The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

I had gone to Fort Reno to see the beef issue which takes place there every two weeks, when the steers and the other things which make up the Indian’s rations are distributed by the agent. I missed the issue by four hours, and had to push on to Anadarko, where another beef issue was to come off three days later, which was trying, as I had met few men more interesting and delightful than the officers at the post-trader’s mess. But I was fortunate, in the short time in which I was at Fort Reno, in stumbling upon an Indian council. Two lieutenants and a surgeon and I had ridden over to the Indian agency, and although they allow no beer on an Indian reservation, the surgeon had hopes. It had been a long ride—partly through water, partly over a dusty trail—and it was hot. But if the agent had a private store for visitors, he was not in a position to offer it, for his room was crowded with chiefs of renown and high degree. They sat in a circle around his desk on the floor, or stood against the wall smoking solemnly. When they approved of what the speaker said, they grunted; and though that is the only word for it, they somehow made that form of “hear, hear,” impressive. Those chiefs who spoke talked in a spitting, guttural fashion, far down the throat, and without gestures; and the son of one of them, a boy from Carlisle, in a gray ready-made suit and sombrero, translated a five-minutes’ speech, which had all the dignity of Salvini’s address to the Senators, by: “And Red Wolf he says he thinks it isn’t right.” Cloud-Shield rose and said the chiefs were glad to see that the officers from the fort were in the room, as that meant that the Indian would have fair treatment, and that the officers were always the Indians’ best friends, and were respected in times of peace as friends, and in times of war as enemies. After which, the officers, considering guiltily the real object of their visit, and feeling properly abashed, took off their hats and tried to look as though they deserved it, which, as a rule, they do. It may be of interest, in view of an Indian outbreak, to know that this council of the chiefs was to protest against the cutting down of the rations of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. Last year it cost the Government one hundred and thirteen thousand dollars to feed them, and this year Commissioner Martin, with a fine spirit of economy, proposes to reduce this by just one-half. This means hunger and illness, and in some cases death.

BIG BULL

“He says,” translated the boy interpreter, gazing at the ceiling, “that they would like to speak to the people at Washington about this thing, for it is not good.”

The agent traced figures over his desk with his pen.

“Well, I can’t do anything,” he said, at last. “All I can do is to let the people at Washington know what they say. But to send a commission all the way to Washington will take a great deal of money, and the cost of it will have to come out of their allowance. Tell them that. Tell them I’ll write on about it. That’s all I can do.”

That night the chiefs came solemnly across parade, and said “How!” grimly to the orderly in front of the colonel’s headquarters.

“You see,” said the officers, “they have come to complain, but the colonel cannot help them. If Martin wants a war, he is going just the best way in the world to get it, and then we shall have to go out and shoot them, poor devils!”

I was very sorry to leave Fort Reno, not only on account of the officers there, but because the ride to Anadarko must be made in stages owned by a Mr. Williamson. This is not intended as an advertisement for Mr. Williamson’s stages. He does not need it, for he is, so his drivers tell me, very rich indeed, and so economical that he makes them buy their own whips. Every one who has travelled through the Indian Territory over Mr. Williamson’s routes wishes that sad things may happen to him; but no one, I believe, would be so wicked as to hope he may ever have to ride in one of his own stages. The stage-coach of the Indian Territory lacks the romance of those that Dick Turpin stopped, or of the Deadwood coach, or of those that Yuba Bill drives for Bret Harte with four horses, with gamblers on top and road-agents at the horses’ heads. They are only low four-wheeled wagons with canvas sides and top, and each revolution of the wheels seems to loosen every stick and nail, and throws you sometimes on top of the driver, and sometimes the driver on top of you. They hold together, though, and float bravely through creeks, and spin down the side of a cañon on one wheel, and toil up the other side on two, and at such an angle that you see the sun bisected by the wagon-tongue. At night the stage seems to plunge a little more than in the day, and you spend it in trying to sleep with your legs under the back seat and your head on the one in front, while the driver, who wants to sleep and cannot, shouts profanely to his mules and very near to your ear on the other side of the canvas.