Given—A gallon of Hays whisky in the saddle, and a race-horse under it. Endeavor to divide the latter by a rawhide whip, and the result is a sore-headed Indian, who stands forfeit to his peers for "the drinks."
As we wandered back to the council-chamber, the scene there had changed somewhat. White Wolf had been transformed into a cavalry colonel, and was strutting around with two gilt eagles on his broad shoulders, looking fully as important as many a real colonel whom we have caught in his pin feathers and, withal, much more of the hero. Our warrior had seen some of the officers from the fort strolling around, and straightway fell to coveting his neighbors' straps, which observing, Sachem at once purchased from a store the emblems of power and pinned them upon him. He whispered to us that when White Wolf took his first step as a colonel, it had been accompanied by a snort of pain, the unlucky slipping of a pin having evidently conveyed to the chief the idea that one of the eagles had grasped his shoulder in its talons.
The chief modestly requested similar honors for his "papoose," and that individual was treated to the straps of a captain. A different application of strap, it occurred to me, would have seemed more proper upon the six feet of unpromising humanity which appeared above the "papoose's" moccasins.
It had been a matter of surprise to us how the Indians could make such inferior looking stock as theirs capable of such speed and extraordinary journeys; but it ceased to excite our wonder after an examination of their whips. These ingenious instruments of torture have handles, which in form and size resemble a policeman's club. To one end are attached some thongs of thick leather, half a yard in length, and to the other a loop of the same material, just large enough to go over the hand and bind slightly on the wrist. Dangling from the latter, the handle can be instantly grasped, and the body of thongs brought down on the pony's skin, with a crack like a flail on the sheaves, and the result is what Sachem called an astonishing "shelling out" of speed.
We explained to White Wolf that Tammany Sachem was one of many great chiefs who had a mighty wigwam in the big city of the pale-faces, far away toward the rising sun; that they were all good men, and never lied like the chiefs of the Cheyennes, or took any thing belonging to others; and that their women, instead of carrying heavy burdens, spent all their time in distributing the money and goods of the big wigwam to the needy.
White Wolf signified, through the interpreter, that such a wigwam was too good for earth, and ought to be pitched on the happy hunting grounds as soon as possible.
Sachem thought the savage meant to be sarcastic.