Quanah has a large family of children, and is giving all of them good educational advantages, at the mission schools on the reservation, the large school at Chilocco, Oklahoma, and at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
We met one of his sons, Baldwin, who is a sprightly and handsome youth of about seventeen, the day we spent at Cache, and from him derived much of the information contained in this chapter. He has also a beautiful and accomplished daughter, Needle Parker, whose sad, sweet face resembles somewhat the portrait of her grandmother. She also brings to mind one of the night-eyed Castilian beauties of old Mexico, whose blood mingles with and tinges the life-current of the Comanche Indians.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
A SHEAF OF GOOD INDIAN STORIES FROM HISTORY.
I. AN INDIAN STRATAGEM.
During the Revolutionary War, a regiment of soldiers was stationed upon the confines of an extensive savanna in Georgia. Its particular office was to guard every avenue of approach to the main army. The sentinels, whose posts penetrated into the woods, were supplied from the ranks; but they were perpetually surprised upon their posts by the Indians and borne off their stations, without communicating any alarm or being heard of afterward.
One morning, the sentinels having been stationed as usual over night, the guard went at sunrise to relieve a post which extended a considerable distance into the wood. The sentinel was gone. The surprise was great; but the circumstance had occurred before. They left another man, and departed, wishing him better luck. "You need not be afraid," said the man, with warmth, "I shall not desert."
The sentinels were replaced every four hours, and, at the appointed time, the guard again marched to relieve the post. To their inexpressible astonishment the man was gone. They searched around the spot, but no traces of him could be found. It was now more necessary than ever that the station should not remain unoccupied; they left another man and returned to the guardhouse.
The superstition of the soldiers was awakened and terror ran through the regiment. The colonel, being apprised of the occurrence, signified his intention to accompany the guard when they relieved the sentinel they had left. At the appointed time, they all marched together; and again, to their unutterable wonder, they found the post vacant, and the man gone. Under these circumstances, the colonel hesitated whether he should station a whole company on the spot or whether he should again submit the post to a single sentinel. The cause of these repeated disappearances of men whose courage and honesty were never suspected must be discovered, and it seemed not likely that this discovery could be obtained by persisting in the old method.
Three brave men were now lost to the regiment, and to assign the fourth seemed nothing less than giving him up to destruction. The poor fellow whose turn it was to take the station, though a man in other respects of incomparable resolution, trembled from head to foot.