The deer, which, during the scorching heat of mid-day, had nestled among the thick groves which dot the prairie, now began to steal from their hiding places, and were seen bounding over the green sward, or standing buried up to their heads among the tall flowers, and gazing wildly and fearfully at our party.
At a distance, too, we could perceive the gaunt form of a vagabond wolf, sneaking through the grass, and stealing snake-like upon his beautiful, though timid, co-tenant of the prairie.
An exclamation from our guide attracted our attention to a solitary Indian, mounted upon a horse, and standing, statue-like, upon a distant hill directly in our route.
Although we had often seen straggling Indians in the frontier towns, they had in general so degraded an air as to attract but little attention. The appearance of this one, however, standing alone on his own soil, where he was bowed by no feeling of inferiority, must, we thought, be as noble as the soil of which he was the master; and we pushed forward to gaze upon him. He remained unmoved, neither advancing a single pace to meet us, nor retiring on our approach. He proved to be a Shawnee; one of the remnant of that brave tribe who, under Tecumseh, had made such a desperate attack upon the whites near the banks of the Wabash.
Some years since, they had been removed from their old hunting grounds, and stationed about ten miles beyond the boundary which separates the state of Missouri from the territory bearing the same name. They had left the graves of their fathers, the home of their childhood, to seek in a strange land that freedom which they could no longer enjoy in the homestead handed down to them by their unfettered ancestors; but not before the sapping influence of their communion with the whites had exerted its sway over them, and reduced them to that abject state which distinguishes the civilised from the savage Indian.
A feeling of disappointment, mingled with sorrow, came over us as we rode up to this solitary being. At a distance our fancies had painted him possessed of all that was noble in the Indian character; but a nearer view dispelled the illusion. He could not have been older than thirty, but intemperance had left its mark upon his features. His hair was thick and matted, and hung nearly to his eyes. His legs were covered with leggings of deerskin, ornamented with a yellow binding. Over a dirty calico shirt he wore a long surtout coat, with immense brass buttons; and upon his shoulder he bore a very long and heavy rifle.
He saluted us with the usual guttural salutation of “ugh!” and, turning round, rode slowly ahead of our party. His horse was one of those tough little Indian ponies celebrated for hard heads, hard mouths, hard constitutions, and a fund of obstinacy which it would puzzle Satan himself to overcome. He wriggled through the grass with a sideling ricketty pace, that would have wearied any other than an Indian; and, between the incessant drumming of the heels of the rider into the ribs of his steed, and the jerking, hitching pace of the animal, I could not well determine which underwent the most labour, the horse or his master.
He had not ridden in front of us long before we saw, at a distance, another of the same class galloping towards us. He came forward over the prairie at the full speed of a lean raw-boned nag; and we hoped to find in him a character which might redeem the first, but in this we were disappointed.
He was short and broad; dressed in a dirty calico shirt, and an equally dirty and ragged pair of pantaloons. On his head was cocked, with a very knowing air, a something which once might have been called a hat. On his shoulder he carried a long rifle, while he plied its wiping rod lustily upon the flanks of his horse until he reached the party.
After gazing at us with some curiosity, he rode off to our first acquaintance. A short conversation then took place, after which they thumped their heels into the ribs of their horses, and scampered off over the prairie; rising at one moment over the top of some ridge, and then again disappearing in the hollow which lay beyond it, until at last we lost sight of them behind a grove which jutted out into the prairie.