The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

Before each lodge a warrior established himself, crosslegged, and began to smoke. When the sun dipped behind the Hills and threw their long shadows silently out across to the Bad Lands, the chill of twilight struck in, and so the Indians wrapped themselves closely in their blankets. As by a stroke of enchantment, with the concealment of the shirts and overalls, the Past returned. Against the sky of evening, the silhouettes of the pointed wigwams and the suggestion of the shrouded warriors smoking solemnly, silently, their pipes, all belonged to the nomadic age before such men as Michaïl Lafond had "civilized" the country.

After a time they rose and departed silently to the bottom-land for a while, leaving Lafond in charge of the two young men. They had gone to eat their suppers. The half-breed had not tasted food since the early morning, nor slept for thirty odd hours.

The stars came out one by one, and the stillness of that great inland sea men call the prairies fell on the world. Such occasional sounds as rose from the creek bottom seemed but to emphasize the peace. And then suddenly, from the shadows somewhere, without disturbance, the blanketed figures appeared and took their places again. A squaw came bearing a torch, and lit the fire in the centre of the circle, and there sprang up a broad shaft of light which drew about the little scene a great canopy of imminent blackness. From hand to hand passed a great red-stone calumet or pipe. Each warrior puffed at it twice and passed it to his neighbor. It was not offered to Michaïl Lafond, whose bonds had now been loosened.

After each of the seated warriors had taken his part in this ceremony, and the pipe had completed the circle to Lone Wolf, that chief arose, throwing back his blanket from his shoulders.

With a sudden chill of fear, Michaïl Lafond saw that he was to assist at a state council of the sort held only when the tribe is to sit in judgment on one of its own number.

The savage was naked to the waist. In his hair, worn loose and unbraided after the Sioux fashion, three eagle feathers with white tips were thrust slantwise across the back of his head; and under its heavy mass his fierce bright eyes and hawk face gleamed impressively. About his neck hung a fringe of bears' claws, from which depended a round silver medal. Now as he stood there—the lithe strength of his bronze torso revealed one arm clasping the blanket about his waist, the other holding loosely at his side the feather-bedecked calumet of sandstone—the stigma of sordidness and drunkenness and squalor seemed to fall away, so that the spectator would have seen in this group of silent men under the silent western heavens only the pomp and pride of a great and savage people in the zenith of its power.

Lone Wolf stood for the space of several minutes without a sign. Then with a magnificently sweeping gesture he held the calumet aloft and began to speak.

At first his voice was low and monotonous, but as his speech continued it took on more color, until at the close it responded in modulation to every flash of his eye. He began with a recital of the tribe's ancient glory, dwelling rather on concrete examples than on broader generalities. He numbered its warriors, its ponies, its arms, and lodges. He told of the beauty of its women and the greatness of its men, whom he ran over by name. He told of its deeds in war, enumerating the enemies it had struck, the ponies it had stolen, the stratagems it had conceived and carried out. And then he swept his arm and the feather-fluttering calumet abroad as he described the boundless extent of the hunting grounds over which it had used to roam. As he continued, the warriors' expressive eyes brightened and flashed with pride, though they moved not one muscle of their faces or bodies. Beyond the circle could be dimly descried another not less interested audience of women and older children.

"These and more were ours!" cried Lone Wolf, "these and many more. The favor of Gitche Manitou was ours and the riches of the world. Where are they now?" With an indescribably graceful gesture the orator stooped to the ground and grasped a handful of the loose dry earth. "Gone!" he said solemnly, letting the sand fall from his outstretched suddenly opened palm.

Then, without pause or transition, he began, in equally vivid objective language, to detail the tribe's misery and poverty of to-day. He recounted its disasters, just as a moment before he had recounted its victories. He told of the Spotted Sickness, the dividing of forces, the battle with the red coats, all the long series of oppressions great and little which had brought them to their present condition. He counted over by name the present members, to show how their numbers had shrunken, and to each name he added others of those who had gone before. So real was the picture that the orator himself faltered, while from outside the circle rose for a single instant a long trembling wail. The warriors had half covered their faces with the folds of their blankets.