me that there was an opportunity of utilizing such a piece of furniture in the family of a very particular friend. But I could not beg or buy one, even with the help of my friend the interpreter. We asked several squaws, but not one of them would sell. I heard afterwards that an extravagantly high price, backed by the Indian agent’s influence, failed to procure one. The squaws no doubt consider it “bad medicine” to sell a papoose-board.
A gaudily-dressed Indian, whose cheeks were streaked with paint of all the colors of the rainbow, approached us. In my civilized simplicity I supposed that this glaring individual was some very big chief indeed. I asked the interpreter what great chief he was.
“Some Indian plug,” responded that gentleman; “no chief at all.”
“How comes he to be so extravagantly adorned?”
“They can wear anything they can beg, buy, or steal.”
My mistake reminds me of a similar one made by Indians with regard to some white visitors. Col. —— visited an Indian camp, accompanied by some officers and a cavalry escort. The colonel and the officers were dressed in fatigue uniform, with merely gold enough about them to indicate their rank to a close observer on close inspection. The observed of all the Indian observers, however, was a “fancy” Dutch bugler, with his double yellow stripe and his bars of yellow braid across his breast. To him the most respectful homage and the greatest consideration were paid.
As we passed one of the Kiowa lodges, a young man, seemingly about twenty-five or twenty-eight years old, came out to meet us
with outstretched arms. With the exception of Kicking Bird, he was the most pleasing Indian I met. He was very fair-skinned for an Indian, bright, intelligent-looking, with a frankness of manner rare among Indians. He was presented to me as Big Tree, a paroled Indian.
The interpreter told me that, up to the time Big Tree was taken with Satanta, the former was an Indian of no note. He was innocent of crime, and achieved a reputation merely by his accidental associations with Satanta.
Notwithstanding the lesson I had received, when we met some gaudily-bedizened Indian I could not refrain from asking who he was.