complain of or want to be satisfied. At length, after some more hand-shaking, we escaped from them.
On leaving the prison-house we learned that we should not find the principal Indians in their camps until later in the day, as they were then collecting in the commanding officer’s office to talk about sending a party to find some of the Cheyennes, who, having been driven from the brakes of the Staked Plains, were supposed to have gone to southern New Mexico. The interpreter said I should have a good opportunity to see the “head men” there; we could visit the camps afterwards. To the office we went, and found there about fifteen or twenty chiefs, among them Little Crow and Kicking Bird, the head chief of the Kiowas. If ever there were a good Indian—and there are many very honest people west of the Mississippi who think that no live Indian can be good—I think Kicking Bird was a good Indian. During the recent troubles he never left his reservation, was constant in using his influence in favor of the whites, and never wavered in his fidelity to the government.
He was a fine-looking Indian, and had as winning a countenance as I have looked upon anywhere. The expression of his eyes was remarkably soft and pleasing. There was a quiet, natural dignity in his manners, tempered by great natural grace. I was taken by his appearance from the first, and shook hands with him with pleasure and sincerity, which was not the case on every occasion of hand-shaking that morning. Kicking Bird, as nearly as one can judge an Indian’s age (an Indian is generally as great a chronological difficulty
as a negro), was then about thirty-five years old. He was somewhat above the middle height, richly but not gaudily dressed. Hanging by a loop from his left breast were a pair of silver tweezers.
After the “talk” was over and the arrangements for sending out the party agreed upon, every chief except Kicking Bird had some private “axe to grind”—something to ask for. As the presentation of these “private bills” was likely to take much time, we withdrew, mounted our wagon, and drove to the Kiowa camp.
The camps of the three tribes, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, were pitched in the fringe of timber that borders Medicine Bluff Creek and the Main Cache. The day was bright and warm for the season. The scarlet and white blankets of the Indians, seen here and there among the trees, gave life and color to the landscape. Crowds of children gambolled and shouted, and seemed to enjoy themselves intensely. They had no idea they were the children of a doomed and dying race. There was no trace among them of the stoicism of the Indian of maturer years. No crowd of French urchins playing around the Tour Saint Jacques in the grounds of the Palais Royal, or the gardens of the Tuileries, was ever more full of gayety and espièglerie than these little savages. They threw their arms about and “kicked loose legs” as naturally and with as much abandon as any white children could have done. Some, more industriously inclined, built little tepies, or lodges; others made tiny camp-fires, playing “war-party”; others, with miniature bows and arrows, skipped along, shooting at the small birds that crossed their path. Now an urchin, more bold
than the rest, would hop alongside our wagon and return our “how, how” with compound interest. Emboldened by his example, others would follow, until we had a crowd of little red-skins of both sexes about us, hopping, laughing, and “how-how”-ing. Occasionally they indulged in a general shout of good-natured merriment, which may very probably have been caused by some more than usually good joke at our expense.
Our first visit was to Kicking Bird’s lodge. It was quite roomy, being a tepie of twenty-four poles. In rear of the lodge, and carefully covered by a paulin, like the carriage of any civilized gentleman, stood our friend Kicking Bird’s “buggy.”
Kicking Bird had not yet returned from the talk at the post. His wife, a buxom young squaw, profusely beaded, brightly blanketed, vermilion-cheeked, but not over-washed, did the honors. She had a child about ten months old—a lively, stout little red rascal, whose flesh was as firm as vulcanized rubber. The little wretch was just beginning to walk. He was in puris, of course. He took wonderfully to us. He would try to walk across the lodge to each of us in turn, falling at every other step, and getting up again with a loud crow of determination. Then he would toddle from one to the other, holding by our boot-tops as we stood in a circle around him, and being jumped as high as arms would admit of by each in turn, to his intense delight and the great enjoyment of his mother.
We walked through the camp and watched the squaws tanning buffalo-hides and preparing antelope-skins. I was very anxious to get a papoose-board, as a telegram from a medical friend had just informed