“All the time we had been fighting, a little slave imp of a boy belonging to my antagonist had been loading the canoe with my goods and chattels.... These were now brought back.”
In the sequel this desperado committed two more murders “and also killed in fair fight, with his own hand the first man in a native battle ... which I witnessed.... At last having attempted to murder another native, he was shot through the heart ... so there died.”
Mr. Maning was never again molested, and making full allowance for their foibles, speaks with a very tender love for that race of warriors.
LVI
A.D. 1840 A TALE OF VENGEANCE
In the days of the grandfathers, say ninety years ago, the Americans had spread their settlements to the Mississippi, and that river was their frontier. The great plains and deserts beyond, all speckled now with farms and glittering with cities, belonged to the red Indian tribes, who hunted the buffalo, farmed their tobacco, played their games, worshiped the Almighty Spirit, and stole one another’s horses, without paying any heed to the white men. For the whites were only a little tribe among them, a wandering tribe of trappers and traders who came from the Rising Sun Land in search of beaver skins. The beaver skins were wanted for top hats in the Land of the Rising Sun.
These white men had strange and potent magic, being masters of fire, and brought from their own land the fire-water and the firearms which made them welcome among the tribes. Sometimes a white man entered the tribes and became an Indian, winning his rank as warrior, marrying, setting up his lodge, and even rising to the grade of chief. Of such was Jim Beckwourth, part white, part negro, a great warrior, captain of the Dog Soldier regiment in the Crow nation. His lodge was full of robes; his wives, by whom he allied himself to the leading families, were always well fed, well dressed, and well behaved. When he came home with his Dog Soldiers he always returned in triumph, with bands of stolen horses, scalps in plenty.
Long afterward, when he was an old man, Jim told his adventures to a writer, who made them into a book, and in this volume he tells the story of Pine Leaf, an Indian girl. She was little more than a child, when, in an attack of the Cheyennes upon the village, her twin brother was killed. Then, in a passion of rage and grief, she cut off one of her fingers as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and took oath that she would avenge her brother’s death, never giving herself in marriage until she had taken a hundred trophies in battle. The warriors laughed when she asked leave to join them on the war-path, but Jim let her come with the Dog Soldiers.
Rapidly she learned the trade of war, able as most of the men with bow, spear and gun, running like an antelope, riding gloriously; and yet withal a woman, modest and gentle except in battle, famed for lithe grace and unusual beauty.
“Please marry me,” said Jim, as she rode beside him.
“Yes, when the pine leaves turn yellow.”