TO MY BOY FRIENDS ALL OVER THE WORLD
The first fifteen years of my life were spent in the Dakota Territory. The great West mothered me during the shaping of my boyhood ambitions and ideals. Therefore, I know by personal experience much of the actual life of our frontier days.
Let me relate a few unusual stories of early environment which will show why a man brought up in the West never forgets its history, traditions and life.
While boys of my age in the East were playing baseball, football and the various school games, I was forced through environment to play the more primitive games of the Indian. I lived on the frontier. White settlers were scarce. Naturally, I had but a few boy companions of my own race. A boy is a boy no matter what race or country; therefore, we played with the Indian youths.
In this way, I learned to ride Indian-style as well as with the saddle; I learned to shoot accurately with rifle or six-gun; I learned to hunt and track with the wisdom of my red friends; and I learned to play the rugged, body-building games of the native Americans, which called for the greatest endurance and best sportsmanship. In short, I was a Western boy.
For instance, we used to sail primitive Indian ice-boats on the upper Missouri river. This sport was the chief joy of my winter days. With our Indian boy friends we would construct the ice-boat in this fashion:
Taking a suitable number of barrel-staves, we lashed them together lengthwise with buck-skin thongs. Thus the staves were raised from the surface both in the front and rear, making a canoe effect. Then a soap box was placed in the middle of the craft. Next we placed a stout pole upright in the front end of the box. To a crosspiece on the pole we lashed a blanket. We were then all ready to go.
When the winter winds hit those rude sails, we traveled so far and so fast in one direction that it would take us all day to walk back home.
During my Dakota boyhood I not only acquired the accomplishments of the West, but I met some of the most famous characters of frontier days—white and red men. In fact, my early days of intimate relationship with the Sioux Indians enabled me to learn their tribal traits and history nearly as well as I know our own. I speak the "silent tongue"—the sign language of the Sioux which, by the way, is understood by all Indian tribes.
In those days the luxuries and even many of the necessities of civilization were denied us in our frontier settlements. My mother brought four children into this world, attended by Sioux squaws because a doctor could not be procured. And, when a vicious rattler nearly ended my career at the age of twelve years, a squaw officiated as the doctor, the nearest physician being engaged in punching cows at a ranch some sixty miles distant. That the Sioux squaw was a good doctor is proven by the fact that I am alive to-day.