In his excited condition, he happened to cut his own hand; the sight of blood made him more wild, and glaring at one of the wooden Indians who seemed to be staring at him, he attacked him fiercely with heavy hacks and thwacks until hurried away by a passing policeman.
This last fleeting statue even figures in one of the World’s funny series of the trials of the “Newly Weds.” That two toothed baby, who, with all his pranks never ceases to fascinate, wanted one of these Indians to take home and only closed his mouth when his adoring and long-suffering Dad had bought one and carried it along with them, with his befeathered head sticking out one way and legs the other. No doubt there are many capital jokes connected with this subject, but the first one to look up an odd theme has a hard hunt for facts. I know that a well known Steel Magnate gave a beautiful church to the town where his mother lived, at her request.
And not entirely satisfied, she next begged him to get a statue of some Saint to make the gift perfect and adorn the grounds. He promised, and soon a long box came directed to his mother but alas! it proved to be one of the wooden men, of which we are talking. Her son was fond of practical jokes!
A friend has told me that the Indians of Oklahoma resent these representations of people of their race and want to suppress them all. It is difficult to find any in many of our large cities; photographers write that they have been obliged to hunt not in a taxi or auto, but by groping in store lofts and dark attics and that then the figures must be taken “down and out” to get a right light on them.
Saint Tammany of the Delaware Tribe
“We Are Tending Strictly to Business”
Every man to whom I have appealed for aid in making my story interesting, through pictures, has been most courteous and amiable. I have written to absolute strangers—often to a Post Master for the name of a skilful photographer in his town, another perfect stranger, and have always been answered promptly and sometimes with enthusiasm. Several have refused pay, saying they had got real pleasure out of the work and were sorry there was nothing more to do. Sometimes they were obliged to crawl out on a roof and shovel away snow to rescue the poor Indian.
V
TO show the genuine interest shown in my collection I will offer one letter from a business man in Worcester, Mass: