenacity as bright as that recorded in the pages dedicated to the heroes of Thermopylæ.
After all, in what land, in what race, nationality, or community can be found the vaunted vestal home of assured peace? And where is human nature so perfected that circumstances might not waken the dormant demon of man’s innate savageness?
But then again the practical view of the non-industrious use of nature’s cornucopia of world-needed resources and the inevitable law of the survival of the fittest must bring the “flattering unction to the soul” of those to whom the music of light, work, and progress is the charm, the gauge of existence’s worth, and to which the listless must hearken, the indolent attend, the weak imbibe strength from—whose ranks the red man must join, and advancing with whose steps march cheerily to the tune of honest toil, industrious peace, and placid fireside prosperity.
Passing through the to them marvelous experience of the railroad and its flying express train; the sight of towns, villages, cities, over valley, plain, and mountains to the magic floating house (the steamer); sadly learning, while struggling with the mal de mer, the existence of the “big waters,” that tradition alone had bruited to incredulous ears, was passed the first portion of a tempestuous voyage. Its teachings were of value in bringing to the proud spirits of the self-reliant Dakotans the terrible power of nature, and of white man’s marvelous skill, industry, and ability in overcoming the dangers of the deep; the reward of patience being found in a beautifully smooth approach to land. The Scilly Islands and a non-fog-encumbered journey up the English Channel—unusually bright with sunshine; the grand panorama of England’s majestic shores, her passing fleet of all kinds of marine architecture, the steaming up the river Scheldt, with its dyked banks and the beautifully cultivated fields, opened to the marveling nomad his first edition of Aladdin, and landed him—wonderingly surprised at the sight of thousands of white men peacefully greeting his arrival—in the busy commercial mart of Antwerp.
After introducing the Indians to hotel life for the first time, a tour of the city was made, among the notable points visited being the cathedral, which grand edifice aroused their curiosity; the grand picture, Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross,” bringing to the minds of all—white men, “friendlies,” and “hostiles”—the “Messiah craze”; all interest intensified by the fact that the æsthetic-looking Short Bull and some of the others had been the leading fanatical believers (probably even apparently conscientious), promoters, and disciples of the still mysterious religious disease that lately agitated the Indian race in America. In fact, after the death of Sitting Bull the central figures of this strange belief were Short Bull as the religious leader and Kicking Bear as the war chief. Grouped together with Scatter, Revenge, and others, in moody contemplation of this subject, was the late defier of a mighty nation of 65,000,000 people, nearly all of whom teach or preach the truthfulness of the picture’s traditions. A man in two short months transported from the indescribably desolate, almost inaccessible natural fortresses of the Bad Lands (Mauvaise Terre) of Dakota to the ancient city of Antwerp, gazing spellbound on the artistic reproduction by the renowned artist of the red man’s late dream, “The Messiah.” Respect for his thoughts and the natural stoical nature of the Indian leaves to future opportunity an interesting interrogative of what passed through the mind of the subtle chief. Suffice it to say that surprise at the white man’s many-sided character and the greatness of his resources in the past and present was beginning to dawn more and more on the new tourists. Arriving the next day at Strasburg, introduction to the cowboys, the camp life, the cathedral, the great clock, the fortifications, etc., was followed by the delight of each brave on receiving his pony, and once more with his trusty friend the horse, the Ogalalla and Brule in a few days felt as though “Richard were himself again.”