APPENDIX B.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.
AS VIEWED BY WEEPING WEASEL, LATE CHIEF
OF THE KIOWAS.
A LECTURE
Written by Captain Orsemus Bronson Boyd, in behalf of the Charitable Enterprises of the Ladies connected with the —— Church of Davenport, Iowa, and also given before the Masonic Lodge in San Antonio, Texas.
Ladies and Gentlemen:—In the first place I am not a lecturer. I make this announcement now, for fear you may not discover it before I shall have finished, or if the fact should be rudely thrust upon you, I will have pleaded guilty in advance to the indictment.
When, a boy, I took part in the debating clubs that were held in those old red schoolhouses where all great affairs of state—wars, revolution, politics and finance—were discussed with the freedom of boys and the ignorance of savages, there was one question which never failed to elicit ample talk: “Resolved, that anticipation is better than reality,” and on that question I was always in the affirmative. In an hour you will all be with me.
I shall tell no tale of personal adventure; nothing worth recording ever happened to me. Diogenes, with a lantern, and open sunlight to aid the lantern, in the city of Athens failed to find an honest man. An untutored Indian from the plains of Texas, amid the common events and every-day life of the Pale-faces, discovered that their vaunted civilization was a myth, and their boasted culture a delusion. Let us at once annihilate the Indian and discredit Diogenes.
In common with all Christians of our kind, we believe that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of heaven. There are other Christians who believe that it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than for a camel to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Who shall say which Christian is the Christian?
Before the brothers of this noble profession, this mystic tie, whose deeds have been known in every land and under every sun—amid burning flames and on frozen mountains, on swollen rivers and tempestuous seas, by the bedsides of dying princes, in the cabins of poverty, desolation, and disease, in public and private, to bond and free, to all brothers who own its symbolic rites—to all brothers and wives of the brothers, I can more freely speak of one who, though ignorant and a savage, still found in his own faith and his own civilization his own Christianity.
Eighteen hundred years ago, in Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, a man, whom the charity of God had sent into the world, was preaching to the people. And a certain lawyer, willing to justify himself, stood up and asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Promptly came the answer:
“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
“And by chance there came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
“And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
“But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.
“And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
“And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him: and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?”
On the boundless prairies of the West and South, that are in extent empires, the white man has learned that devotion which Nature, in her grandest forms, most surely teaches. He has learned that tolerance which men unfettered by the bonds of conventional society most quickly learn.
Two years ago last July I found myself encamped upon the banks of the Red River of Texas, with forty horsemen as scouts under my command. Like a silver thread the river ran a thousand feet beneath us, through the wildest and most precipitous cañon.
At four o’clock one morning, a Seminole Indian, attached to the command, brought me intelligence that six hours previously six horses, four lodges, one sick Indian, five squaws, and several children had descended into the cañon one mile above us, and were then lost to sight. I asked:
“Had they provisions?”
“Yes; corn and buffalo meat.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw corn scattered upon one side of the trail, and flies had gathered upon a piece of buffalo meat on the other.”
“How do you know that one of the Indians is sick?”
“Because the lodge poles were formed into a travois, that was drawn by a horse blind in one eye.”
“How do you know the horse was half blind?”
“Because, while all the other horses grazed upon both sides of the trail, this one ate only the grass that grew upon one side.”
“How do you know the sick one was a man?”
“Because when a halt was made all the women gathered around him.”
“Of what tribe are they?”
“Of the Kiowa tribe.”
And thus, with no ray of intelligence upon his stolid face, the Seminole Indian stood before me and told all I wished to know concerning our new neighbors, whom he had never seen.
Two hours from that time, not knowing whether they were friends or enemies, I was carefully studying, from the bluff above, through a field-glass, the Indian camp.
The lodges had all been erected, and were gay with the robes of the buffalo of the plains, the prairie wolf, and the coyote. A great war bonnet of eagles’ feathers hung before the door of the principal tepee, denoting that its occupant was a chief. From the lodge pole floated a blue streamer, bearing the rude device, in red paint, of a whip-poor-will attacking a rattlesnake; this told me that he was the chief of all the Kiowas. I knew the man. I had met him, with many others of his tribe, one night several years before, one hundred miles below on the same river, and the meeting had not been pleasant to either of us.
In fact, several hours had been required in which to adjust our differences; and as the chief left me amid the crack of rifles and the swish of arrows, I heard his clear voice solemnly declaring in Spanish that he would surely come again “when the moon was young.” Fate was too strong even for the chief of the Kiowas; he never came; his tribe had been conquered and were at peace.
Returning to my cantonment, I hastily saddled a small detachment, and descending the almost precipitous sides of the gorge reached the Indian encampment, and dismounting, raised the buffalo skin that hung before the entrance of the principal lodge, and stood unsummoned in the presence of the chief. An old and shriveled man, with nerveless arms and sunken eyes, from which the fire of battle had forever fled, lay upon a rude couch of skins. He gave courteous greeting, said he knew me, and even spoke my name. As I sat upon the ground at his side he told me how, for weeks before our previous meeting to which I have alluded, he had been upon my trail when I marched over the short, crisp buffalo grass of the staked-plains. He had known my personal habits, the disposition of the camp for defense at night, the number of men, animals, and wagons; in fact, all that I had known myself.
The chief then told me that he was stricken by death, and should soon be in the presence of the Great Spirit, roaming the happy hunting grounds of his tribe, and asked that he be allowed to die in peace.
Day after day I visited the dying warrior, who related from time to time, as his strength permitted, the story of his life and the story of his tribe. He recounted the wrongs they had suffered, and the wrongs they had done. He told me of their customs and traditions, their marriages, births, and deaths. For days he talked, sometimes in the soft Spanish tongue, often in the beautiful sign language of the plain Indian.
In my youth I lived near, and of course read the romantic creations of that clever gentleman who resided upon the shores of the beautiful Cooperstown Lake. I had also read the works of a novelist from the South who had invested the Indian character with all the warmth and color of his native skies, with all the romance that belonged to his Southern forests, gay with flowers and poetic with festoons of clinging moss.
In consequence of this I had come to look upon the Indian as all that was noble, grand, and heroic in war, all that was gentle, tender, and true in peace. I had read with breathless interest of his loves, courtships, and marriages. I had admired his keenness of vision upon the trail, his untiring energy, fleetness of foot, immunity from fatigue, his long fasts, and the halo of romance that seemed to ever encircle him. I considered him a “Chevalier Bayard,” a model of physical beauty, who resembled, perhaps, the dying gladiator.
My boyhood’s dream was rudely broken, and like many another boyish illusion it disappeared in a day. I found the Indian dirty, unwashed, and treacherous, a prey to the lowest instincts and the most revolting cruelty.
He was no “Chevalier Bayard,” and did not resemble the dying gladiator. The romance, color, light and shades—all were gone, and I learned that the Indian and our treatment of him were deformities and blots upon our fair land and our modern civilization. Between the law of force upon one side, and the law of civilization upon the other, the Indian has been tossed like an unripe apple, and has not known which to obey.
One night the old Indian chief died, and the next morning, with such rude and simple rites as obtained among the Kiowas, we carried him to his last resting-place upon the platform which had been erected for the purpose.
The dawning light was flushing rosy red in the blushing East; in the West the darkness of the night still lingered. The songs of a thousand birds and the chirp of millions of insects broke in some measure the eternal silence of those great plains. The buzzard, a mere speck in the sky, with the eye of the eagle waited impatiently for his prey. Herds of timid antelopes, with great startled eyes, watched us from a distance, ready to dash away on fleetest foot at a moment’s warning. Troops of buffaloes were slaking their thirst in the rippling river. The great cat-fish, with strong leaps, rose bodily from the water in pursuit of prey, and fell back with a splash.
All animal life was awake with the flush of the morning; and as the sun’s disk appeared above the horizon’s dead level, we laid the chief upon the platform, with his face turned toward the “God of the Dome.” His body was wrapped in a red blanket stoutly bound about with cords. He had been brave in battle, so all his war implements were laid by his side. His great war bonnet of eagle’s feathers was hung upon one of the upright poles. His horses were slain by the scaffold. Then, to the accompaniment of low-voiced chants, his widows began their work of scarification with knives upon the lower extremities. When that was finished we left him to the hush of those vast plains.
That night in one of the lodges a great great granddaughter but a few months old died. The child was placed in a frail burial canoe, covered with trailing vines that had grown upon the river’s banks, and gently cast adrift. No doubt the tiny bark was soon caught in rippling eddies, or its course stopped by stout rushes, and in time its lifeless occupant returned to the dust from which it had sprung.
After the obsequies of the dead chief I returned to camp, and in order to divert my mind sought to fatigue my body by stalking buffaloes all day. But I had gained a new insight into the Indian character, and one which enabled me to respect it.
That evening, lying in a hammock under the awning of my tent, as the first shades of darkness came creeping over the plains, there struck upon my ears, borne upward from the gorge below, the chant of Indian women for their dead. Its tones were the rhythm of sorrow and the notes of woe. Until midnight the songs continued, now loud, then sinking to the faint whisperings of the wind. Next morning the lodges were in ashes, and nothing was left of our strange neighbors but the dead chief upon his platform, and the footprints of their moccasins as they traveled straight toward the North Star.
These events made so strange and strong an impression upon me, that I propose telling you this evening, in as simple words as possible, the story of the pilgrimage of Weeping Weasel, late chief of all the Kiowas. I shall dwell longer upon his attempts to introduce the white man’s civilization in his tribe, what he saw, and the inferences drawn therefrom, than upon all the other incidents he related. The conclusions at which Weeping Weasel, with the intellect of an Indian and the sagacity of a politician, arrived, are not necessarily mine; and if their recital should wound any one within the sound of my voice, I would beg them to remember that they were told me by a dying Indian chief, as he lay in his lodge upon the banks of the Red River flowing peacefully through the great staked-plains of Texas.
Years and years before—even for hundreds of summers—the Kiowas had been a powerful nation. When the tent of the chief was planted, there clustered around it five thousand lodges. The tribe was rich in the implements of war, owned thousands of horses, were mighty hunters, bold and aggressive warriors. No footprint of man or animal, no upturned stone, broken twig or bended grass escaped the keen vision of their scouts.
From El Paso, where the Rio Grande del Norte commences its westward course, and swings in the arc of a great circle until completed at the mouth of the Pecos, where it again flows south, they owned the lands of which this river formed the Western boundary; thence south across the “Devil’s River” and the Nueces, to where it empties into beautiful Matagorda Bay. On the east they had fought for supremacy with the Comanches, and been victorious. They had made the Tonkawas a nation of beggars and old women. From across the border they had repelled invasions of the Kickapoos and Lipan-Apaches. They had marched, an irresistible army, across the pine ridges and cedar mountains of New Mexico, and fearlessly confronted the Warm Springs and Mescalero tribes. The Utes of Colorado had descended from their mountain fastnesses, battled with them in the open plain, and been defeated. They had measured lances with and beaten the Tonto and Jicarrila—Apaches of Arizona. They had destroyed the great wheat-fields on the Gila River of the Pima and Maricopa tribes. The Yumas had heard their battle-cry. They had pushed their conquests amongst the Pi-Utes and Shoshones of Nevada, and from thence had marched against the Bannocks of Idaho, and the Nez Perces of Oregon. Their spoils of war had been great.
But in course of time the hands of all other tribes were raised against them, and through disaster and defeat they had been reduced to the occupancy of only the great plains of Western Texas.
At that time Weeping Weasel became their chief. He was then in the prime of manhood. The nerveless arm that I saw in his lodge could then draw the six-foot arrow to its head, and make the cord of deer sinews writhe and moan as in pain.
He saw that peace and industry would perhaps be of great benefit to his tribe, and after much communion with himself and consultation with the elders, concluded at no distant day to turn his face toward the rising sun, and learn the strange and barbarous ways of the Pale-faces. He had been told they were as numberless as the leaves of the forest when the hot sirocco that comes from the southern islands shakes them with its fiery breath.
Marching over these great and silent plains under the blazing sun, he had learned in some instinctive way that the Pale-faces would build cities there, and people them with busy men and women.
Weeping Weasel had seen the Pongo or smoke-man in the North that traversed its iron rails faster than his fleetest pony could gallop. He had seen a small wire stretched on poles through which he could but dimly comprehend that the men who lived at the rising sun talked with their brothers who lived at the setting sun.
But before starting on a journey so fraught with peril, he thought best to call to his aid teachers—those of good repute among the Pale-faces. Through a missionary he secured the services of two devotees from Massachusetts, who came and opened a school for the boys and girls of his tribe.
It is true that in visage and mien these teachers did not resemble the dusky beauties of the Kiowa race. The ringlets worn at the side of the face, the eyes that looked through strange pieces of glass, the mysterious scrolls which they held in their hands, and the sounding fall of a heavy foot instead of the dewy touch of the moccasin, were not calculated to inspire love and respect from untutored savages.
Still, with the devotion of their calling, and in their desire to do good, these mistaken and misguided women taught on. But one fatal day they were surprised by Weeping Weasel while teaching the children that the world is round. The Kiowas believed it to be flat. Weeping Weasel, with the decision worthy a general of iron nerve and unflinching courage in the right, seized and burned them at the stake.
He scattered their ashes to the four winds of heaven, and in a long address to the Historical Society of Boston, asked that others with less pernicious doctrines be sent. It is perhaps needless to state that even the old Bay State, with its advanced ideas and unyielding principles, could find no more volunteer missionaries for that work. Therefore Weeping Weasel must needs start upon his pilgrimage toward the rising sun.
The night previous to his departure all the tribes assembled, and with the great Southern Cross gleaming and burning, they performed the sacred rites and mysteries of the sun dance. A hundred fires flamed brightly. Amid the yells of warriors and the shrieks of those fainting from self-inflicted tortures, there arose the monotonous chants of the women as they prayed for the safety of their chief.
At break of day he left them, and a great silence fell upon the tribe as they mournfully sought their separate lodges.
Day by day Weeping Weasel traveled north and east, sleeping at night under the stars, his food procured by bow and arrow, his drink taken from limpid streams.
At last he came to the country of the “Smoke-man,” and taking passage was borne swiftly over mountains and through the valleys to some bluffs upon the boundary of a great State, where other Indians had held their councils years before, and where he determined to commence his researches and investigations.
His pilgrimage becoming known, the chief was hospitably lodged in the house of a Christian gentleman of that town who was a land agent. Among the Kiowas the title to all lands and the occupancy thereof were considered sacred. Even in their forays against other tribes they contended for supremacy, not for a title to the country. Indeed, so strong was this honesty implanted in the breast of the savage and barbarous Indian, that once, after a great battle with the Comanches, rather than do violence to this principle he had ceded to them a thousand square miles of his own country, deeming that better than to question such undoubted right.
The land agent showed him, in his office, maps of lands which bore strong resemblance to those occupied by his tribe. Upon leaving, this same Christian gentleman followed him across the State to a city with a great bridge and offered to sell, beseeching him to buy, for a merely nominal sum, thousands and thousands of acres upon which his tribe had dwelt from time immemorial. Weeping Weasel determined not to incorporate the land usages of the Pale-faces amongst his people.
In the towns and camps of the Kiowas, great attention had been paid to the sanitary conditions of their immediate surroundings. This was necessary for the life and health of individual members of the tribe.
In that city by the bridge he found the people in a certain locality stricken unto death by a strange pestilence. Upon investigating the cause, he learned they all had drank water from a certain well. Weeping Weasel concluded that, if he were the chief in this locality, there would be sewers and water-mains; or failing these, the inhabitants who refused or were too indolent to carry water from the river would receive a punishment, compared with which the cholera would be a lingering and painless death. But Weeping Weasel was an untaught, rude, and barbarous savage.
The “Father of Waters” next attracted the attention of this curious pilgrim. Compared with all other rivers he had ever seen, it was as the sun to the faintest twinkling star. He worshiped it as a god. Day by day he sat upon the banks, watched it through all changing moods, loved it best when angry currents brought down yellow mud from the far North, and worshiped it most when the setting sun’s ocher light fell upon its surging waters, enveloping beautiful islands.
There floated upon its broad expanse numberless strange monsters, propelled in some mysterious way. Weeping Weasel found they carried grain, fruit, and other produce from one part of the country to another, and then first began to understand the law of trade—of barter and sale. He took passage upon one of these palaces, descending a hundred miles; saw the busy towns upon the banks of his idol, filled, as he thought, with crazy men and women. Why all this rush, ceaseless activity and strife for wealth, he questioned.
Returning at night, and standing upon the deck with head uncovered in the reverent attitude a savage always assumes when awe-stricken in the presence of nature, he suddenly became conscious of a strange throbbing through every fiber of the monster. He also saw abreast another monster all aglow with fire; men were shouting and running like mad! Every few minutes its huge furnace doors were opened, and the blazing fires fed with pitch and resin. The vessel shook in every joint; men and women were crowding the deck all hoarse from shouting; money was freely changing hands; from the smoke-stacks long lines of fire trailed out through the darkness; the gurgling water at the bow was thrown in spray upon the deck. Suddenly there was a terrible roar, a great flash of fire, then darkness came, and Weeping Weasel knew no more until he found himself safe upon the river’s bank.
He was told that a hundred men, women, and children had been sacrificed that night. Burning with anger and righteous indignation, Weeping Weasel attended the coroner’s inquest; the evidence was conflicting; no one in particular seemed to have been to blame; it was an accident. Weeping Weasel went forward to offer his testimony; a savage could not take the oath. The coroner’s jury promptly acquitted all of blame, even the poor Indian, and the event was soon forgotten. Weeping Weasel determined that the civilization of the steamboat should never be introduced among his people.
Again he turned his face to the east, and traveled across a great State where the fields were waving with ripening grain. Neat farmhouses had been erected on every side. The corn and wheat that he saw growing seemed to him of no use. Who would require it?
On these undulating plains with cattle, sheep, and horses, where peace and plenty seemed to reign and the merry voices of children were heard at sunset, our untutored savage began to think perhaps was the civilization of which he had dreamed. Still he had the Indian’s caution, and arrived at conclusions slowly.
He determined to abide three days in the most peaceful and quiet village, and chose one with two churches, a bank, and store.
Upon awakening the first morning, he found that the store had been robbed and burned during the night. The following day the two churches were in fierce dispute over some minor point of doctrine. The third morning it was learned that the bank cashier had absconded with all the funds, leaving hundreds of families destitute.
The Kiowas did not steal from each other; the simple faith in the Great Spirit which they had in common furnished no cause for dispute; and the custodian of the tribe’s public goods never ran away with them. They never had thought of such an occurrence; and the event was so improbable that those barbarous savages had not even prescribed a mode of punishment for it.
Weary, harassed, tormented, and worn out even at the commencement of his pilgrimage, Weeping Weasel would gladly have turned his face toward the setting sun; but patience being one of the great virtues of the Kiowas, he again girded up his loins and proceeded on his journey.
But a great fear was coming upon his superstitious soul. One afternoon, years before, while hunting, Weeping Weasel had fallen asleep by the side of a spring that bubbled from beneath an immense boulder, which was sufficiently large to protect him from the sun’s rays. As he slept, there appeared before him the god Stone-Shirt, followed by Pantasco, or he who robs the living; Kay-Wit, he who robs the dead; and Quite-Qiu, who robs both living and dead. All passed before the sleeping warrior, to whom Stone-Shirt foretold in the sign language this pilgrimage and the events which would follow.
Weeping Weasel could only dimly comprehend on awaking, that in case of failure he was to be turned into one of the three horrid shapes shown him by Stone-Shirt; and, forever shut out from the Great Spirit and the happy hunting grounds, his soul, without arms to defend itself, must wander and fall through unfathomable space and darkness.
When he saw the terrible anxiety, woe, and despair written upon the faces of fathers, mothers, and children whom the vandal acts of the faithless cashier had ruined, Weeping Weasel concluded to ever pray that he be not turned into the horrid shape which steals from the living.
In the robbery of the store the proprietor had been killed; and as this ignorant savage gazed upon the form of the man who had died while defending his property, Weeping Weasel, in the agony of his soul, prayed to Stone-Shirt that he be spared, both in this his mortal, and in his future spiritual, existence, assuming the form of him who robs the dead.
In the dispute between the churches, so much rancor and venom had been developed that men who were peacefully lying, as they had lain for years, in the little cemetery of the town, were publicly discussed, and motives and opinions the worst imputed to them. Happily they were ignorant of all this.
The living were slandered and the dead vilified. Brother became the enemy of brother, sisters were estranged, husbands and wives separated. Again Weeping Weasel besought Stone-Shirt, and with the sweat of mortal agony upon his brow, that, if he must, he would face either of the two horrible shapes to be spared the form of the one who robs both the living and the dead.
Weeping Weasel soon found himself in a great city by a lake. Here he was lodged in the house of a gray-haired and respectable man, a pillar of the church, and one who gave largely, in an indiscriminate way, to churches and the poor. He had no time to investigate charities, and only contributed to them because he had money, or perhaps to ease the gnawings of a conscience not altogether dormant.
Weeping Weasel was taken to church, where an eloquent preacher held his audience spell-bound as he impressed upon it the evils of gambling. To all his strictures the gray-haired man responded with fervent “Ahmens!”
The next morning his host escorted Weeping Weasel to a great mart of trade in that populous city. There the savage Indian remembered the immense wheat and corn fields he had passed as he journeyed east. He saw the reverend gentleman who had spoken so eloquently on the sin of gambling stealthily enter a broker’s office and sell thousands and thousands of bushels of grain which he did not own, and never would. His gray-haired entertainer, who had so graciously responded “Ahmen!” stood in the center of hundreds of other men, all of whom were shouting and howling as he drove grain up and down by a nod of his head; men were ruined and families made destitute by this man, who called gambling a sin.
Weeping Weasel learned, but it was difficult to grasp the idea, that crops were bought and sold before they were sown; that they became a football upon “Change,” even while growing; and when finally sent to market they ruined thousands. He found that all this disastrously affected the poor brethren of the Pale-faces, and that children were hungry in consequence. The chief decided he would grow only enough corn to satisfy the wants of his people, and would forever remain silent in regard to the gambling transactions.
Once in the history of the Kiowa tribe an old and respected warrior had been selected to build a lodge in which public meetings were to be held. He was to be paid from the goods owned in common. To the dismay and horror of all, it was found that this rude architect had not been honest; he had demanded more buffalo hides than were needed for the building, and the best he had conveyed to his own lodge, and afterward sold to wandering traders. When the man’s crime became known he was seized, and the elders sat around him with stern visages. His trial was short; he was bound on the top of the dishonestly built lodge, and met his death in its flames.
Weeping Weasel was shown a great hall of justice in that city where the granite was the finest and the workmanship the most skillful. He was told that the builder had taken the best granite and sold it to the traders among the Pale-faces. Thinking this had just been discovered, our barbarous Indian went early the next morning to witness the destruction of the building and cremation of the dishonest builder. He waited until noon, and as the building still stood and no torch had been applied, Weeping Weasel turned sorrowfully away just in time to see the false builder drinking champagne at a fashionable restaurant with his friends. This phase of civilization would not do for the fierce and warlike Kiowas.
The right of husbands to exact obedience, and the duty of wives to obey, was one of the laws of the Kiowas, as unalterable as if written upon tablets of stone. So strongly was this doctrine implanted in the breast of the savage that once, in a foray against a Northern tribe, a favorite squaw of Weeping Weasel’s had, in direct disobedience to his command, followed a distance of two days’ march and entered his lodge at nightfall. She was beautiful then; but when I saw her on the banks of the Red River she was disfigured. A broken collar bone and a flattened nose were the results of her disobedience. She returned quickly; her only cause of anxiety being that she could not travel nights for fear of passing her own village.
But among the Pale-faces Weeping Weasel learned that the custom was different. He found the wife frittered away her time while the husband was at the counting-room or office. If he commanded her to abstain from the round dances, she danced them; if he ordered her east, she went west; if he asked her to attend church, she preferred the opera; if he expressed a desire for the sea-shore, she chose the mountains of New Hampshire. Weeping Weasel, with the cunning of the savage, decided that this should never be told the squaws of his nation.
As no man, intent upon a great mission, can hope to escape annoyances and observation from the idle, vulgar, and indolent, this warrior from the South found that his wearing apparel, the dress of his fathers, and the habit of his tribe, was a matter of curious comment even among those busy people. His clothes were good enough for him, and there were no fashion plates and paper patterns in use among the Kiowas. Still, at a council held at one time for the general good of the tribe, a daring innovator had, as a protection against snakes while marching, suggested that the boots of the Pale-face be adopted. A pair had been found amongst their war plunder at one time, and had been examined curiously by all the tribe.
In an institution for the sick, Weeping Weasel saw in a padded cell a maniac, confined and chained to the floor. He held a wisp of straw in his mouth, his clothes were torn to tatters, his hands cut and bleeding, foam issued from his mouth and mingled with blasphemy from his lips. His cries for salvation from invisible enemies were piteous. The matted hair and bloodshot eye told the Indian a tale as graphic as the pictured rocks of his own tribe. He found that the man was young, rich, and respected. He asked the nature of the disease, and was carelessly told that it was “snakes in his boots.” Sadly Weeping Weasel asked that the wire be at once ordered to carry a message to his tribe for the immediate destruction of the boots found among their plunder. He also wondered why the Pale-faces did not at once destroy the serpent whose terrible folds were coiling around the youth of their country.
All this time Weeping Weasel’s perceptions were being quickened and his reasoning powers enlarged. The Kiowas had always considered the marriage tie sacred. It was true a man might have many wives, enough to do all the work of his lodge, while he used his energies only for war or in the pursuit of game. But once taken, the man and woman were bound for life. No power on earth could dissolve the tie. Infidelity in either was punished by death. But in that great city he found courts open as the day, in which shameless men and brazen women sought the strong arm of the law to break and tear asunder the most sacred and binding of oaths. Weeping Weasel learned that only a publication in an obscure newspaper was necessary to satisfy the goddess whom Weeping Weasel had seen represented as blind-folded, with scales in her hand. Incompatibility of temperament was often the cause alleged. This the Indian could not understand. Among the Kiowa husbands and wives such a thing was unknown. The husband commanded, the wife obeyed. Weeping Weasel found after a time that this term was used to indicate that wives had become tired of their husbands, or husbands had grown weary of their wives. It often meant dishonest and unholy loves, and could be construed as indicative of a thousand things when the cord that first bound two people together had become a gnawing, corroding chain of iron.
The ignorant savage had not as yet found any advantage to be gained from the civilization of the Pale-faces. Weary and sick at heart, the pilgrim pushed on until he reached the chief city of the great nation. He had begun to comprehend the numbers of the Pale-faces and their strength. His brain was confused. He was so torn by conflicting emotions that he feared his judgment would become warped and valueless. Arriving in the great city, he learned that a man with unlimited power had betrayed his trust and plundered the city’s treasury of millions. Yet the blind goddess had thrown around him all possible shields to cover his glaring rascality. He had banded with him an army of thieves. Again a great hall of justice had been the means used to rob and plunder the people at will. Before public exposure the thing had been a byword and a jest at the clubs.
The man who had done all this had risen to power from the ranks of the common people. Weeping Weasel wondered if he had risen to power by his rascality. But conscious that he was ignorant and a savage, he rejected the thought as unmanly.
When a warrior among the Kiowas betrayed a public trust he was terribly punished. But one such case had ever been handed down in the traditions of their tribe. In that instance the culprit had been led in a circle surrounded by all his tribe—every man, woman, and child was present—the silence was fearful; then the body of the victim was covered with the broad leaves of the prickly pear, and they were one by one set on fire. The punishment seemed to have been effectual.
Next morning our Indian appeared at the city hall to witness the torture; again he waited until noon, and as no steps had been taken against the wrong-doer, he concluded, to say the least, that the white man was slow in punishing criminals.
The Kiowas had always paid great attention to the rearing of their children, and especially exercised great care and foresight over the girls, who were to become future mothers of the warriors of the tribe. No Indian girl of six or twelve years could be absent from her lodge after the fall of evening dew. She knew no lovers until she had arrived at the age and estate of womanhood. Among the Pale-faces this custom did not obtain. Weeping Weasel saw misses of tender age, in pinafores, give large parties to other children; boys were invited. He saw childish eyes sparkle with bandied jest and compliments fit only for mature years. He saw children, excited by the dance, intoxicated with music, satiated with rich food, spend the best hours of the night in gay and reckless dissipation.
At certain seasons of the year the Chickasaw plum furnished much of the food used by his tribe. If the pure white dust was brushed from its surface when half-ripe, it never fruited in perfection. Weeping Weasel found that the Pale-faces often brushed the dust of the plum from the cheek of childhood.
The Kiowa woman was to him the model of physical beauty; her large waist, broad, strong shoulders, the strength of limb, elastic, springing step, and downcast eyes were such as he deemed fitting for women who were to rear the future braves of their race.
Among the Pale-faces he found that maternity was a burden to be avoided; that the waist was contracted by springs of steel; the body thrown forward at an angle upon the hips by strong pieces of wood placed under the heels; the face was covered by a vile compound which looked like flour, or was painted as the savage paints when he marches to battle or prepares for the sun dance. Curious to ascertain the exact value of all this nonsense he made calculation, and learned that the muslin and silk, velvet and ribbons, paint and powder, flowers and bits of steel, amounted to about four hundred and fifty-three dollars. That is to say, in the Kiowa computation, forty-five and a half horses.
Weeping Weasel determined to be silent upon this manifest absurdity of the Pale-face women.
The Kiowa women wore the hair straight down their backs and combed away from their eyes. The daughters of the Pale-faces cut theirs short in front and allowed it, except when curled by hot irons, which the damp strangely affected, to fall into their eyes. The meaning and mystery of this Weeping Weasel never attempted to fathom.
Besides the Great Spirit whom the Kiowas worshiped in common, each Indian had a personal god to whom alone he was responsible. This god was the conscience of the savage, and above it was only the commands of the Great Spirit. His religion was always with him; it was his shield and strength in the day of battle, his comfort in time of peace: he heard it in the whispering of the wind and the sighing of the trees; he recognized it in the rustle of the growing grass and the ripening grain; he felt it in the songs of birds and the whirr of insects’ wings. It warned him in the broken watch-spring buzz of the deadly rattlesnake; in the forms of the clouds he saw it; in the flush of morning and the darkness of evening he knew it. It was his only ideal of the estate of future happiness where game would be plenty and peace eternal. The bark on which these mysteries were written was to him sacred. The savage accepted as truth its teachings, which long generations of Kiowas had confirmed.
He went while in that city to hear a speaker—silver-tongued and magnetic, who had all the graces which belong to the polished orator; his voice was like the sound of bells to the Indian, whose nature is ever open to the charm of this God-like gift. But he heard the man revile, distort, and falsify the religion of the white man. He heard him read from the sacred book, with laughing mien and careless jest, most solemn promises. The mysteries of the creation and the origin of the Pale-faces became in the mouth of this man as intangible as the will-o’-the-wisp he had seen floating over his Southern swamps.
Listening to him, and applauding to the echo, were sons and daughters of the Pale-faces. Fair women and intelligent men accepted as eternal truth the words of the speaker. Weeping Weasel was ashamed, astonished, dismayed! In this desecration of religion the wild Indian of the Southern plains thought he could dimly comprehend the future downfall of a great nation.
The pilgrim lost hope. Still he determined to pursue the subject to its bitter end, and went one bright morning to the City of Churches. Business had ceased, and the streets were quiet. In a darkened temple, rich with stained glass, the air heavy with burning incense, and stirred only by the notes of a great organ as it kept time to the voices of boys who sang in angelic tones the litany of the church, he heard an eloquent preacher tell of the wickedness and sin of two great cities; and how, because not ten righteous men could be found therein, they were destroyed from the face of the earth. He also listened to the story of the wife who looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt. The next morning Weeping Weasel bought a canopy of asbestos roofing, and thereafter never appeared in the streets of either of the cities without carrying it above his head.
Again he was shown the great marts of trade, larger than the grain exchange of another city. Here men bought and sold scraps of paper and the country’s gold. It was the same old scenes. Stocks went up and down by a nod of the head, and again men were made poor in a moment. The ruined ones were driven from the exchange, and forever after, with wild eyes and fevered pulse, they haunted its doors and talked, with the strange infatuation of the Indian hemp-eater, of the rise and fall of the stocks that had ruined them.
One terrible day Weeping Weasel saw a coin that the Pale-face used in exchange for goods become enhanced in value three times. Wild, haggard men clung to railings for support, so faint they could not stand. Two unprincipled members of the exchange were the agents of this scheme. When night came, the credit of the country had been nearly ruined. The two conspirators slunk to a hotel that was soon surrounded by a howling mob. Trade and industry were impaired, commerce nearly swept from the sea and land, and credit almost lost by the act of those two men. Weeping Weasel again determined that gambling should forever be prohibited among his people, even the throw of the six cherry stones for a quart of Chickasaw plums.
Among the Kiowas the public singer of the tribe’s heroic deeds was a warrior, always well paid for his services. He had the warmest seat in the lodge, and at the feast of dog-meat the tenderest piece; but the newspaper man of the Pale-faces was lean, ill-fed, and most lightly paid. Weeping Weasel found that medicines for the cure of all diseases were sold in bottles, and that the proprietors waxed rich. The savage concluded that all the Pale-faces could drink, but that few could read.
In settling disputes among the Kiowas, all matters in question were referred to a council composed of fifteen elders of the tribe. Each principal laid his case before the tribunal with all the clearness possible, in order that a just decision might be reached. Among the Pale-faces the Indian found a class of men skilled in the preparation of causes in dispute. From long practice, close study, and great care, these men, who talked only of others’ rights and not of their own, had become so skillful that white was made black, and black white, as each argued his own point. Doubt was thrown upon the most open and public transactions. Witnesses swore to the most improbable events, and to occurrences they had never seen. In their harangues before the elders each quoted the same statutes in the same words, as applicable to his side of the cause. There were fierce disputes and incessant wrangling. Weeping Weasel determined that this kind of practice should never obtain a footing in his tribe.
The Kiowas had always considered sacred the life of each member of the tribe. In their rude and barbarous code there was no deviation from the rule of “blood for blood;” it was as unchangeable as the “Laws of the Medes and Persians.” In a court of justice Weeping Weasel saw a man arraigned who had wantonly slain a brother by sending a bullet through his heart. The crime had been seen by many; there was no conflicting evidence; it was premeditated; but again the counselors covered the case with doubt. The murderer had a bright, intelligent face and an undimmed intellect. Weeping Weasel heard him acquitted on the ground of temporary emotional insanity. The proceedings of that court were unfit for the uncivilized Kiowa.
Among the Kiowas, the position of medicine-man was one of great honor and trust, but extremely hazardous to the incumbent. When a warrior sickened the medicine-man was at once summoned. With rude rites, much beating of drums and strange incantations, he sought to drive away the disease. Sometimes he was unsuccessful and the patient died. When the corpse of his mismanagement was ready for burial the medicine-man was summoned, and he always came. He was divested of all his titles to respect, all the trophies he had gained by successful practice of physic, and manfully met his death on the scaffold with his victim.
Such was not the custom among the Pale-faces. Everywhere Weeping Weasel saw gilt-lettered signs of the medicine-man of the whites; yet the Pale-faces died, and the same medicine-man ministered to another. The savage also noticed that in this strange country the physician never attended the burial of his victim. Weeping Weasel concluded that the death of the doctor had once been a custom among the Pale-faces, but having fallen into disuse the fraternity attended no funerals for fear it might be revived.
Among the medicine-men of the Pale-faces, Weeping Weasel found a class who with pictures and posters attracted the eye to fabulous certificates of wonderful cures. They resided in great houses wherein were all comforts, and where, with endless noise and show, they professed to cure all diseases by water, by physic, by pills, by powders, by plasters, by new and strange remedies, even by the laying on of hands. He found that while regular practitioners were allowed to live, these people fared better even than they. They waxed fat and grew rich upon the credulity of an ignorant public. They lived and moved in the open glare of the noonday sun. After all he had seen, Weeping Weasel ceased to wonder at the strange epidemics that sometimes prevailed among the Pale-faces.
He saw long trains, drawn by the mysterious Pongo man, and managed by underpaid and careless workmen, collide with other trains, and as a result men and women were killed and children maimed; yet no one was punished.
Our pilgrim now turned his face toward the capital of the great nation. One of the three horrible shapes shown him by Stone-Shirt must inevitably become his. But he did not look back. Civilization had caused him to think of the exhortations of the Pale-faced preacher. He “remembered Lot’s wife.”
The Massachusetts school teachers had displayed in rude letters on the walls of the lodge in which they taught this text from the scriptures: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” In the city in which Weeping Weasel had just arrived he found that an officer of the Pale-face warriors was a defaulter to the sum of many thousands of the coins of his people. He was shamefully untrue! His position and name had been used to further defraud. There were no extenuating circumstances—there could be none. But the officer escaped, and no one followed and brought him back. Weeping Weasel was glad that he had burned the teachers at the stake, for he concluded they had willfully misrepresented the text hung upon the walls of the lodge, and that it should have read, “No man pursueth when the wicked flee.”
In the Kiowa tribe all the councils were held and the proceedings argued in a grave and dignified manner. The pipe, signifying good will and friendship, was first passed around. Each warrior touched it with his lips. That day on the banks of the Red River, when Weeping Weasel attempted to tell me of the councils of the elders of the white man, his breath was short, and much of what he said was lost.
In that city he was told offices were bargained for; the daughters of the Pale-faces solicited them for their husbands and friends. He saw a cabinet minister fall from his high place through the sale of paltry positions.
Worn, harassed and broken in spirit, his pilgrimage useless, as no good could, in his opinion, come to the savage from the white man’s civilization, Weeping Weasel turned his face towards the setting sun. He traveled as before, sleeping at night under the stars, and again his drink came from limpid streams; but his food was procured by a revolver and magazine gun of the Pale-faces. Civilization had taught him the deadly effect of these weapons which he afterward used upon his enemies and the Pale-faces themselves.
He returned to his tribe. His coming was seen from afar. Without a word he entered his lodge: he had no greeting for his faithful wives who clustered around him.
Three days passed, and then Weeping Weasel told to his people the story of his pilgrimage, told what he had seen and heard, and the conclusions he had drawn therefrom. With barbarous splendor he was tried for the crime of falsehood, which is capital among Indians, all the men, women and children of the tribe serving as judges.
In a great amphitheater of rock, at the junction of the Pecos with the Rio Bravo del Norte, where the swift rush and meeting of the two rivers forms a whirlpool from which nothing can escape, the public trials of the tribe were held, the people sitting for days in solemn judgment. If sentence of death was decreed the body was thrown into this fearful eddy, and watched by all the tribe as it whirled, leaped, and sprang in the boiling water until its final disappearance.
For generations and generations the gray and frowning rocks had witnessed the trials of offenders among the Kiowas. On one side rose sloping to the bluff a half-circle of trees. So thickly grew the branches of those pines and cedars that but scant sunlight could filter through them. Custom had decreed that if, at the moment of passing sentence, a ray of light should penetrate those thickly mingled branches and fall upon the face of the criminal, one-half of the sentence should be remitted.
The trial was as great as the occasion. Eagle Face, the oldest medicine-man of the tribe, was master of ceremonies. Flowing Hair, the favorite wife of Weeping Weasel, who had at one time, during five days of starvation, fed her first-born boy with blood drawn from her breast, was there, but silent, in her great fear, as became an Indian woman. Circumstances were against the pilgrim. Those wild savages could by no argument be brought to believe that there were such uncivilized people upon the face of the earth. If it were true, how could they live together? It was decided that sentence of death must be passed.
The chief, proud and defiant, took his stand against the half-circle of trees. Below, the pool was lashing itself into anger from a rising river. Flowing Hair had thrown herself at his feet as if to interpose her womanly strength against the dread sentence of an undeviating Indian code. At that moment a broad, imprisoned ray of light that had been entangled among the pines escaped and fell, in all its trembling warmth and pitying tenderness, upon the face of the wild Indian who had told the truth. In its soft caress it embraced the form of his fainting squaw.
Weeping Weasel escaped capital punishment, but was deposed from civil authority over the Kiowas, and was only obeyed as their supreme war-chief. His sentence further banished him, when stricken by death, from his tribe and from burial with his brethren. This was why I found him while dying, surrounded only by his family, on the banks of the Red River.
On the night of his death, to comfort a poor, dying soul, whose future seemed bright enough—although his religion was not mine—I told him, in the sign language, which his glazed and closing eyes could but dimly see, that, in my opinion, his tribe was nearer civilization than he dreamed, since to advanced ideas his sentence seemed just, and that he had only suffered the fate of all reformers.