The Sunset of a Dying Race
The Indian composes music for every emotion of his soul. He has a song for the Great Mystery; for the animals of the [pg 221] chase; for the maiden he woos; for the rippling river. His prayers are breathed in song. His whole life is an expression in music. These songs are treasured down through the ages, and old age teaches youth the import of the melody so that nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. Haydn wrote his “Creation,” Beethoven his “Symphonies,” Mendelssohn his “Songs Without Words,” Handel gave the world his “Dead March in Saul,” Mozart was commissioned by Count Walsegg to pour his great soul into a requiem; during its composition he felt that he was writing the dead march of his soul. For generations it has been sung in the little church at St. Mark's, where the great composer lies in an unknown grave. Had the Indian the combined soul of these masters in music, could he cull from symphony and oratorio and requiem and dirge the master notes that have thrilled and inspired the ages, he then would falter at the edge of his task in an attempt to register the burden of his lament, and utter for the generations of men the requiem wrought out during these moments of passion—a passion of sorrow so sad that the voice of it must ride through the width of the sky, and conquer the thunder of the fiercest tempest. The orchestral grandeur of the world's great composers is the child of genius. They reached the far heights of inspiration in a few isolated instances and for the delight of men. The Indian composing his own requiem must encompass [pg 222] the eternal pathos of a whole race of mankind riding forth beyond the challenge of death. It is well that the Indian does not compose this death march, for the sorrow of it would hush all lullabies, and banish the laughter of children.
Napoleon said to his soldiers, drawn up in battle line on the plains of Egypt, in sight of the solemn Sphinx and the eternal pyramids: “Forty centuries look down upon your actions to-day!” Four hundred and a score years ago Columbus looked first upon the red man. These solemn centuries look down upon this day; look down upon the sheathed sword, the broken coup stick, the shattered battle-axe, the deserted wigwams, the last red men mobilized on the plains of death. Ninety millions, with suffused eyes, watch this vanishing remnant of a race, whose regnant majesty inspires at the very moment it succumbs to the iconoclasm of civilization. It is the imposing triumph of solitary grandeur sweeping beyond the reach of militant crimes, their muffled footfalls reaching beyond the margin of an echo.
The Empty Saddle