This complimentary allusion is intended for me, but I make no claim to this honor; it is difficult and risky to try to prove oneself the first in any line of discovery and no doubt there are scores of others who have rescued these statues from oblivion, by giving them a place of refuge.
It was the enthusiasm of this friend which suggested to me the idea of collecting the best surviving specimens of the Tobacco Sign Indian and I soon found that I must take a hint from the modern nature-lover, and do most of my hunting with the aid of the camera.
II
MY first wish for an Indian was to add to the effect of my wigwam. I’ve always been rather partial to the Indian race because there is a tradition (which cannot be verified) that my great grandmother, Abigail Eastman Webster, had a slight infusion of Indian blood. She was a noble looking woman, I have been told, with rather a dark skin and large black eyes. Her son, Daniel Webster, possibly owed to her his swarthy complexion and wonderful eyes, like “Lanterns on a dark night,” as the Websters were mostly of a florid complexion, and addicted to red hair.
I feared my dear old Indian (my first purchase) might look too much like an advertisement as he carried a bunch of cigars in his right hand, so this was removed and replaced by a tomahawk.
Next I suspected my unnamed brave might feel lonely; any way he looked so, as he was from the busy Bowery of New York, so I begged friends to aid me in providing him with an attractive spouse.
Many hunted but in vain; at last there was a squaw reported from Leicester, Mass., but alas! she had lost both feet. With the usual pedal appendages she would have cost $35.00, “but seeing as how she was crippled, she might go for $15.00.”
I bought her and she looks all right with her stumps of ankles set deep in the ground and heavy stones around them to keep her firmly planted. The couple seem very real and human to me and I am often startled in the twilight by coming on the pair without thinking that they are always there. I intend to put a Cupid in the bushes near by or behind a sassafras tree, to make it a little more exciting. I regret not giving them any names but may do so, if I can decide on something appropriate. I have a splendid portrait of Tecumseh, but that name does not seem right.
And what a long list there is; I will only give a few, as Massasoit, Squanto, Black Hawk, Pontiac, Red Jacket, Leather Stocking, Quizquiz, Katsa, Red Cloud, Many Horns, Spotted Wolf, Yeh-toot-sah, Yok-ki-e-to, and finally the name I like best, “Samoset,” that good Indian who was the first to welcome the Puritans in 1621, saying “Welcome Englishmen, Welcome Englishmen!” He told the Pilgrims to possess the land, as those to whom it had belonged were swept away by a pestilence. So Samoset, it shall be and the woman? No “set” to her for her knees have no bend to them, “Squaw-without-feet” is true and sounds like some of their queer names.