Behind the warriors and braves followed the baggage of the village. The lodge poles, in bundles of four and five, had been lashed to pads or pack-saddles, girthed tight to the ponies’ backs, the other ends being allowed to trail along the ground like the shafts of a truck; the sign easily denotes the course of travel. The wolf-like dogs were also harnessed in the same way; more lupine than canine, they are ready when hungry to attack man or mule; and, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, they not a little resemble the Indian pariah dog. Their equipments, however, were of course on a diminutive scale; a little pad girthed round the barrel, with a breastplate to keep it in place, enabled them to drag two short light lodge poles tied together at the smaller extremity. One carried only a hawk on its back—yet falconry has never, I believe, been practiced by the Indian. Behind the ponies the poles were connected by cross-sticks, upon which were lashed the lodge covers, the buffalo robes, and other bulkier articles. Some had strong frames of withes or willow basket-work, two branches being bent into an oval, garnished below with a net-work of hide thongs for a seat, covered with a light wicker canopy, and opening, like a cage, only on one side; a blanket or a buffalo robe defends the inmate from sun and rain. These are the litters for the squaws when weary, the children, and the puppies, which are part of the family till used for feasts. It might be supposed to be a rough conveyance; the elasticity of the poles, however, alleviates much of that inconvenience. A very ancient man, wrinkled as a last year’s walnut, and apparently crippled by old wounds, was carried, probably by his great-grandsons, in a rude sedan. The vehicle was composed of two pliable poles, about ten feet long, separated by three cross-bars twenty inches or so apart; a blanket had been secured to the foremost and hindermost, and under the centre-bit lay Senex secured against falling out. In this way the Indians often bear the wounded back to their villages; apparently they have never thought of a horse-litter, which might be made with equal facility, and would certainly save work.
THE SQUAWS.While the rich squaws rode, the poorer followed their pack-horses on foot, eying the more fortunate as the mercer’s wife regards what she terms the “carriage lady.” The women’s dress not a little resembles their lords’; the unaccustomed eye often hesitates between the sexes. In the fair, however, the waistcoat is absent, the wide-sleeved shift extends below the knees, and the leggins are of somewhat different cut. All wore coarse shawls, or white, blue, and scarlet cloth-blankets round their bodies. Upon the Upper Platte we afterward saw them dressed in cotton gowns, after a semi-civilized fashion, and with bowie-knives by their sides. The grandmothers were fearful to look upon—horrid excrescences of nature, teaching proud man a lesson of humility, and a memento of his neighbor in creation, the “humble ape”—it is only civilization that can save the aged woman from resembling the gorilla. The middle-aged matrons were homely bodies, broad and squat like the African dame after she has become mère de famille; their hands and feet were notably larger from work than those of the men, and the burdens upon their backs caused them to stoop painfully. The young squaws—pity it is that all our household Indian words, pappoose, for instance, tomahawk, wigwam, and powwow, should have been naturalized out of the Abenaki and other harsh dialects of New England—deserved a more euphonious appellation. The belle savage of the party had large and languishing eyes and dentists’ teeth that glittered, with sleek, long black hair like the ears of a Blenheim spaniel, justifying a natural instinct to stroke or pat it, drawn straight over a low, broad, Quadroon-like brow. Her figure had none of the fragility which distinguishes the higher race, who are apparently too delicate for human nature’s daily food—porcelain, in fact, when pottery is wanted; nor had she the square corpulency which appears in the negro woman after marriage. Her ears and neck were laden with tinsel ornaments, brass-wire rings adorned her wrists and fine arms, a bead-work sash encircled her waist, and scarlet leggins, fringed and tasseled, ended in equally costly moccasins. When addressed by the driver in some terms to me unintelligible, she replied with a soft clear laugh—the principal charm of the Indian, as of the smooth-throated African woman—at the same time showing him the palm of her right hand as though it had been a looking-glass. The gesture would have had a peculiar significance in Sindh; here, however, I afterward learned, it simply conveys a refusal. The maidens of the tribe, or those under six, were charming little creatures, with the wildest and most piquant expression, and the prettiest doll-like features imaginable; the young coquettes already conferred their smiles as if they had been of any earthly value. The boys once more reminded me of the East; they had black beady eyes, like snakes, and the wide mouths of young caymans. Their only dress, when they were not in “birth-day suit,” was the Indian languti. None of the braves carried scalps, finger-bones, or notches on the lance, which serve like certain marks on saw-handled pistols farther east, nor had any man lost a limb. They followed us for many a mile, peering into the hinder part of our traveling wigwam, and ejaculating “How! How!” the normal salutation. It is supposed to mean “good,” and the Western man, when he drinks to your health, says “Here, how!” and expects a return in kind. The politeness of the savages did not throw us off our guard; the Dakotah of these regions are expert and daring kleptomaniacs; they only laughed, however, a little knowingly as we raised the rear curtain, and they left us after begging pertinaciously—bakhshish is an institution here as on the banks of the Nile—for tobacco, gunpowder, ball, copper caps, lucifers, and what not. The women, except the pretty party, looked, methought, somewhat scowlingly, but one can hardly expect a smiling countenance from the human biped trudging ten or twenty miles under a load fit for a mule. A great contrast with these Indians was a train of “Pike’s Peakers,” who, to judge from their grim looks, were returning disappointed from the new gold diggings. I think that if obliged to meet one of the two troops by moonlight alone, my choice would have fallen upon “messieurs les sauvages.”
At 6 P.M. we resumed our route, with a good but fidgety train, up the Dark Valley, where musquetoes and sultry heat combined to worry us. Slowly traveling and dozing the while, we arrived about 9 15 P.M. at Diamond Springs, a bright little water much frequented by the “lightning-bug” and the big-eyed “Devil’s darning-needle,”[37] where we found whisky and its usual accompaniment, soldiers. The host related an event which he said had taken place but a few days before. An old mountaineer, who had married two squaws, was drinking with certain Cheyennes, a tribe famous for ferocity and hostility to the whites. The discourse turning upon topics stoical, he was asked by his wild boon companions if he feared death. The answer was characteristic: “You may kill me if you like!” Equally characteristic was their acknowledgment; they hacked him to pieces, and threw the corpse under a bank. In these regions the opposite races regard each other as wild beasts; the white will shoot an Indian as he would a coyote. He expects to go under whenever the “all-fired, red-bellied varmints”—I speak, oh reader, Occidentally—get the upper hand, and vice versâ.
[37] The first is the firefly, the second is the dragon-fly, called in country parts of England “the Devil’s needle.”
THE PLATTE RIVER.The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40° 05′ 05″, and W. long. (G.) 101° 21′ 24″. The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the Iatans, whom the Spaniards term Comanches,[38] averages 600 yards, about 100 less than its rival in breadth, and, according to the prairie people, affords the best drinking. Hunters often ford the river by the Lower Crossing, twenty-eight miles above the bifurcation. Those with heavily-loaded wagons prefer this route, as by it they avoid the deep loose sands on the way to the Upper Crossing. The mail-coach must endure the four miles of difficulty, as the road to Denver City branches off from the western ford.
[38] The Kaumainsh (Comanche), a warlike and independent race, who, with the Apaches, have long been the bane of New Spain, were in the beginning of this century entirely erratic, without any kind of cultivation, subsisting, in fact, wholly by the chase and plunder. They were then bounded westward by New Mexico, where they have laid waste many a thriving settlement; eastward by the Pawnees and Osages; northward by the Utahs, Kiowas, and Shoshonees; and southward by the nations on the Lower Red River.
At 10 P.M., having “caught up” the mules, we left Diamond Springs, and ran along the shallow river which lay like a thin sheet of shimmer broken by clumps and islets that simulated, under the imperfect light of the stars, houses and towns, hulks and ships, wharves and esplanades. On the banks large bare spots, white with salt, glistened through the glooms; the land became so heavy that our fagged beasts groaned; and the descents, water-cuts, and angles were so abrupt that holding on constituted a fair gymnastic exercise. The air was clear and fine. My companions snored while I remained awake enjoying a lovely aurora, and, Epicurean-like, reserving sleep for the Sybaritic apparatus, which, according to report, awaited us at the grand établissement of the Upper Crossing of La Grande Platte.
This was our fifth night in the mail-wagon. I could not but meditate upon the difference between travel in the pure prairie air, despite an occasional “chill,” and the perspiring miseries of an East Indian dawk, or of a trudge in the miasmatic and pestilential regions of Central Africa. Much may be endured when, as was ever the case, the highest temperature in the shade does not exceed 98° F.
12th August. We cross the Platte.
AURORA.Boreal aurora glared brighter than a sunset in Syria. The long streamers were intercepted and mysteriously confused by a massive stratum of dark cloud, through whose narrow rifts and jagged chinks the splendors poured in floods of magic fire. Near the horizon the tint was an opaline white—a broad band of calm, steady light, supporting a tender rose-color, which flushed to crimson as it scaled the upper firmament. The mobility of the spectacle was its chiefest charm. The streamers either shot out or shrank from full to half length; now they flared up, widening till they filled the space between Lucifer rising in the east and Aries setting in the west; then they narrowed to the size of a span; now they stood like a red arch with steadfast legs and oscillating summit; then, broadening at the apex, they apparently revolved with immense rapidity; at times the stars shone undimmed through the veil of light, then they were immersed in its exceeding brilliancy. After a full hour of changeful beauty, paling in one place and blushing in another, the northern lights slowly faded away with a blush which made the sunrise look colder than its wont. It is no wonder that the imaginative Indian, looking with love upon these beauties, connects them with the ghosts of his ancestors.