It was rather cold and frosty in the early January morning as we rode eastward from Otter Creek to the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, in the Indian Territory. Toward noon, however, the sun came out, brilliant and warm. The effect on the transparent covering of the trees and shrubs was dazzlingly beautiful. Some were encased in a bright armor, cunningly linked in chains of crescents. I detached a perfect “ice-plant,” with every curve of the stem, every nerve of the leaves, taken in ice. The humblest weeds on the prairie sparkled with frosty diamonds. But as the sun grew warmer they began to bend under their gorgeous burdens, as if wearied by their splendor, like tired beauties after a ball.
In the afternoon the weather was as clear and balmy as on a day in June. Our way lay through the most beautiful part of the Indian Territory. We skirted the southern slopes of the Wichita Mountains. These, as if in honor of our coming, exhibited all their jewelry in its brightest lustre. Down their dark slopes ran shining streams, like chains of silver adorning their broad breasts. Stones of gray and yellow and green and purple were
heaped together in distracting profusion, the whole seen through the most surpassingly tender of violet tints, too delicate to be compared to the filmiest marriage-morning lace. As we proceeded the country became more and more diversified. Upland and vale succeeded each other in delightful variety. Beautiful glens, wooded slopes, bold mountain-crests, filled the landscape. The day had become warm enough to free the babble of the scores of pretty little streams that flow into the Cache. We rode through groves of mesquite and forests of oaks. The long, straight paths through the oak-woods made one think of the long alleys of Versailles. We pass along the Main Cache; the scenery is ravishing. To the right flows the stream. It is thickly wooded; and through the English effect, produced by the smoke of a prairie fire in the far distance, it brings back the memory of a railroad glimpse of the line of Windsor Forest. Occasional circles of oaks in the midst of noble stretches of upland render more striking the likeness to the park scenery of old England. To the left are the mountains. They actually furnish the luxury of rocks, covered with
moss and mould as green as you could see upon Irish ruins. What a joy was the spectacle of so lovely a region to our eyes, that had been starved for months on sand-hills and treeless deserts!
We passed hundreds of lovely sites for cottages, in pleasant nooks, sheltered from all cold winds by wooded slopes that opened towards the south and bounded semi-circular vales of marvellous fertility. Indeed, in beauty of scenery and in richness of soil I think this portion of the Indian Territory may be considered the garden of the western world.
But, alas! nothing earthly is perfect. The brightest prospect has its shadow. Over this seeming paradise, where you can see in a day’s journey the loveliest characteristics of the most favored climes, malaria spreads its black and baleful wings.
I visited the reservation of the Kiowas and Comanches soon after it was entered by one of the expeditions that operated against the hostile bands of these Indians and of the Cheyennes in the winter of 187-. This force had driven in a number of Kiowas and Comanches. It was a close race between the troops and the Indians. But the latter, having the great advantage of the start, throwing away all impedimenta, leaving their line of flight marked by abandoned lodges, lodge-poles, ponies, cooking utensils, etc., had won the race by a few hours only, and surrendered not a moment too soon. I wanted to see all I could see of Indians while opportunity offered. I visited the commanding officer of the adjoining military post, and made known to him my wishes. He received me with great courtesy and kindness, placed a vehicle at my disposal,
and instructed his interpreter to accompany me through the Indian camps. The Indians had pitched their tepies in the timbered bottoms along the streams for several miles around the fort.
The interpreter was an “old Indian man.” I found him intelligent and polite. He had evidently been well brought up and fairly educated. His language was generally good; and when he indulged, occasionally, in a graphic, frontier mode of expression, it was easy to see that this was an after-graft, though not the less apt and piquant on that account. The Indians on the reservation were divided into two great classes, those under civil and those under military control. The former were under charge of the agent; the latter under that of the commander of the fort. These were again subdivided into the incarcerated, the enrolled, and the paroled (pronounced by the employees of the post and reservation, pay-rolled).
The imprisoned were again subdivided into two classes: the more guilty and dangerous, who were placed in irons and confined under strict surveillance in the post guard-house; and the Indians of less note and guilt, who were in confinement, but not in irons. Of the first the principal was White Horse, a Kiowa chief, a murderer, ravisher, and as great a general scoundrel as could be found in any tribe. These really “bad Indians” did not number more than half a dozen. The Comanches and Kiowas belonging to the second subdivision were confined within the walls of an extensive but unfinished stone building, intended for an ice-house, one hundred and fifty feet by forty. They numbered about a hundred and twenty.